I guess I didn't need that shower after all...

When I woke up this morning, it was raining gatti e cani. So after taking in the sopping wet laundry that I had left outside on the clothes line all night (oops) and making my coffee, I got right back into bed. Soon enough, however, the clouds had passed and it was a sunny, warm, beautiful day. So I hopped in the shower and headed out to the market down the street from my apartment, which I'm lucky to be living near! Since I live in a really ethnic area (hardly any Italians), you can only imagine the kinds of things they sell at the market. It was absolutely crazy! It's an indoor market and I could barely push my way through the doors. Once I made it in, though, I saw pigs' feet, pig heads, chili peppers, onions, cow tongue...all hanging from the ceiling, and some really amazing produce. And all I could smell were the spices! There were Indian stands, Spanish and Mexican stands, fresh herbs...and everything was so cheap. Anyway, I bought all sorts of great things and then all of a sudden, BOOM! Thunder shook the building and the skies, which were clear and blue ten minutes earlier, opened up and rain came down in sheets. I felt water drops and when I looked up to the glass roof I saw streams of water coming down from some of the slightly ajar windows. Pretty soon there were little waterfalls in the middle of the market, which all the little kids seemed to love, but not so much the vendors. I peeked out the door, but there didn't seem to be any blue sky in sight, so I made a run for home and got completely soaked. Thus the uselessness of my previous shower.

I had a blast looking around, but I was afraid to take my camera out and snap pictures because the clientele seemed anything but tourist-friendly. But I played food-stylist when I got home and arranged my haul on the kitchen counter. All of this for about 15 euro!

For my less visually-inclined audience, here's what I got (approx. from left to right):

half a dozen eggs, fresh Sicilian tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, 200g of prosciutto crudo, fingerling potatoes, 1/2 kg. of dried black beans, 3kg (over 6 lb!) of peaches, fresh strawberries, and a huge loaf of bread that was still hot!

I think I'll make a sort of fried egg and prosciutto sandwich with some fresh mozzarella. And I'll be trying Matt's favorite tomato recipe, pomodori al forno - cooked at 250 degrees for over 3 hours!

Another great perk about this apartment, besides its proximity to this market and its steady source of internet is the American-style coffee pot. It makes it so much easier to wake up in the morning knowing I can have a whole cup of coffee, not just an espresso! My Italian professor had told me about a coffee bar here in Rome that adds a bit of sugar to the ground coffee before brewing it, so I thought I'd give it a try. It was delicious! You can't really taste the sugar, but somehow it makes the coffee taste more like coffee, the way coffee makes chocolate taste more like chocolate.

I was going to try to go to the Villa Borghese today (kind of like the Central Park of Rome), but the weather seems too iffy. As I've seen, it goes from sunshine to pouring rain in a matter of five minutes, and I wouldn't want to be stuck sitting in a huge park when the sky opens up...