farmstay! rome-sora

hello once again! i know i have been missing for hte longest of time again! i went to rome again for easter break, BUT this time i went for FARMSTAY! its a freaking real farm i tell u, more real than we expected. but this trip was special too cos pris ( my id classmate in torino,italy) came with us! so 4 of us went together..
we thought the farm was just some place u can lazy ard, just that it has beautiful scenary, n have the occasional trips to to olive farm n vinyards to pick olives n grapes for wine etc, then maybe see them process etc... but no man, it was a real farm with goats, donkeys,sheeps,dog,chicken,pig,bees,cows n hell lotsa shit... like LOTS. its the general paving here...together with its aroma.. yucks

goats n sheeps at the farm... ure jsut lucky u cant see the shit bits ye alone smell them...

so anyway, the more real farm than we thot, it came as a pleasant surprise to the other 3, pris went on n on like how its her dream come true... lynn n jx enjoyed the openess n farm environment on the whole ( not hte shit la) n then there was me, ms janeyhia who packed her shades, in her camper shoes, even brought her famous body spray that everyone is oh so familiar with so that she can smell nice n clean all day.... of cos, i was like ' oh goodness what is this place..., how am i gonna sit in the afternoon n sip tea with perpetual shit smell ...??' so its wasnt as well...'beautiful' as i expected...

we were driving on the road n suddenly a whole hoard of sheeps came charging at us!

then there were activitie slike 'a hike ot the gorge', 'overnight trip into the woods' which the other 3 were really interested in, of cos i was less... but htere were stuff like horseback riding too n paragliding n italian cooking lessons! so that wasnt so bad... but hte overnight trip, the 3 of them were how gung ho abt it la!! i was thinking,' huh... how to sleep, how to wash face la.... so much toilettries to carry la....' oh well.. u can figure...
so anyway, thats that...

in the farm...its huge!
2 of them, chillin in the nice lil creek....

the next day we went for the hike to the gorge... ok, tho less enthu, i went along, if not i wldnt have anything to do anyway, it was tiring man... climbing up n up n up on rocky roads n all... tougher than i expected! but at the gorge, it was really fun! to hop form rock to rock n cling on to rock walls n the exciting bit is u REALLY dont wanna fall cos my shoe will get wet n its damn cold.(i borrowed a pair of track shoes , my camper was too slippery n i didnt wanna get shit on it either...)

jx n lynn hiking, we all got ourselves sticks to hike with, much easier, well, guess who was the first one to get herself a stick?!?!?! hah! well, jx had a mother of a stick la, he called it the 'gandolf stick'... ok, pls once again tilt ut head n try to find the waterfall in the abv pic...this is form my nokia once again, no thanks to my damn olympus... which is hte next thing that i gotta send for repair... :(

oh then we went to see how cheese was being made! i was excited abt this bit too... when we got there, the shepard was milking his sheeps... then he took the fresh milk n boiled a lil n added this disgusting enzyme that wld make it curd.(enzyme:they feed the sheep with only milk n then when slaughtrin it, they take the entire stomach with milk n leave it to dry for abt 3 mths till al dried n wringled...then when htey need, they take jsut a tablespoon n with some water, squeeze the stomach jup into the nilk..) totally gross man, u see them make cheese, u wont wanna eat anymore man... there, dried sheeps stomach with milk.. u think this is gross, jsut u wait till u see how the shepard gets the jup from it... oh goodness....

anyway, the milk the colelcted, had tiny lil black balls in it, we thot it was something special, well well, we concluded its their poop man! then the milk didnt really come to a boil b4 cheese was made from it.. so... lets jsut say there was extrs flavouring.
anyway, we saw them make fresh ricotta which have to be eaten within24rs, then there was the regular n smoked ricotta too.. boiling the FRESH milk, it seriously gets as fresh as fresh milk can be... u see those white stuff on the top of the pic? thats ricotta being smoked...



collecting curd-ed sheeps milk, or well... ricotta cheese....


squeezing the cheese into containers to be left to dry...

fresh recotta, which was boiled thoroughly... phew!

ok then the next day we went to the town of sora, to get groceries mainly, cos we dont wanna pay 8euro per meal, which we had on our first night, tho highly authentic n organic cos whatever we eat if from the farm... it wasnt much man, i mean, pris went on a couple of times saying we cook better!!(she had a couple of meals at our place, she stayed with us for 2 nights b4 we left for farmstay.. well, jsut to add, heh, she was so impressed with out cooking she said it inspired her to buy more liao to cook too!!) ok, back to the story... we had to walk quite a bit to the town, say 45mins-1hr? well we did stop n tkae pics too see... then in the town we walked up to this church thats kinda high up n cont walking to this castle which we cldnt see from the groundfloor... so we climbed yet again, like siao la... damn rocky too! then finally reached the church, gues what, it was closed! oh nevermind then , it was a real small church too... like the size of 2 classrooms maybe?i dont know y this pic is particularly blur, but thats the church...
top of the church, lynn doing stretching... no seriously, stretching...

