So as I previously wrote.. my art history teacher looks just like Johnny Depp.. anyways before he became an art historian he was a professional chef, he actually worked at the #1 restuarant in the USA for a couple years.. anyways so s group of us paid him 35euro to go to his house for lunch.. we left around 10 am, took a bus, then an hour train ride to this town called Bracciano.. this city is so beautiful! It overlooks a huge lake and is surrounded by green gardens and fields and rolling hills.. and of course the castle where Tom Cruise just got married.. it was pretty sweet.. we toured the castle and the tourguide was only in Italian so Johnny relayed it on to us.. they also had a costume area of the castle where they had outfits on display from different movies like Othello etc.. After the castle we went to this apartment.. it was really small, two bedroom, bathroom, kitchen/living room with fireplace. It was exactly what I thought it would look like though! It was really authentic/rustic, with lots of art and random prints on the walls. He bought the place when it hadn’t been lived in for 12 years.. it was a 4 bedroom with no bathroom so he basically had to gut it. Anyways here’s a description of what he cooked us/kinda taught us how to remake:

First he made us a quiche-like dish with 4 different types of onions and eggs, then we had a mushroom tart.. I hate mushrooms and it was delicious! He had made some sort of mushroom concoction that he layered between two pieces of this bread tart.. then we had risotto? A rice with safron in it.. then we had pasta “of the woods” with random vegetables thrown in.. peas, onions, mushrooms.. it was really good too, it makes a difference when you have homemade noodles! Then we had roasted guinea fowl with rosemary, potatoes, green beans with a pear sauce (the sweet sauce was really good too) then we had marzipan for dessert…and of course red wine with the meal and bread and followed it all up with a shot of this alcohol called grappa which is made from leftover grape skins after the grapes have been mashed for wine! It was a really fun day.. not kidding, from the time we started eating to when we stopped was 5 hours! We left around 8 at night.. so it basically took all day.

We also had to turn in our oil paintings on Friday.. I’ll include some pictures below.. I got critiqued today and on my painting I got a B+/A- and if I fix a few things I can get an A and I got an A- on my drawing with a possible A as well.. not too shabby for a beginning painter

my final drawing

my desk in studio

all of our pieces on the wall

a view from the castle in bracciano

johnny depp cooking

…if these pictures were pixelated or blurry im sorry i’ll be sure to fix them later but you get the idea!