Skiing in Alta Badia

Saturday, January 30

One of our favorite times of the year, ski season! We try to go skiing as much as possible, which sometimes can be hard with both of us working full time and taking classes for our Master's degree full time. But somehow we still seem to make enough time to go skiing every once in a while. The plan this year is every other weekend, but well see. Another goal we try and do is go somewhere new every time we go skiing. There are so many different places within just a couple of hours from our house, which is perfect for us!

We decided to go skiing in Alta Badia which is about two hours and forty-five minutes from our house. So not that bad of a drive. We wanted something less than 3 hours away. This time there were 4 of us going skiing. Our usual 3, Preston, Bryce and I, but now we have another one of Preston's coworkers coming with us who has never skied before, so you definitely know it was going to be interesting.

Once we got there I couldn't wait to go up the chairlift and ski again! It's an addicting sport! No matter how sore or tired your legs feel while doing it.

One thing I love about skiing over here in Europe is how cheap the price of lift tickets are compared to in the states. Here it's between 40-55 Euro, while I've been told in the states it's sometimes $100 or more! Which seems a little crazy to me.

To start off the day we had to first try and teach our new ski buddy a few things about skiing, but first up the long gondola to the top of the mountain. One thing, he definitely needs to invest in some ski clothes, as he wore cotton sweatpants which get soaked super easy when your learning and falling all the time. Also, goggles here are a must!

I don't really remember the first time I tried to ski but it definitely is kinda entertaining and sometimes funny to watch new people learning to ski. Which was like our friend Jacob, watching him try and get used to wearing skis and learning how to cut down the slopes. We were lucky the first slope we chose to go down wasn't too bad to learn on. It was still slightly steep at one part but super wide so he could ski slowly down back and forth. And plus the view, as always, are breathtaking!

Sorry, but I just had to post these pictures of Jacob on the ground and Bryce trying to help him but then falling over himself hehe :)

Meanwhile, I'm over here like take my picture, it's so pretty up here! :)

Eventually we made it down his first hill! Nobody broke anything! Now time to go up another chairlift to try it again.

Another thing I love about European slopes is that there are bars scattered all around the mountain for you to stop at and get a drink or something to eat. So before we went down another full slope, we went partially down one and stopped at a bar for a drink and for our friend to rest for a minute, as he needed a little break after his first hill of learning how to ski.

Time to ski again!

This next slope was super long, but also perfect for him to try and learn more. I kinda just took off towards the bottom not realizing how long it really was. So I ended up sitting at a little bar/snack place at the bottom and enjoyed another glass of wine while I waited for them all to come down.

(It was a little sunny out)

Eventually, I saw Preston, then Bryce but no Jacob. I was wondering what happened to him. Eventually, we saw him waking down the rest of the mountain. We found out he got a little frustrated and decided to walk the rest of the way down. 

Since we had skied all the way down the mountain, we thought we would go back up and finally have lunch.

We went to the first place we saw when we got off the gondola. I ended up getting goulash soup and a piece of bread and of course a glass of red wine to go with it.

After enjoying lunch it was time to ski again!

One thing we found out is that you can get to Corvara, a ski place we went to last year that we did not like, from Alta Badia. If you ski down certain slopes you basically ski to a different section and area of the mountain. Alta Badia is huge!! You could go on a different slope basically the whole day if you really wanted to.

We ended up skiing until the chairlifts closed for the day. Which always seem a little early to me, they close at 1630. But I guess that is a long day since we always like to get there within an hour of the lifts opening at 0830.

It was unanimous, we all loved Alta Badia! This is now by far our favorite ski place we have been to over here! We had nothing bad to say about here. The views were amazing, the food was good, the slopes were perfect and you could ski new slopes basically all day! Definitely would break our tradition of going to new places everytime and come back here!

Time to drive back and find somewhere to eat dinner.

I had always said I wanted to try this place in Sacile called Funky Go, which is similar to BeFEDS in Aviano, which is our favorite! to see if it's as good as everyone talks about.

My verdict, I think I will always be a BeFEDS person! The one thing I did like is that there was wine on the menu and that the music was deafening like it is sometimes later at night at BeFEDS. The chicken seemed smaller to me and was too spicy after a while. Also, Preston got something completely different than what he thought he ordered. It was it was a sandwich but it come out as just a huge piece of plain breaded chicken.

I'm glad I can say I've tried it but I will most likely not be going back to this restaurant.

I can say that this was definitely a long but super fun filled day!! I can't wait until we get to go skiing again! :)

Italian Cooking class with Teresa Colors

Friday, December 18

Since I knew my family was coming to visit me, I thought I should do something special and unique, that they have never done before. And what did I come up with...an Italian Cooking class with Teresa Colors! I have done her events, cooking classes and even her take home meals before and they are always so much fun and delicious! For the cooking classes you can choose what you want to learn how to make. First I thought of doing pumpkin gnocchi because gnocchi is Preston's favorite and I love pumpkin things. But I'm was so glad when I saw Teresa learned how to do spinach gnocchi with butter and sage because that sounded so good to me I had to see if we could make that instead when she comes. I'm so happy she said that was fine.

The only day we could fit this cooking class in was the day my sister and brother-in-law came, as we going to be heading on our Italian adventure the next morning. So I was hoping they wouldn't be too tired to do this.

When my family arrived Preston and I told them we had a surprise for them. I made a certificate that said we are treating you guys to an at home Italian cooking class. At first they sounded excited but they didn't realize it was with an Italian lady coming to our house to teach us. They thought it was Preston and I teaching the class at first. When we told them no, not us, it's with Teresa Colors an Italian lady who comes to your house to teach you how to make different Italian dishes they got super excited and happy and could not wait until she came! They thought this was the coolest surprise ever!

Teresa brings everything you need for the class, all the different utensils, bowls and cooking ingredients to your house, so you don't have to worry about that. Which makes it even better!

Once she arrived, we were put to work right away peeling all the potatoes needed to make the gnocchi.

After that, we had to let them boil a little before using the potato ricer and rolling the potatoes into a huge ball. Also, while they were boiling we had to cook the spinach that was going to be mixed in with the potatoes.

Trying to roll the ball in to the perfect form and shape is a lot harder than you think, way sticker and harder to form how you want. You have to keep adding more and more flour to help it become the right texture, but you don't want to add too much flour and make them taste funky. But once it was the perfect texture, we cut small pieces off the ball and rolled it out to make it like a skinny snake. Next, you cut off small pieces of the potatoes, however big you want your gnocchi to be.

(Ricing the potatoes)

(Adding the spinach to the potatoes)

Once you have cut them into the right size pieces place them in a frying pan to fully cook. 

Meanwhile, Teresa was telling us all the ingredients and spices she mixes together for the butter and sage sauce. This was the easier part.

Lastly, once all the gnocchi was fully cooked and the butter and sage sauce completed, we got to mixed it together and enjoy a huge bowl of it! We had made so much!! But it was super delicious! I will definitely try and make this again.

I'm so glad my family was here to experience this with me. This was just the start to our crazy and fun "Danner" family Italian adventure :)