Summer Hit List: Food & Drink

Rosé chilling in a fountain in Aix-en-Provence (photo by LMB)

I don't know if you've noticed, but we love to eat and drink over here in the Bossy-Melear household. And that goes double when we're in foreign countries. Wherever we go we try to partake of all the local specialties, wander the aisles of grocery stores, and spy on the natives at neighboring tables to see what they're having. Then we have long discussions/Google searches of how to incorporate our favorites once we're back home. I thought you might like to know what made our list this summer:

• Chocolate sprinkled on cappuccino: With the amount of Nespresso that gets consumed at our house, I don't know why we never before thought to put chocolate on top. They do it everywhere we went in the UK and most places in Italy. Once we got home we hunted down a shaker (we found one at Sur La Table, similar to this one, exactly like this one that Williams-Sonoma is charging double the price for, lame), and now we get a little sprinkle of decadent chocolate with every cup!

• Rosé: In Aix-en-Provence it felt like every person in every restaurant was drinking rosé. I wasn't sure about it (I think I was associating it with the Franzia of my youth), but it turned out to be the most light, refreshing summer drink. Plus, there are lots of delicious choices in the $10 range—can't beat that! To keep it cold, lots of outdoor cafés in Aix use plastic wine chiller bags. Wouldn't these be perfect for picnics?

• Pecorino al forno with honey: We first discovered this last summer on our honeymoon: pecorino cheese, on bread or with bread, melted in the oven and then drizzled with honey and cracked pepper. Maybe the best thing I've ever eaten. It's tricky to reproduce it here because the kind of pecorino usually found in grocery stores is aged. The key is to look for "pecorino fresco." We're lucky enough to have Central Market and their wall of cheese nearby, which is probably why we got too excited and bought an entire (smallish) wheel of the stuff. Who could blame us?

• Potato chips: When you order a glass of wine or a Negroni in Tuscany, more often than not you are served a bowl of potato chips with it. At first we thought it was bizarre (if not a little trashy), but now we're sold. We even learned how to say "potato chips" in Italian for the rare occasions we had to ask for them ("patatine fritte," if you're wondering). Back home, classic Utz chips do the job just fine.

We could not be happier to be home after so long away, but it's good to have a little taste of vacation on hand when needed. What delicious things are you eating and drinking this summer?