This week the region of Campania fell from the yellow zone into the orange zone. We are currently not allowed to go out of our municipality and should basically only be out for essentials or work. Yet, staying at home doesn’t have to be a complete disaster. I am choosing to spend this time catching up on my blog with the adventures that we have been fortunate to discover already, get back into learning/studying the Italian language, and of course, more practice making Italian dishes. I can only hope that in the years we are here I will have enough time to fully experience the complexity and meaning of Italy’s soul- il cibo (the food). Being here, I long for the day it’s safe to sit at a crowded table, shouting, laughing, and making memories over some of the best food in the world… For now though, our journey into the tastes and preparations of various dishes from southern Italy continues in lockdown. This is a short video I created of our homemade dishes during our first lockdown when we arrived and were unable to explore. From Neapolitan recipes we made foods such as gnocchi alla sorrentina, spaghetti with zucchini, la pizza napoletana, and pasta and beans from scratch. We discovered a little gourmet shop on base that sells Neapolitan foods and tried making pistacchio pesto with fusilli noodles, Taggiasca olive mix with lemon and lemon fusilli pasta, Bolognese-style meat sauce, Ligurian pesto, truffle honey, pepper cream sauce, wild boar ragù, and eggs and pork cheek carbonera! Once we had a car and could shop locally, we started putting together endless amounts of meat and cheese platters and stocked up on a variety of olive oils. And of course, we have indulged in the infamous buffalo mozzarella a time or two!

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