Let me draw your attention to...

My twitter.
Mainly because I tweet fairly often now and mostly about things going on here in Italy/my Italian lifestyle, so it might sustain you until I get my act together and post more readable and enjoyable things here in the blog.
Here are some samples:

Having a telephone conversation in Italian is totally frightening, makes making calls in English considerably less intimidating.

— Victoria (@VictoriaTheGerm) July 3, 2013

Why do restaurants in Italy insist on serving a single person a WHOLE pizza?! Don't you know I can't eat that much in one sitting?! 😩

— Victoria (@VictoriaTheGerm) July 10, 2013

Italy, sometimes I can't imagine a more perfect place than you. #tivogliobeneitalia

— Victoria (@VictoriaTheGerm) July 7, 2013

Italian babies aren't intimidating at all (in fact I prefer them to older children) because they know less Italian than I do. #winning

— Victoria (@VictoriaTheGerm) July 6, 2013

Correction: Italian babies do indeed know more Italian than I do. #fail

— Victoria (@VictoriaTheGerm) July 7, 2013

Italian birthdays. pic.twitter.com/YuHAVf5xm6

— Victoria (@VictoriaTheGerm) June 28, 2013

Plus I retweet and tweet some cool links and stuff that might spark your interest. Hope to see you around the twitosphere.
Ciao, ciao.

Los Angeles Highlights Part 3 - Brite Spot

• Los Angeles Highlights Part 1 - Venice Beach Boardwalk
• Los Angeles Highlights Part 2 - Wacko's Soap Plant / La Luz De Jesus Gallery 

Yesterday I met up with my grandparents for a little lunch at this place in Echo Park. I told them to meet me there without them have ever eaten there and they both said they really enjoyed the food, so it got me thinking, I really enjoy the food there as well and if even my grandparents (who are normally very picky about food), like it, then I think others will as well. So I want to show you some great images I found and suggest to my readers out there, that the next time you are in the L.A. area and are a bit hungry, you should definitely check this place out. 

PART THREE - BRITE SPOT

"20090607175843" by Googiesque

 Brite Spot

1918 W. Sunset Blvd

Los Angeles, CA

90026

(213) 484-9800

Now, after doing some research online about Brite Spot I've read some good reviews and some bad. I've had friends in the past say that they don't like this place and I've had friends who I go with every so often because they like the place, so I would say this place is really up for grabs when it comes to opinions. I can easily say that every time I've gone there, the people have been nice and the food has been good. I particularly like this place because they offer vegetarian friendly foods as well as a meat lovers paradise (my grandfather can vouch for how good he thinks their hamburgers are). Their diner style (plus lots more) menu is broad and chances are you can find something that sounds yummy to you when there.

Another thing about this restaurant that I like is that they have always played good music when I was there and the decoration inside the place is very interesting and fun to look at. They have chalk boards along the walls that always have great chalk art with special menus incorporated into the art. 

At the end of the day it's your own experience with the place and it's food that determines if you like it or not, but I suggest you give Brite Spot a try. 

"Brite Spot" by Angelica Robles

"Full Moon" by Castro142

"chilaquiles" by 7-how-7

"Brite Spot - breakfast quesadilla" by bionicdog

"Brite Spot - burger" by bionicdog

"Red Velvet Cupcake" by Ms Holloway

"brite spot stop" by neptuneyear

"hot sauce" by '|'||'| '|'{}||{

"Brite Spot - Echo Park by Ms Holloway

"breakfast" by poppely

"britespot2" by dealinhoz

"Andy J. Scott" by laurenlemon

 More pictures of Brite Spot on Flickr can be found here.

Nostalgia: My Italian Food Part 2

Today, once again, I found myself looking over photos from my study abroad time in Italy. I know that at the end of the day it's just pure torture to me, because it makes me miss Italy more and more everyday, but I couldn't resist showing off some more photos of great food I had while over there. (I know, most of these photos aren't the best, I only took a small digital camera because I was more concerned about it being lost/stolen while living over there, so I did my best with what a I could.)

