Nov 29, Day 108, The Bacio

“If you gave me all the kisses in the world it still wouldn’t be enough.”
-a quote on a silver candy wrapper that came with my coffee at lunch

Bacio means kiss in Italian. It is a type of candy that might be the inspiration for Hershey’s famous creation; or it might be completely unrelated.

I have my first complaint about Italian food. Ready? Ok. Here goes: I think it’s nearly impossible to eat a small-normal size meal that has the proper balance of the major food groups in a restaurant. If you want carbs, they comes as a whole plate of pasta. If you want protein, that covers a separate plate. And if it doesn’t come with much vegetable, you’ll need to order a third plate to get something green. However, they usually give you about ¾ of a meal on each plate, so you have to eat at least 1 and ½ meals to get carbs and protein. It’s not uncommon to exceed 2 meals in one sitting if you want carbs, protein, and vegetables. I don’t think I’m a light eater by any standard excluding sumo wrestlers, but I’m sick of stuffing myself to feel like I had a complete and balanced meal. So to counter some of these deficiencies that I will face if I start only eating a single plate, I bought some multi-vitamins. They don’t sell vitamins in the supermarkets although they have a plethora of herbal extracts with dubious nutritional value. So I had to go to a pharmacy to buy vitamins for 25 cents/pill. In Italian they call that a fregatura! (rip-off)