Butter Ice

So pretty much what we've been doing since we got home last Wednesday is making gelato (well, plus a little sunbathing and tv-watching here and there). Our fourth batch (hazelnut) is steeping for one hour right now, so we thought we'd use that time to update you on what has been going on.

We decided to start off with a basic gelato recipe: gelato di crema. The only ingredients were egg yolks, milk, sugar, and a pinch of salt. Not very hard to mess up, right? Well, we mangaged to anyway. Our main problem was the ice cream maker. It wasn't quite frozen enough, but we were impatient so we poured in the base anyway. We checked it periodically for the next hour, when we finally realized that nothing much was happening and decided to just put it in the freezer. Louisa stirred it a couple of times before she went to bed and when she got up in the morning, and it finally froze, but it wasn't exactly gelato. Instead, it was very icy and very, very yellow. It had a good taste (though sometimes we thought we were eating butter ice) but the texture was just not right at all. So since then we have been trying many other recipes--and ice cream machines (Thank you to everyone who has lent us one!).

So far we have been pretty successful with our chocolate and peach flavors. They aren't perfect, but we've realized that nothing we make is ever going to be. In any case, you can try what we've made at our presentation on Friday (sorry to tempt everyone who can't come).

We've also made a trip to Staples to get materials for our book. There, we found out that in order to buy single sheets of color paper (instead of packs of 100 or more), you have to pretend you are making copies with them and then fill out a self-serve copy slip. So we made seventeen blank copies!

Next up (well, once this hazelnut is finished): straciatella!

Two blocks over, two blocks down

Today we had a lot to accomplish, considering we leave tomorrow. We decided to go to the Italian-American museum this morning, so we took the subway to 42nd St. and eventually found it, on the 17th floor of some building. We saw the first exihibit, but we couldn't go any farther because no one was there. We then headed back to the subway to go downtown for gelato.

After gelato, we trekked around town taking pictures of gelaterias that we hadn't gotten good ones of. We took a break in a park (though unfortunately we couldn't sit on the grass because it was being reseeded) and then decided to take the subway to 8th St. to find Louisa a cardigan she had been looking for. On the map we saw that the station we needed was two blocks over, and two blocks down. We sat for a while longer, watching the grass being mowed, while we repeated to ourselves "two blocks over, two blocks down." We finally got up to go and made our way over to the subway. When we got out at 14th St., Cecilia asked, "Wait! Why are we at 8th St.? I've forgotten." Louisa had to remind her about the cardigan.

After that business was taken care of, we started walking around the neighborhood, trying to find a Jamba Juice (which we are now obsessed with). We had seen a man walking towards us carrying one, so we went in the direction he was coming from. After a few minutes, we came to a sign that read "3rd St." "Wait, how are we at 3rd St. if we were at 8th St. and we are walking uptown?" Louisa asked. We kept walking anyway. Later, after several more blocks, we came to Bleecker St. still Jamba Juice-less and decided to take the subway back up to 42nd St., where we knew there was one. We checked the map and decided to walk to the Bleecker St. station, which we thought would be to our right. After about 10 minutes of walking, we finally realized we were going the wrong direction. We really had been walking downtown. Don't worry, we usually have an impeccable sense of direction.

At one point we were walking down the sidewalk when a woman came up to us and asked us for directions. We pulled out our handy map and showed her the way, but right as she was walking away a man came up to us to ask us directions. We had to pull out the map again. We must look like real New York-ers now.

We came back for our last dinner in the apartment and then started packing. We'll be on a 10:00 bus tomorrow! We've really enjoyed being in New York and would like to thank everyone who helped us while we were here! Though we won't be updating every day from now on (our life in Maine is a lot more boring than our New York life), we'll write every now and then to let you know how the rest of our project is going.

