Snippets from the Italian Scene
On Breakfast
Moving on to other things, I was recently asked what Italians eat for breakfast. Depends; when I was little and spent summers in the Tuscan countryside the farmhands who got up before dawn would have sandwiches with cold cuts (salami or prosciutto) washed down with wine. In the city, on the other hand, it was a bowl-sized mug of caffélatte (light tan, and sugared to taste) with thick slices of day-old Tuscan bread for dipping. Since then things have changed somewhat. If we have breakfast at home today, it's still often caffélatte, though a somewhat smaller amount (or an espresso), and rather than use day-old bread for dipping, it's more likely to be cookies of some sort. However, like many who live in Italian cities, Elisabetta and I are quite likely to have breakfast out, in a bar: a cappuccino and a pastry. It's an institution and most Italian bars have a considerable selection of freshly baked pastries, including cornetti (croissants) either empty or filled with cream or chocolate cream, sfoglie (in Florence these are clam-shaped pastries made with puff pastry dough folded over and filled with cream, rice and cream, chocolate, or whatever suits the chef's fancy -- in Naples the dough is different and the filling is often ricotta based) to budini di riso, rice puddings firm enough to be picked up and eaten. There are also small pizzas and sandwiches (known as tramezzini) for those who want to accompany their cappuccini with something salty.
There's no wet cereal as far as I know. Dry cereal is a different matter; there are many of the classic American kids' varieties (frosted flakes, rice crispies, cocoa crispies, and so on); our son likes them. There are also the "healthy" cereals such as Special K, which are touted as an excellent way to preserve or regain one's figure (good advertising in a country where almost everyone hits the beach in the summer). Because of the Italian custom of having breakfast out I doubt cereal will ever become as common as it is in the US but it is catching on. The other day I heard a DJ on the radio say that frosted flakes stirred into yogurt are "energizing." Undoubtedly true, but I don't know of anyone who has tried the combination.
A presto,
Kyle Phillips
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