eyes bigger than my stomach

We've all experienced it before: you see a food item you really, really want, and you end up buying much more than you can actually eat. It's universal.

This happened to Bruce and me yesterday. We stopped by Vancouver (BC) to visit friends and celebrate his 35th birthday. One thing he really wanted to do was stop by Mondo Gelato for one of their larger containers, stroll into the middle of Stanley Park, sit on a bench, and share said container. When we bought the gelato, we had a choice of 1/2 liter or 1 liter insulated containers. The half liter looked awfully small, so... you can see where this is going, we picked the liter, naturally.

(Mind you, this was our first food of the day, at about 1pm. I'd gone for a run that morning, as well, and had not had a thing to eat. No wonder I was crashing all day.)

So we got our trio of straciatella, cream puff, and limone gelati. We found a bench in the middle of the park, sat, and munched happily. After about 10 spoonfuls each, we realized... barely made a dent. That was a lot of gelato. We packed over half of it to take back with us to eat later, indoors, especially since the wind was picking up... not fun to eat ice cream in overcast and wind.

Of course, we realized afterward... 1/2 liter would've been plenty.

But it brought back humorous memories of our time in Como, Italy, four years ago. Wandering around, we found an outdoor market with the most fabulous looking fruit. I decided to buy some dark cherries as my afternoon snack.

But pride got in the way. I have a meager knowledge of Italian, and I was trying so hard not to come across as an American (as it is, I was mistaken for a Spaniard in many places), so I placed my order in Italian. Thing is, I couldn't remember how to say "half" in Italian, so.... I pointed at the bin of cherries and said "uno chilo" when, really, I would've been better off with a half. One kilo is 2.2 pounds, I kept telling myself, but I went ahead with the purchase, because it was cheap, anyway.

I carried cherries around with me for days. I finally finished them, what, 4 days later? But all because they looked really good, and I had my non-ugly-American pride to maintain.

It happens to the best of us, eh...