Full

This whole weekend, including today, we stuffed ourselves with food. It all started with a food festival, covering all of 9th Ave. from 57th St. to 37th St., that Cecilia's friend Natalie invited us to. It was the true Mecca of food, and completely overwhelming. We managed to each find something to eat, and we sat in a park for a little while to chat with Natalie and digest our food. We decided we'd need to come back the next day because there were so many things that we were just too full to eat.

That night, we decided to go out. We arrived at the movie theater only to find that the movie we wanted to see was sold out, and while we were deciding what to do that next showing also sold out. We decided to see the later showing of our second choice, a film called Paris, je t'aime that we knew nothing about. It didn't start for another hour, though, so we hung out at Whole Foods until then. The movie was actually a compilation of short films that all took place in Paris and were named after different neighborhoods. Though a couple of them were quite bizarre, most were very good and we enjoyed the film.

Sunday we went back to the food festival to get crepes, and then came back to the East Side to go to the Met, where we spent a couple of hours. We then trekked downtown to visit a gelateria (at Mario Batali's restaurant) and then came back to the apartment for dinner. We wanted to order in takeout at least once while we were here, and we struggled for a while choosing what kind of food to eat. Cuban and Burmese were our two final choices, and we decided to go with Burmese, which turned out to be an excellent decision. After dinner we talked late into the night with the Austrian couple staying at the apartment, and they invited us to Valentin's exhibition the next day.

Today we went to a restaurant owned by family friends of the Nardis, and since we ate a baked potato ice cream dessert, we decided that we would save the gelato till tomorrow. We then headed over to the exhibition, where Valerie and Valentin showed us around. Valentin's designs were wonderful, as were many of the other pieces in the exhibition. We spent a long time walking around the convention center looking at everything.

Other friends of the Nardis had invited us over for a pizza dinner tonight, so after dinner we took the subway to their house and enjoyed a nice meal. Tomorrow we plan to go to our last gelateria and pack for our departure on Wednesday!

The Key to a Successful Day

Today was quite an exciting day. We woke up to see that it was grey and rainy and decided to make it a lazy morning. We caught up on our reviewing and planned for the next few days, and then we decided that it was time to do some laundry. With our pockets stuffed with quarters we set off for the basement to examine the washer/dryer situation. While waiting for the elevator we saw Rick and his wife Anne coming out of the apartment for a say on the down, and we saw that they had locked the door behind them. Realizing that we didn't bring the keys, we asked them to leave the door open for when we returned in a few minutes, and they gladly did so. On the way down, they told us that if we ever were locked out, Gil down the hall had copies of the keys.

It wasn't until we were almost in the basement that we realized that we didn't have any detergent. We took the elevator back up to the fifth floor and Cecilia ran into the apartment to find some. Finally in the basement, we chose one of the empty washing machines and put our dirty clothes in.

Only a couple of minutes later, we were back up at the fifth floor. Only now, the door was inexplicably locked. Well, not inexplicably, someone must have locked it, but it was very surprising. We stood dumbfounded outside the door for a few minutes, frantically knocking and ringing the bell, before we decided that we would have to go find Gil (and thank goodness Rick and Anne had told us about him!). However, we didn't even know which apartment he was in. We realized that the only solution would be to go look at the board with everyone's name on it down in the lobby. Louisa stood safely on the other side of the lobby door while Cecilia ran out to check. He was in 5F.

We knocked on the door of 5F. A woman's voice called out, "Who is it?" We told her that we were friends of the Pughs and that we had been locked out, but she couldn't really hear us from the other side of the door and almost sent away. We persisted because we could hear Gil's voice in the background asking who it was. Finally she let us in and we found the keys. We ran back excitedly to 5A and tried to open the door. We tried the first lock, but nothing happened. Then the one above it, but the door still would not open. So we tried the first one again. This time, however, the key got stuck. We stood bewildered for a few seconds before we decided to unhook the other key from the loop and try the upper lock again. Finally we were able to open the door, to our great relief. Cecilia ran the keys back to Gil while Louisa again stood safely on the other side of the door.