ok, so we cont to climb to this church thats famour there i mean, u ask n anyone will know kind... so we climb... n climb, n climb further... man... while walking up i was like, 'wah lau, natural defense ah! so high up, ememies wanna attack also climb till sian...' ok, so FINALLY we reached the dman castle... n man... im like 'simi castle!!!!!' rumbles i say!!! i mentioned to jx that it was probably a very poor king, some small fry.... jx said not king, a peasant.... got fred from some rich king who prob gave him a bag of gold...hai... n all those effort n time spent climbing!! ok, the only thing was, the weather was real nice,like climing in aircon room, and the higher we went the more we saw, as in u know u see the town n all...

ok, after that i was so craving for gelato.. so we found a lil bar(cafe, here they call cafes bar)n had 3 scoops of gelato for onoly 1.50euro! some other dude paid 2.10euro for 1 scoop! n near our home its 1.50 for 2 scoops... so its cheaper la...
i had choco-hazelnut,n 2 other flavour which obviously wasnt good enough for me to rem... but the rest had grapefruit which was kick ass man! so i asked for a top up of a tiny lil grapefruit ... then it was so satisfying, i erm... got another gelato! 4 scoops this time!!! i got grapefruit of cos, n lemon,hazelnut and coffee! all good n yummy man... tho i was a lil well, over-done for after 7.5 scoops of gelato.. heh... but very very happy indeed.. in the shit-land somemore....

1st 3.5 scoops of gelato...

next 4 scoops of lemon,grapefruit,hazelnut n coffee...yumyum...

next day gelato - hazelnut,coconut,yoghurt... totaly, 10.5 scoops of gelato in 2 days... yeah!

that day we went horse back riding too... real horseys k, not some mini farts in the spore zoo.... i had a white one, like gandolf in lord of the rings.. heh... my horsey was damn kiasu la, whole life wanna over take other horseys even the dman guide's horse! anyway, the best part of the ride was when the horseys had to cross the river, against the current! n water was so high all our shoes were wet...so ok,the ride was a lil exciting...

thats my horsey... thats all i cld get cos well, im on the damn horse!only took a few snap shots cos i didnt wanan drop my nokia n have then trottle all over it...so i put in my pocket n ZIP!

then next day we went to sora again, to get more groceries cos of bon fire at night, (ok, bon fire for the rest, bbq to us sporeans) then well, we had a lil stop over for gelato again! 3 scoops this time, not 7.5... had coconut, yoghurt n hazelnut... :)
then we got back n i had cooking lessons from maria! the owners mum. these ple very smart i tell u, u pay for the cooking lesson, but if u wanna eat what u made, u gotta have dinner n pay for htat too... jeese... so anyway i was really interested so i went for it tho the rest didnt... i learnt how to make fettuccine with wild asparagus n fennel... n made pasta from scratch! hard work man, n ill need a 1m long rolling pin so doubt ill be making any when i get back... well, maria's pasta was nicely, evenly cut and straight... the other girl mandy's was thinner than maria's in terms of width..mine was thick all round n jagged... all cooked together, everyone said it had a gd mixed.. so ok! but the pasta sauce wasnt great man, i dont like fennel, taste like liquorice which i hate... then for dinner there was some veggies which i didnt like either, it was a lil bitter but everyone at the table was going on n on abt how gd it was n they were tyring to figure out what was in it etc! so i forced myself to finish it... :( but the best bit abt dinner was the meat balls!! yumyum!! the meat's theirs.. as in the had to slaughter the cow... maria did a damn gd job with that... yumyum! plus i miss beef!!! its so expensive....

ok, unlike chinese la mien, pasta is rolled n cut....

pasta on the higher end of the pic is made my maria, the obviously jaggedy ones are well, by me... heh...

the end product! nothing very wah-wah huh... didnt taste so yummy too... oh! there was tiny lil bits of bacon in it, n the bacon came form their own pig....

my pasta si-fu....dont see she look aunty aunty one ah, when she changes out of her home-maker's wear, she carries LV bag one leh!

while i was having cooking class, the other 3 went to collect n chop wood for bon fire which was HARD WORK apparently... then while i was havin dinner, they went first b4 all of us to start the fire n again it was lagi hard work.. so i missed all the hard bits! heh.... their kind of fire was massive man! not like the one we imagined it to be, small bbq style... there they use real logs man...

then last day, mrng, we went to the thursday market!!! its like chaktuchak but along hte streets!! had clothes, veggies,\everythgin! i got a jacket for 5euro! ok, i shant go on as to exactly what else i got cos my parents read this blog too... 'hi mum! hi dad!'
ok, tat kinda sums up my farmstya trip... didnt wanna wrtite too much cos its a lot to read as it is... heh