If you know anything about how our family celebrates the holidays it is not like your ordinary family holiday. No, our holidays is packed with a ridiculous amount of food. Basically, if there is 10 people coming to eat we cook for 30. What do you expect, were Italian and we like to eat our delicious food more than just one day. We eat it over the course of a week, sometimes more. For instance, for dessert we made 15 different christmas cookies. Some of them were made 3x the regular recipe amount. Lets put it this way, picture your family dining room table that seats about 8. Now picture that entire table filled with tins of christmas cookies some 2 or 3 tins high. Oh and by the way, we also had a few cakes to make things interesting. Here is the rundown of the homemade goodness:

Black and White

Butter Horn

Pignoli Cookie

Long Walnut Cookie

Chocolate Filled Cookies

Tortalina

Rainbow Cookie

Chocolate Brownie Cookie

Peanutbutter Cookie

Gumdrop Cookie

Cherry Cookie

Butterfly Cookie

Butter Cookie

Pistachio Cherry Biscotti

I mentioned earlier that we had 15 different cookies but if you were counting I only have pictures of 14. There was a new comer to the christmas cookies this year. The Ricotta Minicakes and they were such a hit that they were all eaten before I could take a picture of it. I guess everyone was curious about the new cookie and they were really good so they went fast. No worries, I’m sure they will make it to christmas again next year.

Recently the southerner and I moved into an apartment in Queens. It was a big move day because I had to basically take my entire life that was sitting in storage and move it to the new apt. We were lucky we only had one flight in our walk up apartment. The original place we almost got was a 5 story walk up. I almost could not make the one flight with all my stuff.
It started out great picked up the u-haul truck drove down to storage and loaded the truck to the max by noon. Drove slowly as all my stuff was bouncing around all on the drive from brooklyn to my apartment in Queens. Everything was running smooth. I even found a parking spot right in front of the apartment. What a miracle day, and then….

….we go upstairs and open the top lock and then try the bottom lock but the bottom lock would not open. I tried and tried. It was not opening and I pretty much freaked out. I had my whole life outside in the truck and now I could not get in the Apartment. Talk about a monkey wrench in your day.

I called the landlord and he came in about 45 minutes. He had to go to the roof of the building and climb down the fire escape, climb through the window and then open the door from the inside. The day before the Southerner and I when inside and measured the rooms and locked the apartment when we left. What my landlord forgot to tell me is the bottom lock of the door only locks from the inside. Kind of an important thing to tell your tenant don’t you think?
After we were able to finally get in we thought it would be a good Idea to power up with some lunch before moving all my stuff up to the apartment. We went to Queens Comfort, right around the corner from my place.

The Southerner had a english muffen with bacon and cheese

My mother had a cheeseburger animal style.

My father had the pulled pork over grits and gravy

And I had the fried zucchini coleslaw sandwich.

The southerner and I have wanted to go there for a while now. The food was great and they served huge plates. It definitely gave us the full belly to take on the move, which was a success and has been coming together as the weeks pass. We can’t wait for it to be done so we can finally have some guests for to …EAT.

This year for Thanksgiving I headed down south with the southerner. We hopped into the car and made the normally 7 hour trip to Yorktown VA, in 9 hours. Can not believe how many accidents were on the road. We got caught in every one of them. Lucky us!

The following day was Thanksgiving and the cooking started early. Things are done a little differently in the south compared to my families typical Thanksgiving. Our family usually cooks all day starting maybe around 10:30 starting with some apps around 2ish. The cousins start to come over around this time and there is constant cooking, eating, drinking and catching up. Well probably start having turkey at 6:30 followed by half the family cleaning and half the family triptophaning on the couch.

The Goon house in VA. does things a little different. The cooking starts early just like home but we are eating turkey dinner at around 2:30. Dinner is filled with all the Thanksgiving goodies and a few extra things from the south. Oh and we used an inferred cooker for the turkey instead of a traditional deep frier. However, after dinner we all hopped in the car to take a traditional Thanksgiving picture. It was nice to get up off the couch and go do something on Thanksgiving Day. The rest of the holiday weekend was great and the I was nice to meet the Goon family for the first time.

Here is how Thanksgiving went down:
First the inferred Turkey

30 minutes after inferred

1 hour after inferred

2 hours after inferred

Here is a full listing of all the goodies

For three months this summer I was cruising through the Mediterranean experiencing life in Italy, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Croatia, France and Monaco. I’m sure you have caught a couple of my posts while I was there. I could have done a lot more posts but there was so much food I encountered on my travels that it would become a full time job just to write them all. I put together this video to show you all the amazing food I either ate or saw and wanted to eat. The food in europe is so fresh and delicious it makes it really hard to stop eating. The company I got to enjoy the food with made it even better. The things that stood out to me were the multiple wine and olive oil tastings I went to. Not only did I taste the incredible wine and ridiculous olive oil but the food they served as well was equally delicious and authentic. I learned a lot about the different wines and the acidities in the olive oil. Many of the meals I ate each had it’s own uniqueness to it. From my company to the service to the food and drinks, the mediterranean had it all to make each experience a memorable one.

