The Italy Recovery Period

For every two weeks that a person is in Italy, he or she requires one week of recovery. It’s a little-known fact, but one should not engage in any mentally or physically challenging tasks immediately upon returning to one’s home country, including, but not limited to, food blogging. Following all that R&R, it’s important to slowly transition back into a schedule. After all, I had to fulfill many strenuous duties as a tourist in my two weeks in Italy:

– Checking out some famous buildings, statues and fountains

– Swimming in assorted seas and lakes (like Lake Albano, pictured here)

– Shuttling the kids around, and sometimes putting my super-sized sunglasses on their itty-bitty faces and deriving far too much amusement from it

– Eating food that other people cooked for me
That last one has really done me in. I haven’t cooked in–please withhold your shock–two weeks. My Italy vacation began with the promise of infinite food inspiration and ended with sheer gluttonous laziness. “Why cook when Italians can do it for you?” I have often wondered in a post-pizza-and-gelato daze. There are few moments more joyous than watching your waiter weave his way toward you with a pizza the size of a Monopoly board, contentment washing over your sun-weary skin and carb-starved stomach when you realize that whole pie is for you, solely and exclusively. And you didn’t have to make it.

But, folks, I’m back. And I’ll be cooking again pronto.