Parma and Northern Italy

Most of us know it for its cheese but Parma is a very nice university town. This is the university. Notice the bound and dead body in the background.

So they take pride in their partisans in Northern Italy. This is a monument to those who died fighting fascism in "Red Bologna" (omg I hope I didn't give anything away there).

The most recent victims died in August of 1980 in the waiting room of this train station. Eighty people were killed by right wing extremists here. This may be getting boring for some of you who prefer to get back to the food. Here, this is also red.
That is steak "florentine" at a place called Da Burde in Florence. The reason it is prepared rare is that Tuscan wines tend to be tannic and you need the juices to counteract the desalivating effect of the wine. When Jackie asked for it cooked more the waiter misunderstood her and said he couldn't served it any less cooked. He then said sometimes rubes from Rome or Milan come in and ask for it well done. We then had a laugh at their expense.

Here is Jackie in Trieste, formerly of the Austro-Hungarian empire, showing that Italian food is very diverse.
That is pork covered in horseradish served with sauerkraut and beer. Might as well be Germany.

One last food pick for fans of Jackie. This is Tortellini in Brodo and Strozzapreti in Bologna. Strozzapret means "priest choker." Whatever the fable you want to believe for the origins of the name, let's just chalk it up to the politics of red Bologna.

For those of you who think fascist bombings and choking priests are boring, I will try to dig deep for inspiration for the next post.