Rhea's Italian Adventure

The markets in Italy are really different. Instead of markets like Safeway where the food is up on the shelves, a market in Italy is where people set up their own little shops in a building called the Market. In Italy, people eat all different kinds of things, like: octopus, pigs’ ears, hooves, and snouts, duck, rabbit, stuffed chicken heads, etc. People in Italy like to see that it is fresh, unlike Americans who like to pretend that they do not know that they are eating dead animals. You can actually see what the meat came from. You can see a pigs head and a rabbit with all its organs in it.  

At the market you can actually see people making pasta. We eat it a lot. We got some linguini this time. When you order the linguini, they take a sheet of pasta that hasn’t been cut and they put it through this special machine that cuts it into the shape that you want it. There are many different kinds of pasta there, like ravioli, tortellini, etc. They have pasta that is green and twirly noodles that we like. They put different things in the ravioli, like artichoke, mushrooms, and cheese. In August, they also have basil in the ravioli and that’s my favorite. At that particular pasta place they have a window so you can see the people making pasta.  

One corner of the market has fish stands. They sell things like clams, octopus, lobster, shrimp, and lots of different kinds of fish. We found the little clams that we had once in a restaurant near Popilonia. We decided to get 2 packages to mix in with our linguini. After we bought the little clams, I was taking pictures and the man who ran the stand let me go behind the counter and take pictures. He even held up a weird red fish. 

Upstairs in the market there are the fruits and vegetables. We eat some different fruits and vegetables in Italy than we do in California, like figs and pointy broccoli. Upstairs is pretty crazy like downstairs, because there are a lot of people walking around and the best little stands have almost all the people trying to buy things at once. It is really noisy. It is kind of beautiful because of all the fruits and vegetables laid out in different ways. Some things are beautiful downstairs like the painting of a dolphin near the fish stand, but not the pigs heads.  

When we went to the market on Saturday morning Lizy and I took pictures. One of the pictures that I took is the picture of the bananas and the apples. We took some other cool pictures too. We had a really fun time in the market.