While there has been a plethora of awe-inspiring historical sights that we have seen, one of my favorite parts of our adventure here so far was our cooking class with Mary Lou Gray. Mary Lou is the most darling South African lady who has been living in Italy since the 1960s. She moved here after marrying her Italian husband and has been gleaning the techniques of Italian cooking ever since. Intermittently throughout her instruction, Mary Lou would share stories of her time in Italy. She explained to us how when she first got married she was an inadequate cook, but with the help of her Italian mother-in-law, she learned the skills she is now passing down to us.
For our first cooking class, we made pasta with an Amatriciana sauce and another with a pesto sauce. For dessert, we iced a cake with Nutella icing and another with jam and bananas. While I myself didn’t cook, there was so much to take in just through observation. She shared with us that the proper way to cook pasta is to have enough water for the noodles to be able to move around and to make sure you add plenty of salt to the water. After we finished cooking the meal, we got to sit down and share it together, reaping the rewards of our collective labor. That first bite satisfied our grumbling stomachs and our anxious taste buds. My friend Noa and I liked the pesto so much that we went and bought the ingredients to make it for dinner that weekend.
-Morgan Winston