Brunch Americano

Last night, my sister and went to my favorite local trattoria and had a delicious, very Italian meal - bruschetta and stuffed olives as an appetizer, two pasta dishes, and tiramisu for dessert. We went out for drinks first, didn't even get to the restaurant until after 11:00 PM and left at around 1:00 AM, which is considered relatively normal here - maybe a little on the late side but still perfectly acceptable. Always the good influence on my little sister, I made sure we finished every drop of our 1 liter carafe of wine. Waste not, want not!

We were still full when we woke up this morning, so we decided to skip breakfast and fix an afternoon American brunch for all of my housemates. I left a note telling everyone not to eat because we were planning a "Brunch Americano" and we left to go shopping for supplies - when we came back, Andrea had written his replies all over it:

"Turn off the lights, cover the fires! Look out!"
"No! What is it, are they dropping bombs?"
"Indians, look out!!"
"Close the doors and windows!"

Yeah, he's very fond of Americans. :)

In spite of Andrea's comments, we started cooking and went all out - fresh squeezed orange juice for mimosas, french toast and pancakes with two different homemade toppings (strawberry or caramelized banana), hash browns, scrambled eggs and bacon.

Have you ever seen Italians eat brunch? Somehow I doubt it, so I'll go over the highlights.

As soon as we put everything on the table, Andrea picked up a piece of french toast, tore it in half and made a bacon sandwich. I explained in Italian "no, no, Andrea - you put either the strawberries or the bananas on the french toast" and he said "you want me to put strawberries on the panino?!"

I said "there IS no panino" and poured some strawberries on his french toast for him - at which point he started yelling that I was ruining everything, that the sweet food was too close to the salty food. He tried to say this in English for the benefit of my sister, and since "salty" in Italian is "salata," he said something like "The salad! It is too close to the sweet!"

Pier, on the other hand, was confused because there was no bread. I said that we didn't really need bread because we were already eating pancakes and french toast, and he picked up a piece of bacon and said "well how are we supposed to eat this, then??" I said "ummm by itself?" and he started shouting in Italian, saying things like "you crazy Americans, don't know how to eat!!"

Neither Italian liked the mimosas very much so they just drank the orange juice and champagne separately, and I think they were pretty disgusted by my attempt at hash browns. To be fair, they looked like greasy potato mush but I thought they tasted pretty good...

The whole meal was hilarious, with the Italians yelling that Americans are crazy, and my sister and I responding by saying that Italians are crazy... Marta (Portuguese) just sat by and laughed - her people were not involved in this American-Italian Brunch War.