Venice Carnivale

Carnivale is a huge festival held in Venice (and many other towns) just before the commencement of Lent.  There is tons of food, parades, and most notably, costumes!  The costumes are generally quite elaborate and colorful, though many people will come in any costume they have. 

We visited Venice on the last weekend of Carnivale, before it ended on Fat Tuesday.  Many of the costumes were breath-taking, and those that weren’t usually solicited a good laugh. 

The street performers wee amusing. Especially this guy and his “musical” puppets.

This is our friend April with a gang (gaggle?) of chickens.

And the funniest costume of the day was by far “The Queen.”  And yes, that was a dude with a stubbly face. 

It was a beautiful day in Venice!  We had a lot of fun and are glad we were able to experience this centuries old festival.  Here are a few photos we took of the floating city during Carnivale.

   Small crowd.

Spinach Lasagna Rolls

Even though I’ve said before I’m not much of a cook, and I still maintain that I’m not, I’ve started to embrace my role as a housewife.  I still shutter a little when I say “housewife.”  It’s not really met with the same kind of understanding as a stay at home mom.  The American spouses here are not allowed to work unless it’s on base, and the majority of jobs on base go to Italians.  Therefore, we’re all housewives or house husbands.  As a spouse our job is to support the mission and support our active duty members.  For me, that means I’m cooking dinner these days.  Which also means I’m pinning a lot of recipes on Pinterest!

I found and pinned this recipe ages ago over at SkinnyTaste, but I never made it.  I had a friend who tried it and had some problems, so I was never eager to give it a whirl.  However, now that I’m getting a little more creative in the kitchen, I finally decided to try it out.  We both LOVE it!  It’s really easy and feeds us for a few days.  I’ve changed it a tiny bit from the original, so here’s my version:

Ingredients:

• 10 lasagna noodles, cooked
• 10 oz frozen chopped spinach, thawed and completely drained
• 15 oz fat free ricotta cheese
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 egg
• salt & pepper, to taste
• 1 regular size jar tomato sauce
• 10 Tbsp part skim shredded mozzarella cheese

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°.

Boil noodles for approximately 10 minutes being careful not to over cook.  Over cooked noodles will fall apart easily.  Stir noodles continually to keep them from sticking to the pot.

Ladle about 1 cup sauce on the bottom of a 9 x 12 baking dish.

In a medium bowl combine spinach, ricotta, parmesan cheese, egg, and salt & pepper. Dry each noodle and lay them out on a piece of parchment paper. I usually do about 5 noodles at a time. Take 1/3 cup of the ricotta mixture and spread evenly over each noodle. Roll each noodle carefully and place seam side down onto the baking dish.

Cover the noodles with the remaining tomato sauce and top each with 1 Tbsp mozzarella.  Cover the baking dish with foil and for about 40 minutes or until cheese melts.  Remove foil and bake an additional 5 minutes until the cheese begins to brown.

According to SkinnyTaste each roll contains just 225 calories and 5 grams of fat!  This recipe is yumm-o, I promise!  It would be easy to add some browned ground beef or turkey to the ricotta mix for a meaty version as-well.  We try not to eat meat at every meal and love it as is.

As they say in Italy, Buon Appetito!

Weekend in Florence

It only took 5 months, but we were finally able to get away for a weekend excursion.  John’s TDY this fall put a big kink in our travel plans.  Follow that up with Christmas, and that’s why it took us so long to finally travel outside of our local area.

We found a hotel just outside the historical center of Florence, and made the 3 hour trip with dogs in tow.  I’m not going to lie, driving in Florence was a NIGHTMARE, but we survived, Randy didn’t get car sick, and we had a great weekend!

It rained most of the weekend, but thankfully it was never a hard rain and it wasn’t too cold.  It was a great time to go because the crowds were at an absolute minimum.  We stood in line, without a reservation, for the Uffizi for no more than 5 minutes which is unheard of.  That was the only line and the only crowd we experienced the whole weekend.

Our first stop was the Florence Duomo (Santa Maria Della Fiore).  We climbed the 463 stairs to the top of the dome for some fantastic views of the city!

Here you can see the Santa Maria Novella Church & Santa Maria Novella train station in the distance.  When I came to Florence in college I had to give a small presentation to classmates on the SMN train station (it’s designed in the Fascist style of architecture).

 

Here you can see Palazzo Vecchio and the Uffizi Gallery.

The next stop on our trip was the Florence leather market.  Because of the weather (and maybe our shopping) we only have this one photo.   The market was huge with vendors selling coats, bags, wallets, belts, and anything that could be made of leather.  And it was ALL gorgeous!

Our second day in Florence we hit up the Uffizi Gallery and walked around Ponte Vecchio.  We weren’t allowed to take pictures of the art of course, but the views from inside the galleries were just as beautiful!

I loved this view of Ponte Vecchio and the bridges of Florence. From here you have a great view of Vasario’s corridor which connects Palazzo Vecchio with the Piiti Palace. The corridor allowed Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici to go from his home to the government offices without ever having to go out in public.

Beautiful Santa Maria Della Fiore

Florence has always been one of my favorite places, and now John has been able to experience the magic of it for himself.  It’s definitely a place both of us want to visit again (hopefully when it’s warm and sunny)!