It wasn't until much later, after lunch, that we remembered about our clothes. We again journeyed down the basement, only to find all of the washers filled--but none with our clothes. After a moment of panic, we found them piled on a folding chair in the corner. Unfortunately, all of the dryers were filled as well, so we had to come down later to dry them.

Then it was finally time for the day's gelato. We had been hearing all about a new gelateria on the West Side, and we had decided that today was the day to finally check it out. It was definitely worthy of the reviews it has been given.

We decided to walk up Broadway to 96th St. where we could take a crosstown bus, but we hadn't made it that far before we ran into potential prom dress stores. After trying on several, Cecilia miraculously found one that she liked! Both she and Louisa were very happy to finally be done with that.

WE DID NOT BUY THOSE DRESSES

First of all, we would like to clarify a few things. We did not buy either of the dresses pictured, nor did we ever even consider buying them. We repeat, WE DID NOT BUY THE DRESSES IN THE LAST POST. Also, by no means is this blog a complete recording of our daily activities. We thought that it would not interest you to read every detail of the work we do, and we want to save all the juicy gelato secrets for the presentation. We may play hard, but we also work hard. It's like college.

Today we decided to share our love of gelato with two of Louisa's friends, who live in and around the city. We met Rachel and Skye at Grand Central Station, walked around the area for a little while, and then went out to lunch. We had saved what is generally known as the best gelato in the city for them, so after we ate we headed down to Il Laboratorio del Gelato. However, Cecilia AGAIN had problems with her Metrocard (this is starting to get annoying) and had to go ask the MTA officer what to do. She told her to just go through the service gate. Maybe we should have only bought one card and done that from the beginning! We then waited at least twenty minutes for a subway, after accidentally trying to get on the F train to Queens (AGAIN... what is this obsession with the F train to Queens?).

Il Laboratorio del Gelato certainly lived up to its reputation, though you'll have to wait for June 1st to get the whole scoop (no pun intended). Just know that there were some interesting flavors and large portions.

Afterwards, another grueling afternoon of prom dress shopping. This time Louisa devoted all her time and energy to helping Cecilia, who was desperate. This time we tackled Bloomingdales, as well as several other stores, but once again yielded no results. We then headed back uptown to have dinner at the apartment. Rick made several delicious Malaysian dishes in honor of his wife Anne's birthday and the Pughs' return to New York City. Roger and Anne's sister Besty also was present, as were an Austrian couple staying at the apartment, Valerie and Valentin. To say the least, it's a full house tonight. The Malaysian food was followed but some decadent chocolate cake and fruit sorbets. It was a night of delicious food and great conversation.

When It Rains, It Pours

Today started out the same way that yesterday did. Again we boiled eggs and made egg salad (no more peanut butter and jelly for us). Today, however, we went straight to Macy's afterwards to search for prom dresses--we can't afford to do any more sunbathing. Once inside, we promised ourselves not to get discouraged, though there are ten floors. It's the biggest store in the world. But we knew we could take it on.

We soon found the wooden escalators that Macy's is famous for (not really, but we thought we could make you believe that). At every floor we went to, we made a plan. We would circle around and meet back up at the dressing rooms to try on what we had found. Unfortunately for Cecilia, she didn't find anything she liked. She even broke down when we were in the bathing suit section because the selection was just so vast. She later tripped over the bottom of a rack and had the whole staff of Macy's coming to her rescue. Louisa, however, went on a tear through Macy's and Daffy's, which we went into next. She ended up buying two (TWO!) dresses today, which is quite an accomplishment for someone who is usually a very bad shopper. Two of the many dresses we tried on are pictured below. (Cecilia would have bought the green one but the zipper was broken.)


















