Five Guys Secret

When I was in Italy one of the girls in my beginning Italian class was from America and mentioned she used to work at Five Guys. Of course that means she knows about the best combinations and secret items to order that are off menu. 

So this was her advice! She told me as soon as I got back home I should go to five guys and order a Veggie Sandwich with bacon (which defeats the purpose of a vegetarian item..I'm in!), mayo, hot sauce, BBQ sauce, and extra cheese with the cajun fries. 

This sounded a little skeptical to me but it ended up being so delicious. I'm not a huge lover of condiments but these all together were fantastic and nothing I would've thought up on my own. Such great advice from unexpected places! 

No Bake Cake Pop Cookie Truffles

That's a mouthful! Kind of what these ended up being though! 

My oldest cousin in Florida is super hands on and I swear, every year that I see her she has a new hands on kinda craft that she's playing around with. I've picked up on a few of these but I'm not always quite there. 

As complicated as these names are, they're pretty easy to make! Originally my cousin pitched the idea as no bake cake pop kinda things. Awesome! I'm always up for cooking and baking and whatnot so it's really not hard to convince me to help out with one of these kinda things. Eventually they kinda turned into Cookie truffles. SO what you do is break up oreos and cookies and stuff like that. You mix them up with cream cheese (so healthy....) and roll them around with those colorful flavored baking candy chocolate chipp-y discs. I'm so eloquent. So you melt that candy/chocolate down and coat the cookie balls in them then add sprinkles before the candy coating hardens. You stick them in the fridge and bam! Ready to eat! And they're soooo good. We ended up making key lime cookie truffles and the traditional cookies and cream cookie truffles too. 

 Vacation boot camp gets hands on during those rainy days and nights. It's pretty great. 

FL - The summer that Emily travels a lot

So last summer was the summer Emily travels. A lot. Kind of. I quickly went from school to Genova to Florida, before finally landing off at home before heading back to school again. 

I have family in Florida so ever since I was 6 or 7 we would spend a week or two in Florida. My mom hates traveling so we would take a family vacation there every other year just to visit my aunt and uncle and two cousins. Eventually, when I was in middle school and high school, my parents would just send my older brother and me to go without them. Soon, that turned into me taking solo trips to Florida and trips became more frequent. My oldest cousin moved to Arizona and would obviously take trips every summer to visit her parents, and I got to the point where I would show up every year when she would. "Vacation Boot Camp" became the normal thing each year and this included copious amounts of food. Marathon eating is a past time in our family. We find new places to eat and froyo was almost a daily thing. I moved from Gelato Month to Froyo week. Keep up metabolism, this is a test. 

One of the new finds from my cousin this year was this amazing grilled cheese place. (As you can see it's called New York Grilled Cheese. Nice try Florida). They have this special grilled cheese that they make with bread thats like a waffle! Or they use a waffle press to make their grilled cheese? Whatever the case, this was pretty awesome grilled cheese! 

Of course I went through a phase when I inhaled grilled cheese sandwiches like crazy. (Me and my food phases). I was never a fan of them when I was little but one time in high school something hit me and I realized, when it's made right, geesh grilled cheese is amazing! It's so easy too!

But the summer of 2013 I went to Lake George and had the most amazing grilled cheese I've ever had. It must've been that it was my first time on this little boat eating this perfect grilled cheese sandwich with the most incredible weather ever, during my first trip to this place that was beyond beautiful that I couldn't stop saying, "It's so beautiful here" that made that grilled cheese sandwich even more perfect. Those 5 days there were the worst and best five days of my life and I was just so in love with everything that everything after was a little less exciting. So for about a year I didn't have another grilled cheese sandwich because I knew it wouldn't be as amazing. 

But this place in Florida, brought me back to grilled cheese. This place had really great flavors and the waffle bread just added to. Such a great find!  

ITALY - Gelato Month

So I quickly deemed my month in Genova, Gelato Month. Might as well take advantage of it! I made it my mission to get gelato every day, for that month. And not just the same flavor, I tried just about all the new flavors I could find. Rose flavored gelato from the place next to work. Lemon cream gelato from my boss's favorite Gelateria. And of course bubblegum and puffo from the first restaurant we went to in Italy. Let me explain that last one. I was eyeing this mysterious 'puffo' flavored gelato almost from the beginning. Of course there's no logical translation and by each flavor if gelato the Gelateria's usually have pictures of the fruit and flavors in the case. This flavor had a smurf. It was also bright blue. I had no idea what it was. And when I went to the counter and ordered this puffo flavor and the bright pink bubblegum flavor the waiter laughed. Hard. I'm pretty sure my excitement and the fact that I'm a small girl that could pass for a pre-teen american didn't help that fact that I'm ordering brightly colored gelato. YOGO! You only Genova once. It was a great day. (Turns out the puffo was like a cotton candy/birthday cake kinda deal).

So I made sure I got gelato every day. It was pretty much a success. I might have missed a day or two but I always made up for it the next day getting gelato twice. Believe me, I was dedicated. It was fantastic. I even have a list of one or two more Gelateria's that I need to go back. Darn. Sounds like another trip to Genova! 

Pesto Trofie

One of the dishes that I had to get when I was in Genova, was the pesto trofie pasta. For that region, this dish is key. I honestly went most of the trip without trying it, then one day for lunch my boss decided we should sit down with another photographer and my friend who was working for her. Turns out both of our bosses were friends, because Genova is a little town and everyone knows everyone else apparently. So, the four of us went on a little adventure through Genova to this tiny restaurant on the middle of the sketchiest ally lined with the nicest transvestite prostitutes we've ever met (not that I've actually met any before this but that's besides the point). This place had the best food I've had in Genova and this lunch was so fun. It was interesting to try to follow a conversation with two tiny twenty year old american girls and two grown up Italian wedding photographers, especially since I barely spoke any Italian, and both of our bosses spoke little, to no english. It was the best meal I had in Italy and was by far one of the best experiences ever. Our bosses covered the lunch (two courses and coffee... they insisted). And I got to try trofie for the first time. It's hard to wrap your head around the texture but, once you do, its pretty awesome pasta. Lesson of the day? My boss is perfect. I totally lucked out. (Grazie Sandro!) 

I also bought some dried trofie and made it once I got back to America. I tried my own homemade pesto for the first time too and it brought me back to Genova. Not as good, but close enough for the memories!