My buddy Sean Bell and I sent out to explore Venice. Sean had been there before and I asked him for the Sean Bell Tour of Venice. We set out in the morning and had a lot of walking to do that day. Sean, (not a morning person fyi, typical musician) needed a quick fix before we get into the heart of Venice. The video shows the typical sandwich you can get at numerous cafes around Venice, let alone most of italy. However, this sandwich was filled with tuna and olives and was one of Sean’s favorite. Me on he other hand, I can’t stand the smell of tunafish let alone the taste. It was just the pick-me-up Sean needed to give me a great tour of Venice. We walked and saw one of the most unique cities I have ever been to. Where in a normal city you have road, Venice has rivers. Cities have cars, Venice has boats. It’s different but a very beautiful city.

Before I left Greece I wanted to try a dish I had seen many times but never tried. The above is called Moussaka and when I saw it on other peoples plates I thought it was lasagna. It’s close to lasagna, but not exactly. Moussaka is a casserole made by layering eggplant with a spiced meat filling then topping off with a creamy bechamel sauce then baked. It is perhaps the most widely recognized of all Greek dishes. If your ever in Greece you have to get one. After I ordered my Moussaka I asked the waiter to put a little Greek Tirokafteri (Spicy Cheese Dip) on the side of the plate. I had some in Santorini and fell in love with this cheese. It’s like nothing I have ever had before. They tell me that each restaurant makes it differently but it is mainly a mixture of feta and ricotta. These are two Greek treats I’ll have to recreated back home in New York.

…. Not that I am on a diet but I typically will not eat like this all at once. It was the southerners and my last night in Barcelona. The night before be had a massive dinner in Barcelona (post coming soon) and I think it expanded our stomachs creating this void that needed to be filled. What else but to fill that void with food that really tastes good but is really bad for you. We didn’t want to have a sit down dinner but to walk around and sample food here and there.

We needed some food to walk with to find MORE food. We came across the Super Dog. It’s a basic hot dog but they have some extra crunchy stuff added to it. It reminded me of the extra fried crumbs that fall off fried chicken. It gave it that extra added something that made it better than your classic hotdog. That crunch tweaked out appetite and the southerner started to crave fried chicken. Walking up La Rambla there just happen to be a KFC and we need to satisfy that fried craving. Two chicken legs later we were on the hunt for more food.

After a couple pieces of chicken we walked around town dipping our heads in and out of some small to-go type restaurants. I came across a Schwarma restaurant. In barcelona there are lots of doner kababs but not as many Schwarma’s. I go really excited and got a chicken and lamb schwarma and told them to load it up. See above. It was perfect, tender meats, perfect amount for sauce and spice and really big to boot. It was the best thing I ate all night by far. My mom would not be happy with me because I was not a good sharer when it came to my Schwarma. When I was done I wanted another but it was a good thing we were walking around and were far from the restaurant or I just might have had to get another.

On our way back we need to finish the food walk with some desert. We ended up right where we started near the Super Dog. Next to the Super Dog was a waffle stand. As we got closer and closer to the waffle stand the delicious smell of hot waffles and melted chocolate exhumed the air and the southerner needed her chocolate fill. It was really good but a little rich for me. Like may sharing skill with the schwarma the southerner did not share much of that waffle with me either.

I guess the only thing that I can feel good about is the fact that with all that good bad for me food, at least I was walking around while enjoying it.

Forking Tasty – On a Farm Outside Rome from Anthony Anello on Vimeo.

I took a tour and explored the catacombs just outside the city of Rome and after they brought us to a farm for some cooking lessons. We were making Gnocchi that day and the eatin was good. I had a lot of fun watching this Italian women make Gnocchi for us all. She eventually had a few of the guests come up to help out. I wanted to join but there was no more room at the table. When it was asked who would like to help make Gnocchi (she didn’t ask because she did not speak a lick of english) I was busy stuffing my face and missed out. Maybe next time.

A couple buddies and I were walking around Santa Marghrita looking for the perfect stop for some lunch. We literally walked around for at least an hour or two. Santa Marghrita is so small that’s all the time it took to walk the town. We stumbled upon a place called Da Nello. It was so close to my last name we had to try it out. We had an old lady that really did not know much english show us to our table which was right on the beach. I guess we are in her country, we really did not know enough Italian. She ended up being our waitress as well. After finding out that the two things we wanted on the menu they ran out of, she gave us some suggestions.
Great view of the water and what will eventually turn out to be a fantastic lunch. I’m still thinking about those mussels. Not one mussels I ate tasted fishy, they were perfect. I could have dipped bread in that wine and olive oil at the bottom of the bowel all day.