We exited the elevator at Daffy's and saw through the doors that it looked dark outside. Cecilia tried to convince Louisa that they were just tinted, but when they walked through it was clear that it was actually raining. The wind was very fierce and things were being blown all around. We were the only ones on the sidewalk who weren't running, holding things over their heads, or frantically trying to call a cab. We casually walked down the sidewalk to the subway, which we took WAY downtown to a gelateria.

This gelateria had a small but lovely array of flavors, and we chose pear, which was amazing. We then sat down to wait out the rain. The subway ride home we spent thinking about the Ramen with last night's leftover chicken that we were going to make for dinner, and it definitely lived up to the excpectations. It was the perfect meal for a rainy evening.

T = G

Tonight the blogging has been a difficult task. Louisa spent maybe ten minutes typing JARGON, but without further ado here is tonight's official post.
(IT WAS A CRYPTOQUIP.)
She wishes.
(She spent a long time on that, ok.)
On this warm day we once again found ourselves at Central Park enjoying a picnic lunch.
(That won't be happening again tomorrow. We're not friends anymore, ever since Cecilia deleted Louisa's crytoquip.)
After we had spent ample time under the sun, we decided to head uptown to 92nd Street to Ciao Bella Gelateria. At first we didn't think we would find it since we had the address written down as 92nd and 5th, and we hadn't seen it though we walk that block every day.
(Tcoqbl pw vcqoon tlle.)
Once we had waited in line for our gelato we finally reached...
(OK we just made up and Louisa will go back to helping writing the blog posts since Cecilia has writer's block. Wcvfcw ycv vptyb.)

OK. We happened to go to Ciao Bella just as the neighborhood schools were getting out, and it was packed inside. We finally were able to enjoy our gelato in peace when all of the children left, and we spent a while at our table deciding what to do next. We decided to start tackling the prom-dress shopping, since that could take a week and that's all we have left.

With Free and Dirt Cheap in New York as our guide (after all, that is what led to our amazing time on TRL), we decided to head downtown to 34th St. (Miracle on 34th St., anyone?) We were pretty sure that finding prom dresses would require a miracle.

We took two steps into the Manhattan Mall and were immediately overwhelmed. There were glass elevators. Who knew? There were more clothes in the space of one city block than either of us had seen in our entire lives. We walked around a bit, got lost, and walked right back out without trying anything on. We decided to try again tomorrow.

Today was filled with protein. We made egg salad sandwiches for lunch and for dinner we decided to get some chicken (!!!!). We are stepping it up a notch; no pasta AT ALL today. Our chicken caesar salads were delicious and meaty.

P.S. Whoever figures out the crytoquip gets 10 points. Leave the answer in a comment. Or comment anyway, since it will get you 5 points.

"I can be your hero, baby."

We got up obscenely early this morning because we wanted to see if we could stand in line for tickets to the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. We went all the way over to 11th Ave. to find that his studio had moved and been replaced with the Colbert Report studio. Unfortunately, you had to be 18 to get stand-by tickets (we're both less than two months away...) so we decided to get some hot chocolate at Dunkin' Donuts instead. We then decided to take the cross-town bus to Times Square, and the schedule said that it would arrive at 11:06. We got to the bus stop at 11:02 to wait. And wait and wait and wait. It wasn't until 11:26 that a bus came. We could have walked there faster.

In Times Square we had a picnic lunch and went to the Virgin Megastore and the M&M store, where we got our M&M colors scanned--Cecilia was silver and Louisa was pink. Good to know. We then walked across the street to look for a subway downtown so we could get some gelato, but we ran into a line of teenagers. We stood bewildered for a minute or two before a young woman came over and asked us if we had tickets for TRL. We said no, and she told us to go wait against the wall. So we did.

We were standing in line when suddenly all the people around us went crazy. They started taking out their cameras and running down the sidewalk. "It's him; it's him." We had no idea who "him" was. But soon the line started moving and we found ourselves inside the building where the MTV studio is located. We waited in more long lines and were finally ushered into the studio, after giving up our wallets, cell phones, and cameras. Luckily, Louisa had already called her mother and walked her through the process of taping TRL on the DVR.

