Coste

Okay, now that we've been in Italy for six months this time around, I get the feeling that we're starting to miss some foods from home. This is something that neither of us wants to admit to out loud because it's just wrong to say "Gee, I'm really getting sick of spaghetti carbonara" - really, you just can't say that in Northern Italy.

But lately Ryan has been making references to Garbanzo - weird, but YUM - and I've been thinking about spicy tuna rolls and....kale. I didn't used to like kale all that much, mostly because we never had it when I was growing up. (My cousin Isabel, on the other hand, apparently ate kale all the time and from the age of six on claimed that it was her "favorite food", which I also thought was a little weird at the time). Now I get it.

When we left Italy last year and went home for the spring and summer, I bought kale maybe four times a week. And when we would go up to Steamboat for long weekends, and I would discover that Ryan's mom was cooking it, I would sneak up behind her in the kitchen and say "I LOVE kale!!" and then grab some out of the pan. (And then eat it all when it was finished cooking).

Anyway. By now you may have realized that we don't have kale up here in the Dolomites. The other day though, I was determined to get some leafy greens, so I went to the store and picked out this bunch of...leaves.....and then I had to Google what it was when I got home. In Italian, it's "coste".

There isn't too much about coste on Google, let me tell you. But it was unanimous (from the two posts I could find) that it's chard. It doesn't look like the chard we get in Safeway, but it's chard in Italy, so I'm settling for that. I tend to put it in everything now.....soups and pastas and sometimes we just eat plain old coste.

**This post was part of a homework assignment from a food writing class that I'm taking. If anyone is interested in hockey, Renon leads the series 3-2, Ryan is back playing tonight, and they need to win, otherwise we will be home shortly to eat kale.