A dish (EDIT: it is called Torta Salata di Zucchine - Zucchini pie!) made by my best Italian friend's friend's mother. Was DE-LISH-OUS!

Tiramisu a Roma

A Roma

A Firenze

Caffè a Ravenna

Caffè a Ravenna - L'amore vero risplende senza ombre - True love shines without shadow 

A Ravenna 

Caramella a Ravenna

Più caramelle a Ravenna

Zuppa di verdure a Firenze. Best soup I've ever had.

Chianti

A Firenze

A Firenze

Quite a few of the photos here are from the day I took a train from Florence to Ravenna. It's a beautiful town and has AHH-MAZING mosaic artwork. You should defiantly check out the Wikipedia page on Ravenna for more information about this wonderful little town on italia's East coast.
Buon appetito!

Nostalgia: My Italian Food

Today I woke up feeling very nostalgic for my study abroad time (I can't believe that this time last year I was there, meaning it's already been over a year!) and one thing I miss a lot about living in Florence was (obviously) THE FOOD. You have not had true Italian food until you've had it in the heart of Italy, and I'm a little biased on the subject because I prefer the Tuscan, Florentine food to be specific. 

So while I'm yearning for days gone, I thought I'd share with you some photos of the food in italia. 

Espresso

Outdoor food market, down the street from my apartment on Via de' Cerchi. 

Pizza in Fiesole, a small town outside of Florence.

In my opinion, this was the best pizza in Italy, from Sienna. 

Second pizza in Sienna.

Candies in a half candy shop, half wedding shop in Piazza del Duomo.

Well there you have some (I took thousands of photos over my 3 month stay) photos of the great food you can find in italia.
Buon appetito!

Tea Time

(via)

First and foremost I have to mention that my grandmother is from England, so you would think that I would know the way to brew a proper pot of tea, and unfortunately that is not the case. My grandmother and I have shared a few cups of tea over the years, but she never told me if there was any way that a person should brew a tea. I just asked for the tea, she went into the kitchen, and magically she would come back with some great tea. (Needless to say I'm going to question her next time I call or see her.) So I never knew there were so many ways to brew tea until today. I've always thought that there was only one way to brew tea, you either take a tea strainer or a tea bag, pop it in the mug and pour hot water into it, let it sit for a minute or two, and bam, you've got tea, but boy, was I wrong! I've been watching lots of proper ways to brew tea videos on youtube today and I thought I'd share some of them with you. I'm currently on a mission to brew a proper pot of Chinese tea, but I suppose I need some more tea supplies to make that happen... not to mention the proper Chinese tea. Duh. Anyway, check out these videos, they're pretty neat.

  

 

 

(Just realized that I apparently brew my tea just like the video "How to make tea the English way" video, so apparently my British roots have shown themselves somehow!)

Not a totally happy camper

MONDAY (night):

After 6 years my trusty Brother sewing machine decided to royally piss me off by birdnesting a million times, so when Aaron came home to a very distraught me, he decided it was time for us to purchase a new one, but the ever hesitant money spender that is me, persuaded him to take my machine apart and see if we could fix it manually. 

So after he cleaned and did whatever you can do in such a big electrical mess, it still was not working. So I abandoned the tries and relaxed for the rest of the day. 

TUESDAY:

At 10 AM I left our apartment in San Diego and started my long drive up to Los Angeles. After 2 1/2 hours hours I made it to my college, magically was able to arrange an appointment to see a counselor and at 2 was able to meet with her (she was amazing and relieved me of so many worries). 

The whole reason I wanted to meet with a counselor was because since my move I have missed two semesters of classes and really want to get back into school, I feel somewhat lost without studying, so I was able to figure out what my options are for online classes with my old school and what school I think I'll be leaning towards down here in San Diego. Tomorrow afternoon when Aaron gets off work early we're going to take a drive down to the campus to check it out and see what kind of feeling I get. I'm hoping it'll be a good fit because going to one in San Diego will be so much easier than trying to only take online classes (which aren't many) with my old school, even though I'm so sad about leaving it. The life of a college student is STRESSFUL! 