Then we found out who the mysterious man was. ENRIQUE IGLESIAS. He was there to premiere his new video, "Do You Know." He stood within about two feet of us to be interviewed by Damien and then to play ping pong with him. (Anyone who missed today's TRL--probably all of you--can come over to Louisa's house to watch it.) It was beautiful. LaKisha Jones, who just was kicked off American Idol, was also there, but we didn't really know anything about her. Enrique, however, we remembered from way back in his "Hero" and "Escape" days. You can be our hero, Enrique.

Then we finally made it downtown to get some gelato. It was a kind of disappointing gelateria, but nothing could really compare to going on TRL and seeing Enrique Iglesias up close.

Post-Modern Minimalism

Today we learned that assaulting an MTA officer is a felony punishable by up to seven years in prison. Good thing we didn't follow through with our plan the first day, we guess. Cecilia had another run-in with one today when her Metrocard would not let her through the turnstile no matter how hard she tried. She went over to talk to the MTA officer in the booth while Louisa watched the train leave the station. He yelled at her for having bent it a little bit, but she finally made it through and we waited for the next train. One day we'll make it through a whole day with no subway problems.

We had gelateria problems again today too, unfortunately. We chose a gelateria to visit and made our way to the location, where we again saw a giant construction site. WE ARE NOT JOKING. We walked around all of the surrounding blocks but there was no gelato in sight. Something must be pushing all of the New York gelaterias out of business. We have high hopes that this blog will start a revival, however.

We went all the way downtown to Little Italy and passed several gelaterias still in business, which we marked down for next time, before we made it to the one on our list. It was delicious, as gelato always is, but not quite as good as yesterday's. The weather was beautiful, however, and we spent some time wandering around Little Italy before we went back to the subway.

While making our way uptown, Cecilia found herself seated directly underneath two bickering passengers, fighting over how much room there was on the train. "I didn't ask for you to come on this train; you chose to come on this train." "There's room for everybody, if everybody would just move down." At which point Cecilia stood up and moved away, leaving them to fight over who would take her seat. ("No, I don't want that seat, you take that seat....")

We got off in midtown Manhattan because we wanted to go to the Museum of Modern Art, which has free Friday nights (We're saving our money for more important things, ok?). Though it had been 80 degrees and sunny downtown, at 51st St. it was dark and raining. Louisa remarked that it was bearable, since it was not raining too hard, at which point it started to rain harder. Luckily, after passing under quite a few awnings, we made it to H&M before we got too wet.

The MoMA was very crowded but we spent quite a bit of time wandering through the exhibits, including one on the Helvetica typeface, at Louisa's mom's suggestion. We also saw many Picassos, Matisses, and Gaugins, but our personal favorite was the exhibit on post-modern minimalism, which is pictured below.

Tomorrow we're planning a picnic.

"Retail Space Available"

Today started off wonderfully. We got up early, had a breakfast of frosted mini wheats, and then set off for the grocery store a couple of blocks away. There we found bananas at a price of 33 cents per pound, so we bought six for a grand total of 74 cents! We also found some tomato sauce for 99 cents, which was a great bargain. So far we have spent about $15 on food, and we have enough to last us for weeks! We returned to the apartment to research and plan for the rest of the day. We prepared a pasta lunch (of course), which we estimated cost us less than a dollar. We then journeyed downtown to find our first gelateria.


The subway ride went smoothly, and before we knew it, we arrived at 14th St. We had chosen the closest gelateria on our list, which was said to be located on 7th Ave. between 17th and 18th streets. As we approached this location, we noticed that the neighborhood was calm and friendly, and we made a mental note to write about that in our review. We turned onto 7th Ave. and started walking up towards 18th St., looking at all of the stores that we passed. None was the gelateria. Up ahead we saw a large construction site. We checked the address once again--where the gelateria was supposed to be, there was now a large hole in the ground. Luckily, a sign advertised the retail space available, so if we ever want to open our own gelateria, we know where there's a spot! One down, literally, we moved on to the next on our list.





