Bocce - Bella Sera!

Intense Bocce Action

Last Friday we had Italian night here at the house. Well, first at the park and then at the house. We picked up a set of bocce (it's so hard not to say balls, but I guess that would be like saying balls balls, so I'll just stick with bocce) anyhoo, we got 'em, and headed down to Empie Park here in Wilmington. We saw the park last week on a bike ride and were really impressed! There is a lovely loop round the whole thing for running, biking or whatnot (whatnot being my second favorite activity in that list), a half dozen tennis courts with fancy lights and shelters for the line judges, a dog park, and bocce courts, or lanes.

So we bribed our new friends to come along by promising dinner afterward, and had a really fun time learning this fun and often frustrating game.

The rules are thus: pick teams. Throw small white ball (pallino). Throw all other colorful balls. Whoever is closest wins. Yay! Easy, right? Well, there are boundaries. And the balls roll a heck of a lot farther than they're supposed to sometimes. And even though the lawn court thing is flat, it has sneaky hills. It's heartbreaking to watch your last ball roll so tantalizingly close to the pallino and then...keep going...and going. Phooey. But lots of fun! Three stars to bocce! We'll be back for sure.

at Empie Park

Then, to continue our Italian date night, we all dressed up in black and took to the streets on our motorscooters and smoked filterless cigarettes. Just kidding, we went home and made pizza! If you saw my last post, you might remember that I had my eye on a little homemade pizza dough. I was a little shell-shocked after my bread semi-fails, but I whipped up some dough early in the day and left it chilling in the fridge. After our park foray, we came back and pulled it out and it was fairly fantastic...pliable, and rolled flat and crisped up well in the oven. We made veggie pizza, a sausage and mushroom, caramelized onion and prosciutto, and for a real Italian treat, barbecue chicken pizza (hee!).

It was so easy, fun and tasty! I even threw the dough up in the air once or twice. And it never fell on the floor. Win.

Extreme pizza close-up

Here's the pizza dough recipe I used-

http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/pizza-dough-laurentiis