Raining in Rome today - italian dishes

Well it is raining here today, so I am not that keen to go out there just yet.

Yesterday I visited the Spanish Steps which is very near the expensive shopping district in Rome. About half of the stores are Italian. The other half are French. Stores such as Versace, Cartier, Yves St. Laurent, Gucci, Prada, Valentino, Louis Vuitton. I saw some nice clothes at an Eddy Monetti store, but paying 1500 euro for a cashmere sweater or jacket is currently out of my price range. Alot of fancy handbag and shoe stores. Saw a really nice pair of Italian leather shoes for 430 at Capanille.

The typical male roman fashion on the street is wet-look gel hair with a center spike on the top with bangs glued to forehead. Oversize (circumference of my fist) sunglasses (Versache, Dior, 150 euros) complete the top. For clothes, soccer tracksuits are popular. For women, I haven't really noticed a pattern except for high heels and similar oversize sunglasses.

I had a cappuchino at Portofino Cafe on 116 Cola Di Rienzo. Portofino is a funny name for me because I used to go to a restaurant with the same name all the time in North Delta. The cappuchino cost 90 euro cents which is far cheaper than the 4.50 euro cappuchinos in Paris.

But I am not actually writing this because of the cappuchinos. There was some nice looking italian dishes on the counter that I would like to try to reproduce at home. So I will write them here to remember them...

1. Some sort of crepe or pancake which is rolled around a sheet of ham and a sheet of mozzarella, rolled up and served with small tomatoes.

2. Grilled eggplant.

3. Crepe with spinach and mozza (sheet-like again), rolled up, sliced cross-ways and served with a salad and corn.

4. Salad of boccacchini and baby tomatoes sliced in half with basil.

5. Some sort of scalloped potato dish, but the potatoes were cut into quarters instead of sliced.