As we got closer to the next gelateria, we noticed that there was almost no one on the streets, at least by New York standards. We wandered around a little until we saw the address we were looking for: 75 9th Ave. Almost as soon as we walked in the door, we noticed a table where free cookies were being given away. Not ones to turn down free food, we each took one. A little further down the long hallway was a table with free brownies. We each took one of those as well. We could hear live music from even further down, so without knowing exactly where we were going, we kept walking. It was after we saw the free cake samples and soup samples that we realized something was going on. We walked past the band that we had heard and almost ran into a man on stilts, dressed in a clown suit, who was handing out Mardi Gras beads, which was weird, since it certainly wasn't Mardi Gras.

We still hadn't seen the gelateria we were looking for, so we kept walking. Free food was everywhere! We reached a small Italian grocery store called Buon Italia, which wasn't what we had been looking for, but we looked inside and they sold gelato! Finally we were in luck!

The gelato was delicious. The official review will come at our presentation on June 1st, so we hope to see you there! Despite the setbacks, it was a great start to our project (and we were even able to make all of the free food into our dinner)!

"What doesn't kill us makes us stronger"

After two days of planning and organizing, we finally set off for New York City this morning. It seemed like quite a stressful morning, but compared to everything that has happened since, it was a piece of cake! Cecilia's mother graciously offered to drive us to Boston, so we left from Waynflete at about 11:30. We were on the turnpike when Sally noticed that there was only enough gas left for five miles of driving, and we were still a couple of miles from the nearest service station. Cecilia started freaking out, but we managed to calm her down and Sally smoothly slid beside a gas tank with only droplets of gas left. The rest of the car ride went well until we drove right by the exit that Mapquest had told us to use. Luckily, Sally ingeniously figured out another route and managed to save $4 in tolls.

We finally arrived at South Station at 1:30. We knew that the buses to New York left every hour, so we were hoping to make the 2:00 bus. Unfortunately, neither of us is a light packer, and we each had a backpack and large duffel, as well as a shopping bag with a 5 pound bag of pasta and two pairs off flip-flops that we passed between us (sorry about that misplaced modifier; it's been a long day--we mean the shopping bag) as we walked about half a mile through the train station to find the buses. We bought our tickets ($15 each) with minutes to spare, and we sat down to wait.

The bus was relatively empty, and we both managed to catch up on some sleep. We decided to check out Century Buffet when the bus stopped, and we each invested in $3.77 of Chinese food and fruit. There were some strange characters on the bus, including one man who managed to shake the bus with one sneeze, another who kept changing his clothes and brushing his teeth, and one man who kept cracking up in the seat in front of us. The time passed quickly, though, and we found ourselves in Chinatown at approximately 7:00, again with all our luggage in hand. We managed to find the orange line, and this is where things started going downhill.

Louisa opened her backpack to find that her Fierce Grape Gatorade (an awful shade of blue) had spilled on her lovely pink wallet. She managed to momentarily ignore the pain in the interest of purchasing a metro card. However, the machine gave her back $6 in coins (5 Sacajaweas and a Susan B. Anthony) and she was forced to put them in her pocket. She then followed Cecilia through the turnstile, only instead of putting her body through the gate, she pushed her luggage through, leaving her stuck on the other side, unable to swipe her card again, with a line swiftly forming behind her. A metro card cannot be used at the same station within 18 minutes, and instead of waiting that long (as was our original plan--we wanted to buy one ticket and stay 18 minutes apart), she managed to jump over the gate.

