Italy!

My husband and I went to Italy for a week. Finally! He travels there a lot for business, but this is the first time we've gone together. His good friend was getting married in Puglia so we went for the wedding, and then up to Rome. Since this is my food blog, I'll only cover all the eating we did :) 

First off, the place we stayed was AMAZING. A beautiful bed & breakfast in Matera, where "Passion of the Christ" was filmed. 

Our typical breakfast was a pastry, sometimes with cream, sometimes just plain. Heavenly.

These pics are just SOME of the food we ate at the wedding. Yes, the eating began at 3pm and ended around 9pm. Granted, there was some dancing in between there (not by us), but it was mostly eating. And eating.

They had several (I mean, SEVERAL) kinds of marzipan goodies.

Just one of the antipasti platters. Speck is now my favorite food group.

I could've eaten this whole plate myself. Mozzerella. Tomatoes. Ricotta.

Uh, yeah. I didn't eat any of these.

Ever seen fish in a jar? Now you have. I didn't eat this, either.

The groom knows we love, LOVE sushi. So he told the reception center to serve some. This is what they came up with. Arborio rice, cooked al dente, soaked in olive oil, wrapped in seaweed with tuna in the middle. I couldn't choke it down.

One of two pasta courses. This one was seafood. The other was mushroom. And really good.

Did I mention I liked the cheese?

And of course, dessert. There was a very LARGE fruit platter with lots of stuff I've never seen before.

And LOTS of little plates with various sweets on them like this one. Now, I know you're thinking there's NO WAY you're going to eat something that looks like chunks in brown stuff, but you would be missing out on quite possibly the yummiest thing ever. Don't cringe when you read the name.

Chocolate sausage. I know. What? There's no sausage in it, just so you know. It's chewy chocolate with some kind of crunchy cookie numminess. I don't know. But it's goooood.

The wedding cake. It was HUGE. I wasn't convinced the whole thing was cake, but the groom's father said it was. There will be a lot of leftovers! :)

The highlight of our time in Rome was meeting the wonderful, talented, very knowledgeable Natalia of Gatti Fili e Farina. We spent our last day with her at the Vatican Museums and had the best pizza. Grazie mille Natalia!!

Maui!

We went to Maui last weekend for a wedding. We were spoiled. Badly. This was the view from our room:

The wedding festivities included a luau with the freshest sushi I've ever eaten- I'm talking melt in your mouth fresh. The reception was a four course dinner. Yum.

The first course: a shrimp stuffed crab cake:

Second course: fig, arugula, proscuitto bruscetta with a balsamic reduction:

Third course: Filet of beef over spinach-stuffed portobello and macadamia nut-crusted catch of the day in passionfruit beurre blanc and purple sweet potatoes:

And my favorite- the wedding cake

We hit a place called Alexander's in Kihei. Yummy (deep-fried) goodness.

Hush puppies and shrimp and calamari basket:

Tempura purple sweet potato (I was loving these purple sweet potatoes):

On Mother's Day, we hit the ever-popular Mama's Fish House, which has been featured on Food Network a few times. Purple sweet potato fries!! And amazing seafood.

My favorite, though, was Paia Fish Market. I first saw it as Curtis Stone's pick on The Best Thing I Ever Ate. Then I started hearing about it here and there. It was amazing! The people we were with ordered fish baskets and they looked delicious.

We miss you already, Maui!