This was one of my favorite parts. Our day was designed to really engage the kids into a bit of Italian culture that they were sure to enjoy: pasta!
We started the morning by visiting the organic garden and chicken coop on the property with our host, where the kids had a ton of fun. They gathered eggs for the pasta, petted the chickens, filled their tummies with raspberries, plucked basil leaves for bruschetta, dug beets and potatoes out of the ground. On top of that they learned quite a bit about gardening, olive trees and squash flowers, all the while preparing the ingredients for our lunch.
After washing up, the children got a quick demonstration in making pasta from scratch, using very few but wonderful ingredients, like the organic eggs they just gathered at the chicken coop. Homemade pasta is absolutely delicious, and I was thrilled to go home with all of the recipes in hand. Will I ever actually use them? Probably not. I do a lot of cooking from scratch, but making fresh pasta will likely not be on that list. Where would I even keep that pasta machine?
After making the different pasta, the kids got to try their hand at making tomato-basil bruschetta. So simple and so wonderfully delicious! The basil, of course, was one of the things they got from the garden earlier.
Lunch with a view. We ate tomato-basil bruschetta, salad, spinach ravioli, pumpkin ravioli (not traditionally served in Umbria but SO delicious!), truffle fettuccine and pasta with meat ragu. It was a fantastic lunch, and we all stuffed our faces (the children deservedly so, because they worked hard all morning).
The kids loved making the pasta (my kids remember it as a highlight from the trip), and it was a blast for us adults to help and watch the kids have such a fun time. I was pretty proud of my boys. They’re great little chefs.
Stay tuned for next week’s installment of our Umbrian adventure!