We got on the B line and got off after one stop to transfer to the 6 train, which we thought had arrived at the platform. Cecilia pushed Louisa into the train as the doors were starting to close, then pulled her back out with only milliseconds to spare when she realized that it was actually an F train headed for Queens. Louisa was very grateful for Cecilia's quick thinking, as she would have been very lost in Queens all by herself. We then noticed signs pointing upstairs to the 6 train and decided to follow them. Upstairs, we found that there was only a platform for the 6 train downtown--and we wanted to go uptown. Luckily, we had bought unlimited use metro cards, so we went out the turnstile (Louisa made it that time) and asked the MTA official at the counter where we should go. He said nothing but pointed at a handwritten sign on which were written directions to the uptown train. Unfortunately, they required going upstairs and outside (and keep in mind we still had all our luggage--and the 5 pound bag of pasta). We walked a couple of blocks, following the directions that Cecilia had written on her hand, and found only a stairway labeled "6 Train Downtown." We were bewildered and considered going to ambush the MTA officers below. Then, however, Louisa turned around and notice another stairway across this street-- this one going to the uptown train. We breathed a sigh of relief when we sat down in the train and waited through many stops until we made it uptown.

We arrived at the apartment that we are staying at and met Rick, the brother-in-law of the owners, family friends of the Nardis. He showed us around and we settled into our rooms. We decided to make Annie's macaroni and cheese (we are on the opposite of the Atkin's diet for the next few weeks) for dinner, and Cecilia found a pot to boil water in. The dishwasher was connected to the faucet, but we saw that the dishes were clean and decided to unconnect it. Cecilia unconnected the tube and water started spraying on her and all over the kitchen. She frantically turned the faucet, but the water refused to turn off. She then tried to reconnect the tube, but that only made the water spray even more viciously. Louisa tried to help by pressing buttons on the dishwasher, but that only made things worse. Finally we called Rick, who came to help us turn the water off. The rest of the dinner went smoothly, except for the floaty things that mysteriously ended up in our pasta.

We then sat down to write our blog. And after much trouble connecting to the internet (which we won't go into), we are here. We hope you keep reading as we continue to explore New York and get in even more trouble. Tomorrow will bring us to our first gelateria!

Cecilia and Louisa

Gelateria Locations

I was looking for a way to plot the locations of all the gelaterias we are going to visit when I stumbled across this site: Batch Geocode. What you have to do is make a spreadsheet of all the addresses you want plotted, and then it "geocodes" them, or generates another spreadsheet that includes their exact longitudes and latitudes. Then you can view all the locations on a single map, which you can also view a satellite or hybrid version of, just like with GoogleEarth.

Here's a map of the gelaterias we plan on visiting (though unfortunately we may not get to all of them): Gelateria Locations. Isn't that pretty cool? Now everyone will know exactly where we are at all times!

In other news, if you look at the sidebar to the left you will see that now you can not only subscribe to this blog in a feed (ok, I admit I don't really actually know what that is), you can also enter your email address and all new posts will be sent to your email!

Louisa

The Beginning

Welcome, everyone!

We have started this blog to keep you updated on our "Viaggio del Gelato" (Voyage of Gelato!). We're still in Maine right now, and we're still a couple of months away from senior projects (We can't wait for May!), but our proposal is due in two days and we are furiously working on completing it.

Our plan: We are going to go to New York City for fifteen days in May to explore the city's gelaterias and learn about the history of Little Italy and of the Italian influence in New York. We will visit about ten gelaterias and will write a review of each one. We also hope to meet the owners/gelato makers and learn their secrets! When we get home, we will make some gelato of our own (You'll get to try some if you come to our presentation at Waynflete on June 1st!).

During this project we'll be updating this blog to let you all know what we've done. At our presentation, we will have a book of gelateria reviews and recipes for everyone to look at.

For more information about the difference between gelato and ice cream, we invite you to visit this site: Ice Cream vs. Gelato. To learn about the history of gelato, click here: History of Gelato.

Keep checking back for updates, especially in May when we'll finally get on the road!

Cecilia and Louisa