Dining at Villa Maderni

I thought that I might periodically provide little insights into daily life here in addition to the details about the trips and what we've seen that I've mostly been posting.

Today I thought I would post about meals here...

For breakfast, which runs from 7:30 am until 9:15 as self service, we have a selection of four types of cereal, a large variety of yogurt, bread, individual jelly and nutella packets, fruit (bananas, nectarines, kiwi, apples, oranges...), coffee, tea, and juice. The yogurt and fruit are available to snack on all day as well as the coffee, tea (hot and cold), and juice.

Lunch and dinner are both two shifts; I am first shift as it is done in alphabetical order, so I have lunch at 12:15 and dinner at 6:15. (Second shift is lunch at 1 pm and dinner at 7 pm).

For lunch we have a salad buffet, which always has tomatoes, carrots, cucumber, some protein (fish or chicken or turkey... today was crab meat and little shrimp), beans and/or corn, and any other leftover vegetables. Then a pasta dish of some sort is served. Today was lasagna, but we've hardly had the same thing twice yet; we've had crepes with various fillings, ravioli (also with a variety of fillings), gniochi, all different sauces on pene pasta... and many other things. Slices of bread and butter are always on the table.

Dinner consists of a soup served to the table (family style) first, most of the time. We have sometimes had bread with cheese and tomato on it or a "cheese muffin" or something of that nature instead. Then we have a dish with a protein (like pork escalope last night or meatballs later tonight) and a side (often involving potatoes and vegetables). There is also a large variety with this though; one night we even had scrambled eggs with sausage and bacon, then another night we had shish kabobs... there is a huge range. It is mostly Italian cooking though as our chef comutes from Como, Italy.

Of course there is always dessert after dinner. Last night was "berries cake," tonight is Baked Alaska... often there is fruit in the dessert.

I always have coffee after lunch and dinner here, in addition to the coffee I have with breakfast. It seems to be the way of life here. Luckily I counter that with 3 or 4 glasses of water with both lunch and dinner.

We may be a little spoiled, but its not the same as home cooking still...

More updates on other little insights to come.