Train Strikes and Early Morning Breakfast

So it's 10:30 now and I'm sitting at work. I've been here since 9am.  I don't teach until 1:30.
This is not me being compulsively early. I did not randomly decide to come in early and prepare for lessons. No, Rome train transportation simply threatened to strike, which means the last morning train leaves at 8:30am...  Now they cancelled the strike yesterday... However, given that the last time they "cancelled" a strike, it wasn't actually cancelled and we all wound up being late for work, this time we (two other teachers and myself) decided to take the train to work before 8:30am...
I've been awake since 7am... well, ok, half awake lying in bed trying to convince myself to keep my eyes open.  Nonetheless I was out the door by 8am and very luckily caught the 8:20 train. Oh, and just to be clear, I got to the station and realized that the strike has ACTUALLY been cancelled and today trains are running normally, but it was too late to turn back around.  I was not going to walk the 20 minutes to my house for a nap only to have to walk back later on.
So I got to Acilia before 9 and then walked to the grocery store.  I decided that if I'm going to be here literally ALL day long, I was at least going to have amazing food to carry me through.
At the grocery store, I had way too much fun.  I got kiwis, strawberries, mozzarella, milk, chocolate cereal, a giant bottle of coca cola zero, and bread for just about €9.  Essentially breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next 2 days.
I got to work by 9:20 and made myself an amazing bowl of cereal. It was even more chocolatey than I had
imagined from the packaging and turned my milk into chocolate milk.  It was delicious especially since it's the first time I've had cereal in ages.  Oh and I decided to cut my strawberries into it as well! Chocolate cereal and milk with freshly sliced strawberries. YES!  Breakfast of champions...
The chocolate cereal was crisp and super chocolate (actually more than I had actually anticipated... good thing I like chocolate) and the strawberries were very ripe and sweet.

The strawberries were so delicious

Yes, I am now hyper.  I also had 2 oranges leftover from last week, so I've been picking through those as well.
 The kiwis aren't quite ripe yet, so those will be for tomorrow.
Lunch is going to be a sandwich using the bread and mozzarella from the store. No worries, it won't just be mozzarella! I also brought some stuff from home.  I have lettuce, tomatoes and prosciutto from a couple of days ago and the fresh spinach I bought at the market yesterday. Plus I still have leftover fried eggplant from yesterday as well.  It is going to be an epic sandwich.
Tonight when I go home I'm going to cook.  I think I'll make a lentil soup for the next couple of days and I'll also make myself a spinach and cream sauce for some pasta. I want to cook up about half the kilo of spinach I bought yesterday while it's fresh. I'll steam it with some garlic, salt and oil and it will be incredible.  The rest of the spinach I'll eat in salads even though my Italian roommate looks at me like I'm crazy whenever I do.  She didn't know that raw spinach is healthy and delicious for consumption.  -.- I was a little shocked but slowly I'm introducing her to some entertaining foodie facts!!

Foreign Food and Roman Specialties

Normally when I'm in Italy I don't eat much food that isn't Italian. I go out with my girls and we have Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Mexican food in the days before I leave so I can minimize the cravings once I'm here.  In the US, on a regular basis I eat foods from around the world. One of the nice things about NJ is that I've grown up with such a fantastic exposure to foods from different cultures.
I love food and I love trying all sorts of flavor combinations.
When in Italy, however, I generally stick to Italian food. There are a couple of distinct reasons for this. The first reason is simple. There are a majority of Italian restaurants. The kind of variety that exists in the North East specifically NYC and my area of North Bergen, does not exist around the globe. I hazard that it doesn't exist all over the United States either. Certain areas have a larger influx of immigrants and therefore have a larger availability of different cultural cuisine. Italy is no different in that sense.  Certain cities in Italy do have more availability of different types of food. For example Rome and even Florence have more Chinese, Japanese and Mexican available than in other parts of the country. They have larger populations of immigrants and tourists passing through and therefore have more availability of different foods. Rome is surprisingly filled with a lot of options for foreign food. That being said, there is still a majority of Italian restaurants even here.  Italians, I have found, tend to eat more Italian food. It is a deep part of their culture, unlike when you talk about food in the USA, which has less tradition and therefore more variety.  
Another reason that I don't often eat foreign foods while in Italy is because what does exist here does not taste like what we find in the US. It has been Italianized, just as most food in the states has been Americanized.  Because I grew up in New Jersey I like most of the Americanized versions better. Also, because many of my friends are of different nationalities I was fortunate enough to be able to try homemade Korean, Chinese, Japanese and various other cuisines.  Homemade is very different than what you find in any restaurant.
The other reason that I don't often eat foreign food in Italy is simply because I love trying new kinds of Italian food. there are countless regional specialties that we as Americans have never tried. We don't even know that they exist.
Most of the Italian food in the states has been Americanized and also comes from certain southern regions. We know some specific dishes from Naples, Sicily and Rome, but they are versions of those original dishes.  However, those are only 3 of 20 regions. each region has it's own speciaties and the majority have not made it stateside.
For example, Lazio, the region where Rome is located, has a ton of specialties that I didn't even know existed. All I had heard about was Spaghetti alla Carbona.  Who could forget the creamy egg based sauce rich with bacon? In Rome, they don't use bacon (bacon as we know it does not quite exist in Italy) but pancetta (pig's belly) or guanciale (pig's cheek).  Both are similar to bacon but are perhaps a little leaner.  However, there are lots of plates we rarely, if ever, see in the states

• Spaghetti al "Cacio e Pepe" - one of the most simple yet delicious dishes made with Pecorino "cacio", pepper and either olive oil or lard
• Bucatini alla Matriciana - this spaghetti like pasta has a hole through the middle and is served with a red sauce made with lard, bacon, onions, tomatoes, wine and Pecorino cheese 
• Tonnarelli alla Gricia - tonnarelli are a thicker kind of spaghetti and really compliment the hardiness of some of the Italian sauces, alla gricia is like the matriciana except it has no tomato base 
• Gnocchi alla Romana - these gnocchi are much larger than what we are used to in the states and are baked with butter, cheese and nutmeg
• Carciofi alla Giudia - fried artichokes, soft and tender on the inside and crispy on the outside, you can eat the entire thing and you should!!
• Carciofi alla Romana - baked with mint and garlic
• Suppli - are fried and breaded balls of rice in Bolognese sauce filled with mozzarella cheese (they have a Sicilian counterpart called arancini)
• Fiori di Zucca - deep fried Zucchini flower filled with mozzarella and anchovies, they are literally bursting with flavor
• Cicoria - 
• Porchetta - suckling pig roasted with laurel herb, garlic and black pepper, delicious on sandwiches and often found in markets
• Veal Saltimbocca (veal scallopine with ham and sage) - saltimbocca literally means "jump in your mouth" which is what should happen if it's prepared well, it is thinly sliced veal topped with ham and sage cooked in whit wine, butter and seasonings.
• Coda alla Vaccinara (Roman Oxtail Stew) - oxtail stew is one of the traditional preparations of sweetmeats in Rome, the offals are slowly cooked with vegetables, red wine, garlic and spices

I haven't tried all of it yet, but I'm certainly going to.  I have lots of time here in Rome, so I'm going to make the most of it, and my stomach will love me for it. Then, when I get a bit homesick or long for exotic flavors I'll try some of the foreign cuisine available to me here, or I'll just wait till I'm back stateside for Christmas.