Saturday 12 April: Laundry and food

Today I finally got up the nerve to attempt the laundry. I gathered up all my clothes from my flight to yesterday, along with sheets, pillow cases, and towels, and dumped them in my big roll-along suitcase. The laundry is about six blocks away, next to the local police station. I had some trepidation, since I checked the place out a couple of days ago and the system seemed incomprehensible. You don’t feed coins into a machine, you pay for some sort of ticket that you then give someone, who activates the machines for you. Plus, I have a horror of hot water shrinking all of my knits (Gary can confirm my paranoia on this topic). I would never find shirts my size in Rome. A local cook, who is a big guy himself, told me, “Of course you can buy big and tall sizes locally. Milano is only five hours by rail.” But my fear was misguided. The laundry is run by an Indian whose Italian is much better than mine, and whose English is better than most of our students’. He basically told me how much it would cost to wash and dry two huge loads (€20 total), then did all the work except folding. The whole thing took an hour. It being early Saturday morning, the place was relatively quiet except for the television, which was tuned to the ubiquitous MTV Hits Italia. Britney Spears and Kanye West played in rotation, which I could have done without, but I struck up a conversation with the attendant, who highly praised the Indian restaurant down the block. Maybe when I get sick of pasta and pizza; their menu is posted outside, and looks most savory.

I got home and started to unpack my laundry, then decided it was easier just to use the suitcase as a dresser and pull out what I needed when I needed it. Since I was on a roll, I figured I’d do a little cleaning. Now housekeeping is not my favorite task (something else Gary will confirm), but the place is so small it didn’t take long at all. The realtor did leave me well stocked with cleaning supplies. The one thing I had been confused about was trash: what do you do with it? I hadn’t taken it out in a week and a half, and there were banana peels in there. I know what you did with trash in Rome in antiquity and the Middle Ages: you chucked it out the window. These days, they’re more advanced. You put it in plastic shopping bags and leave it on the street, and someone eventually comes by and picks it up. At the caffè they said that it’s sorted for recycling centrally. When I repeated this with admiration at the bakery, I was told that they really “just dump it in the sea, like the mail they don’t feel like delivering.” This was followed by a statement about Berlusconi in Italian too rapid for me to follow.

Coffee at Good, to check email. Gary posted more great cat pics. I especially like the one where Xander asks if the rug makes him look fat (it does). The pics from his previous night’s dinner are also amusing. He went out with Emily, Jeff, Anne, and Ben. There is a truly priceless photo of Jeff and Ben; I can only assume that Anne and Emily were driving.

More work in the early afternoon, and some pics of the neighborhood, then I decided to treat myself to an early dinner at an actual restaurant with table service and multiple courses. I didn’t walk far before a proprietor tempted me with the daily special: oak-grilled T-bone steak with grilled vegetables. I went all out and had a (small) bottle of Castelli Romani, a white wine from the Alban Hills, and a bottle of mineral water “with gas,” as naturally carbonated water is called here. For an appetizer, I had a misto de mare, cold marinated squid, octopus, crab, and shrimp in oil with chilies and garlic. It was incredibly good, as was the bread (which of course the restaurant buys from my bakery across the street from me, as do most of the local eateries). Then they brought my steak: a monstrous t-bone on a huge, sizzling hot cast iron trencher. It looked like something Fred Flintstone would eat. I had ordered it molto crudo, sanguinissimo, and I was not disappointed. It bled on contact with the knife. It came with contorni: grilled potatoes, tomato halves, onions, and surprisingly, a grilled half head of purple cabbage, which was delicious. Since I had come this far, I decided to go for dessert, too. I had the panna cotta, which means “cooked cream;” in other words, custard. It was perfect—not very rich or very sweet, so you could appreciate both the delicate flavor and the subtle texture in the mouth. A drizzle of barely-sweetened raspberry purée made it perfect. With it I had caffè corretto, “corrected coffee.” How, you ask, do you “correct” a cup of espresso? By dumping in a huge shlog of liquor, in this case grappa, high-proof Italian brandy. It’s also good corrected with sambuca, amaretto, or even bourbon. I highly recommend it. All of this is immortalized on Flickr in the food set.

Back to the apartment to organize photos, make some notes, and get ready for tomorrow, when my parents visit.