Mamma Agata, the Amalfi coast cooking school

Once upon a fairytale, Sister and I headed to Ravello, on the Amalfi Coast in Italy, for a cooking class with Mamma Agata! Needless to say it was an ah-mazing day. And made an already memorable trip, that much more unforgettable. Mamma has recently published a cookbook, so I thought this would be a good time to share a little about our day in Ravello. Who am I kidding? You know I will take any excuse possible to talk about Italy, my one true love.

At first glance...

Time to get cooking! Mamma and her daughter, Chiara lead you through a series of dishes. They do most of the heavy lifting, with you watching and learning (And eating).



Al and Chiara (Mamma's daughter)



Mamma!! If that's not an Italian Mom, then I don't know what is!

Mamma Agata's is situated on a clifftop, overlooking the gorgeous coastline. The family cooks with nearly all home grown produce. They have a farm built right into the side of the cliff. During the course of the day you head down to the farm area and check out all the fresh produce.

At the end of the day you sit down for a huge feast with all the food cooked during the day. And of course wine made from the grapes grown right on site and homemade limoncello are served!

If you find yourself on the Amalfi Coast, definitely book a day with Mamma Agata! I may be seeing Mamma in the U.S. soon, so I'll report back. And hopefully her cookbook will be sold in the states soon!

....................................
Piazza S. Cosma 9 - Ravello (SA)
Amalfi Coast - ITALY
Phone +39.(0)89.857019
e-mail: info@mammaagata.com

Steal of the week: Vintage Prints

After a little blog hiatus, I'm back with a lovely "steal" for this week! This is almost like two steals in one, first the vintage posters and second, the designer discount site that I bought them on, ideeli.

One of my friends introduced me to ideeli awhile back. It's one of those sites that offers different designer clothing and home goods sales every day. Click on this link if you feel the urge to join and grab these prints! This is a referral link from my account... ideeli.com/invite/alittleditty. I've made a few purchases from the site that worked out really well. Scored some super good deals on Kenneth Cole winter jackets and more recently, as in a few hours ago, these vintage prints! I am so excited about them, I had to share. 

The featured company is called artehouse, they are listed under the "home" tab on the site. According to ideeli they've established one of the largest and most impressive collections of vintage prints in the world. In this sale, the prints have all been mounted on birch wood. Easy to hang, but perfect for just propping up too. I really like the look the wood mount gives to these. Now for the "steal" portion, these are marked more than half off, the small size starts at just $18!!

I loved all of them, but of course couldn't resist the Italian theme prints. You know my Italy thing runs deep. 

For la mia cucina...

I have a ton of built-in shelving in my place, I think these are a perfect size (7.5'' x 12) to display in some of my shelves. I'll have to post pictures when I have these little pretties in my possession! 

A few others I admired...

I think this rustic wood number would be perfect in that Lake Michigan cottage sister and I are always dreaming of...

language of the homeland

I started Italian lessons on Tuesday (!!!!!) I am beyond excited, I have been wanting to do this for awhile and finally took the plunge and signed up for a 10 week session. We have a great Italian cultural center in Chicago that offers lessons. If you want to take classes sign up here :) They also have events like wine tasting (count me in), dinners featuring different regions' traditional food and Italian movie night.

My text book! (infinitely more exciting than Spanish books I had in high school...)

And because I love an excuse to post pictures from Italy... 

Sister and I in front of the Vatican, Summer 2006

View of St. Peter's Square after our climb to the very top of the duomo (summer 2008). I love the symmetry of the columns surrounding the square. It just looks so, well...perfect. I read (and probably heard this during our tours of the grounds!) that Bernini designed the two walls of columns to symbolically embrace the crowds. The square can hold up to 100,000 people during religious ceremonies outside. Pretty darn amazing. 

Alright, that's all I'll say about Italy today. 

HAPPY, HAPPY FRIDAY!

vrbo

Have you guys ever used VRBO? Also affectionately pronounced, VerBo. I might be preaching to the choir here -- but just in case you haven't stumbled across it, it's an awesome site. I first heard about it a few years ago from someone at work who had used it for a vacation. I kept trying to repeat the web address to myself, vrbo, vrbo...it stands for Vacation Rentals by Owner!

You would not believe the database this site has, almost anywhere in the world you would want to go, has a vacation rental listed!

My first experience with staying in a place found on VerBo happened last week.  We rented a condo for our stay in St. Thomas. We initially found the place and contacted the owner about a year ago, checking for availability and asking a few other questions. There were so many places to choose from! But we were extremely pleased with the place we stayed in.

Of course I can't vouch for everyplace on VRBO but the owners of our condo were wonderful! They thought of everything! We felt right at home, the kitchen was stocked with all sorts of supplies, right down to the chip clips. It was a nice change from staying at a resort in a hotel room, we enjoyed having our own kitchen and a really comfy couch to plop down on. And plenty of space to spread ourselves and our clothes out!

Our condo was at a hotel/resort but many of the places had been converted into private condos. If you really want to check the place out, the listing is here.. And below is a shot (taken by sister of course) of the complex. We had three balconies! How nice is that?

You can read reviews of the rentals so you can (hopefully) get a true picture of what it would be like staying there. VRBO also offers a rental guarantee as well. After interacting with the owners I think you can get a pretty good feel of what kind of people they are too!

I think this would be awesome way to go to Europe. Sign me up for a villa by the sea in Italy and I would be set. How fun would that be to get a big group and rent an entire house?! Some places do only rent by the week, but others have daily rates more like hotels. You can usually work with the owners too. Our place in St. Thomas was very flexible, the owner easily worked it out with us to stay one extra day for a total of 8 nights.

It's fun to look up places and dream of your next vacation. Especially on a say, cloudy, dreary, not- quite-spring-yet, day. Happy Browsing!

Antipasto for the kids

We had an International potluck at work to raise money for a charity we are sponsoring this year. It's called Off the Street Club and its located in Garfield Park, which is one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in America. I've had a chance to meet the kids on a few different occasions, they are the sweetest kids. Today is the cumulation of a year of effort, the big luncheon is over at the Hilton today. This is the website we created to help raise money for the kids.

But back to the potluck, here is what I brought in. Yum! I wish that I would have made more caprese, it was all gone pretty quick! It was $10 for anyone at the agency to eat lunch, we ended up making over $1000 dollars for the kids.

la dolce vita

Dreaming of Italy today....

gorgeous positano

All of the pictures were taken by my talented big sister during our 2008 trip. We are beyond anxious to plan our third trip back to the homeland!

Happy Friday!