Fighting all my urges to stay indoor, sip a hot drink, and even blog a little, I drove to campus.  At least it was fun; working on the national week nominations for next calendar year beats finance or completing CV book entry any day.  So next week we’ll be launching our campaign spread the word about Dragon Week – Chinese cultural week.  The goal of getting a high nomination is to have our pick of the week to run the event.  So yes, this is a pre-event to the actual event, a mini national week if you like.

Now as midnight approaches, I grudingly begin my finance assignment.  My only schadenfreude consolation comes from the fact that thousands of miles away, college seniors (including my younger bro) are slaving away on college applications over Thanksgiving break – teehee.

So what did we enjoy? For starters, we savored authentic Italian cheeses: Gorgonzola, Parmigiano Reggiano, Pecorino Sardo, Taleggio, Taleggio and 3 or 4 others. Don’t ask me which is which – I’m still figuring them out myself. The main dish was a handmade pasta, “Casoncelli alla Bergamasca”, meaning casoncelli made with the specific recipe* from Bergamo. At the risk of butchering it, I’m going to attempt a description – it’s very similar to ravioli, but has a different texture and more flavor. It’s served with an olive oil and butter based sauce with various spices and sliced strips of pork (see metal pot in the picture below). Knowing I was stepping into a landmine when I asked about industrial-made casoncelli, I had to do it to find out if there was any other way to get some other than going to Bergamo. The danger of this action can be compared to that of asking a French person if we can find the good French cheeses nicely packaged like Kraft Singles in the market. Being the nice person he is, my friend stopped short of killing me. He claims to never even heard of industrial-made casoncelli and hopes to keep it that way.

Delicious Italian Cheeses

And the wine? We enjoyed some very tasty stuff, including a bottle of 95 Brunello di Montalcino from the famous Catello Banfi winery. It’s a type of sangiovese and paired perfectly with the cheeses. I’ve been discussing my newfound affinity to cheese with some of my friends back in the States.  One of them said that he’d be 30 pounds overweight living here, given the tremendous quality and variety of cheeses, wines, and baguettes. And he’s right. Just yesterday, I was just proclaiming the need to cut back on my cheese intake, only to find myself munching down another block of it with fresh baked bread an hour later.

Dinner was concluded with a simple and elegant confection of ice cream and Limoncello. Think root beer float, except replacing the root beer with lemon flavored Italian liquor. Nuff said.

The bonanza of authentic Italian delights heightened my growing snobbery in culinary expectations. Living in Europe (and being around my European, and especially French, friends) will do that. I want to extend a special thanks to our Italian host for sharing with us a glimpse of his hometown delicacies. Speaking of which, anybody who knows him will vouch for his rare generosity and soft-spoken gentlemanly qualities. But I asked myself, was there a bit of competitive spirit behind this elaborate dinner, given his conversation with the French guy the other night? Perhaps. But we learned that competition is good for consumers, so I’m not complaining at all. All joking aside, we are very much spoiled by and indebted to all our gracious European hosts. I look forward to the Spanish dinner soon (wink wink hint hint).

*Email me if you want the recipe. I have it, in Italian, naturally.

Even though the date conflicted with the aforementioned Lebanese dinner, we decided to go through with it since we had already made the invites earlier, and after all, we know that it’s not easy passing up a chance to attend one of Monty’s infamously fun parties. Besides, this would be a great warm up for our huge party in two weeks.

Like everyone else who visits our chateau for the first time, our guests simply loved the drive in the forest leading to the spectacular view of our home. We couldn’t hear enough compliments about it. Soon after settling in, with the pleasant company, food and drink, people were mixing it up and enjoying themselves. We set a relaxing mood with some good music and played hosts to our best extent. Throughout the night, each of us gave guided tours of the whole chateau. In terms of division of labor, I assumed pizza heating duty. Because of the limited oven size, I would continuously bake and serve pizzas one by one. I had a pretty good system going, my cell phone alarm would go off every 20 minutes and I’d break off from some lovely conversation with our guests and scurry up to the kitchen. But their disappointment was more than made up for when I came back, and don’t even bother trying to convince me the smiles on their faces had more to do with the hot food than seeing my return.

In the main hall, you could feel the energy of the crowd. The delight of our guests was palpable and we were thrilled to help them start the weekend with such a gathering. The photo below was taken before it filled up. At one point, there was no walking room so you’d have to introduce yourself to each lovely guest in your path and make a new acquaintance before passing.

Half of our Monty gang – Thank the guy
in the bottom middle for this party.

After most of the people left, we hosts decided to entertain the remaining guests in a more intimate setting. We moved the music and wine upstairs to the dining hall. In a blink of an eye, our resident Salsa man from Peru had us dancing to hot latin tunes. As much fun as it was, our last batch of guests reluctantly departed around 2:30 – too early for my taste if you ask. Still, great fun for the night. I realize now how much we actually enjoy hosting our friends. I wonder if the nobles who lived here 300 years ago felt the same.

* The concept of potluck was completely foreign to some of our residents and guests. Back in their respective countries, they wouldn’t fathom inviting guests and then asking them to bring something. I’ll chalk that one up to a cultural learning experience.

Back on the concept of shower/bath, when I first saw the bathtub, I noticed the shower head connected to the faucet, but no curtain. The first time using it, I made a mess and splashed water all over the place. Not one to repeat my mistakes, I asked our chateau owner about it, and he replied, “that’s how we want it.” I didn’t get it. Why would we want a shower without a curtain? The other shower on the same floor has one.

So I asked my French neighbor next door on the proper technique of cleansing oneself, a-la old style. What he described is what I will coin here the “shower/bath.” The concept is simple, you sit down in the tub with the shower on (which happens to have very low water pressure) and lather yourself up. Proceed to clean yourself, and before getting out, take one final rinse. That made sense. But then I wondered, what about during the winter, where sitting in a frozen tub seems highly undesirable. This is where the “bath” portion of the technique comes in. You plug the tub, run hot water for a while so you accumulate like 2 cm worth of bath water, and then as you shower, the tub gradually fills up. Here my inquisitive manner got me into trouble, I blurted, “isn’t that like bathing in a pool of your own filth?” The retort, “what the hell do you do all day that you get so dirty?” Touché.

Final grade: low-medium efficiency, low water pressure, high on style points for chateau living.