Saturday, January 1, 2011

FIRST CHRISTMAS IN ITALY





We celebrated our first Christmas in Italy. In the morning we stayed true to tradition and had breakfast and homemade hot cocoa. We then gathered around the artificial Christmas tree (non-tradtional for us and the first artificial we have owned due to the real trees sold locally look like the poor tree on "Its a Charlie Brown Christmas"). The kids separated the gifts and we took turns opening the gifts one by one. It was nice having Caden home from boarding school. We did miss not having Annelise and the baby here. Everyone seemed to be happy with their gifts.
In the afternoon we went to our Italian neighbors for Lunch (they are depicted in the photo). They served several courses. The first was an assortment of bruschetta, fried fish, fried potato puffs, zucchini and egg plant in olive oil, olives, and prosciutto. The second course was lasagna, very good. The third course was pasta with meat, mushrooms, olive oil, and buffalo mozzarella. The fourth course was lamb, a traditional Italian meat served on Christmas. The final course was a variety of deserts, one of which is pictured. This desert is very sweet, a specialty of Naples, and made with ricotta cheese, cake, and frosting over it. The meal was very good. So good I ate myself to near sickness.
It was a good day spent with family and friends. As enjoyable as it was, we missed not being with extended family back in the states. Buon Natale!

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