But on the other hand I got to see my kittens, like Kirby (the ever elusive) here:

And the delicious dish my mother made with home grown zucchini:

WEDNESDAY (yesterday):

I had a very important dentist appointment at 10 AM and found out some horrible news. After so many years of braces and teeth surgeries I now have to have a whole different procedure to have a tooth totally replaced, a whole procedure that will take in total around 6-9 months most likely. I am absolutely dreading the whole experience, but as everyone keeps telling me, it NEEDS to get done, and that is what I'm going to do. Kicking and screaming the whole way. NOT A HAPPY CAMPER.

I left to drive back down to San Diego at 1, made it in town around 3, pretty good timing I do think. Aaron and I relaxed at home and went out for dinner and then headed over to one of our favorite places, the World Market and picked up a bunch of random stuff (blueberry scone mix that I'll probably make later on today, yum!) but while there I saw one of my favorite Italian chocolates (not to eat, just because of the funny looking boy), the bambino that is most likely old as all hell by now hahaha.

THURSDAY (today): 

Well it's still early, but I plan on trying to get my grandma's old Singer sewing machine up and running until I pick a good new (and hopefully cheap) replacement for my now dead Brother sewing machine. 

Ciao miei cari 

What I did over the weekend

Overall the weekend (plus some of Thursday) was somewhat uneventful, but had it's precious little moments for sure. 

Some of THURSDAY:

I spent the day drawing, watching Hellboy (new to me, never wanted to see it because frankly it looked uninteresting to me, but finally gave in and realized it was a decent watch, I need to stop judging movies before I see them), eating some delicious Morning Star chicken patties, which, being a vegetarian, is my favorite veggie meat maker ever. Aaron and I buy Morning Star food all the time, it's pretty much all we eat (we are both vegetarians).

Also put some of those apple soda cubes into some apple juice and it was delicious by the way, I suggest you try it. 

Later on that day I was delivered some packages from Amazon, my favorite place to buy things because they get shipped to me usually by the next day (so much faster than some of the sellers on half.com, although I will still use half.com for it's amazing prices on books). 

Reminds me, I finished Catching Fire (the second book from The Hunger Games series and  now I'm halfway through the last one, such a good read, I'll write more about them in other posts.

Also, Thursday night brought the blackout in San Diego. Aaron and I did not have a very fun night trying to read with one small candle and one small flashlight. Thank goodness the lights came back on at 3AM and we weren't stuck all weekend without electricity like all the reports online predicted. Yikes!

FRIDAY:

Spent the morning doing nothing and was surprised when Aaron came home early from work :) So we went off to a local art store and I was able to pick up some new art supplies to work on my new pillow designs. I figured since it's getting closer to Halloween and I'm a huge fan of calaveras/sugar skulls/Día de los Muertos/Day of the Dead art I thought I'd come up with my own designs and make pillows out of them. 

Those pillows always seem to get a lot of attention and I love making them so I've been working on new designs with my new art supplies. Here is one of them.

Adorable little skeleton cat. I've got lots of regular skulls in the works too and hope to get one of them started sewing today once I'm done writing this up. 

After the stop at the art store Aaron and I headed to El Indio to grab some delicious Mexican food and headed home for a nice relaxing rest of the day. 

SATURDAY:

While most of this day was spent doing nothing, in the afternoon I shook Aaron up and we went and got some smoothies at Jamba Juice and headed to Coronado and the beach. 

The beach we go to is never too crowded and always beautiful. While sitting on the beach I did a sand version of Aaron. 

We both had a good laugh at how realistic it looked and how soulless his empty eyes were. Hahaha. 

After our trip to the beach we went out looking for some books. Aaron got House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski which is apparently supposed to be an amazingly scary book. I'll probably attempt reading it after Aaron has a go at it, but we also were able to score two awesome Star Wars Mad Libs books which we spent the rest of the night laughing at, making disgusting libs. For good wholesome fun I suggest you pick yourself up a copy, here. 

Anyway, that's it for today, off to get some sewing done! 

Caio miei cari