Bubbling up with Helena

My husband and I were supposed to go to Rome in April 2020. Of course, COVID-19 kept us from making that trip, but we hope to make it there when it is safe!

The Food

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I LOVE Italian food and always have. I did some research into some Roman specialities, and we had fun eating a lot of cheese.

• Pizza – I mean, of course, we couldn’t have an Italian weekend without pizza. We decided to try to a Roman-style pizzeria in our neighborhood, My Pie. Roman pizza is square shaped like Sicilian-style pizza. This pizza crust tasted almost like foccacia. It was light and airy under the toppings but was nice and crispy on the bottom. I will definitely try this again.
• Spaghetti Carbonara – Carbonara is a simple pasta with eggs and bacon and is a Roman classic. My husband and I bought a pasta maker last year, and we brought it out to make handmade spaghetti to make this dish. The pasta was so fresh that the effort of rolling the dough out felt worth it. 10/10 would recommend.
• Maritozzi – Maritozzi are sweet Roman yeasted buns. The recipe called for raisins, but I decided to use chocolate chips instead. (I learned that they are sometimes made with chocolate chips). The buns were just sweet enough with the chocolate being a perfect addition. They didn’t quite rise as much as we expected, but they still tasted great.

The Entertainment

As a big fan of late 90s and early 2000s Disney Channel, we had to include The Lizzie McGuire Movie in our weekend. We watched it while making pasta, and we definitely were singing and dancing along. I even was wearing my “Sing to Me, Paolo” shirt (if you know, you know).

Another classic set in Rome that we had to watch was Roman Holiday. I mean, it doesn’t get much better than Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn.

You can take a virtual tour of Musei Capitolini through Google Arts and Culture, and you can also virtually tour The Sistine Chapel. The Sistine Chapel tour is a 360 view that allows you to zoom in and really look at Michelangelo’s famous work.