Gelato

I love gelato!

The first time I had gelato, I was a 16 year old foreign exchange student living with an Italian family in Sarnico, a small village an hour east of Milano.  I don't remember the exact occasion, but we (Mama, Andrea, Laura, and I) were out somewhere and stopped at a gelateria for a treat.  I ordered triple chocolate and it was delicious.  What wasn't delicious was what happened the next day.    

I woke up with a incredibly itchy rash . . . all over my body.  I had never had any sort of allergic reaction to chocolate (or any other food) before and I was understandably upset.  Mama decided to take me to the hospital emergency room for an examination.

Up until this point, I thought that Sarnico was a fairly modern Italian village.  True, I had seen women doing their laundry along the shoreline of Lago d'Iseo, but my family had a washer and dryer in the very large bathroom of our spacious apartment.  Maybe the women I saw on the rocks at the water's edge weren't quite as well off as the Gifantis.

But no matter the method of doing laundry, nothing prepared me for the hospital.  Even in the "dark ages" of 1975, Italy was a modern, industrialized nation.  Yet the hospital I found myself in was barely one step above something more typical of medical facilities in third world countries.

If I wasn't upset and scared before, I definitely was now.  Adding to my anxiety was the fact that none of the hospital staff spoke English and my Italian did not extend to any vocabulary that would be helpful in a medical setting.

More than 35 years later, I can't quite remember what the hospital staff did to ease the itchiness.  I suspect they gave me some form of Benadryl.  I do remember that an actual doctor made a house call to our apartment the next day to see how I was doing.  It seems that I must have bounced back fairly quickly, although Mama refused to let me have any sort of chocolate after that bad experience.  : (   

When I returned to the US, I could hardly wait to eat chocolate again.  Predictably I had absolutely no reaction, itchy or otherwise, to chocolate ice cream, chocolate chip cookies, or chocolate anything.  I have no idea what caused that one-time episode.

So today when my husband and I stopped at Paciugo in Forest Park, I didn't hesitate to choose chocolate as one of the flavors in my three scoop small gelato.  I had a mini scoop each of Coconut Dulce de Leche, Creme Caramel, and Fondente -- extra dark chocolate.  The flavors were amazing, so creamy and rich.  If I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine that I was back in Sarnico with Mama and my brother and sister, enjoying my first taste of true Italian gelato.

Thankfully I won't have to worry about itching when I wake up tomorrow . . . just calories.