Oh, they're chili peppers. I get it.

Sunday evening I had my first encounter with peperoncini, and almost permanently damaged the taste buds of my roommates. I attempted to follow a simple recipe on the back of a frozen wild mushroom package (don't judge me - there's a lousy fresh mushroom selection at our supermarket), of which I only understood about 75% because it was in Italian. Italians aren't huge on measurements, so the recipe called for something like "some peperoncini"... which I interpreted as three small and two medium-large whole peppers. Apparently, one small one would have sufficed... Sarah was the unfortunate sampler, and We dumped loads of butter and cheese into the pan in an attempt to balance it out, but it was still unbelievably spicy. 

I now know the power of the peperoncino. 

Off to Venezia for the day tomorrow! Can't wait to see Dad and Maria in what I remember as being my favorite city in the country.