Hailey Latona, Pitt in Florence, Fall 2025
This past semester, I studied abroad in Florence, Italy. While Italy is known for its fantastic food and high-quality ingredients–and it absolutely is–the differences between the American food culture and Italian food culture was a difficult adjustment for me. Prior to studying abroad, I had lived in an apartment where I was responsible for groceries and cooking all of my own meals before, but when I arrived in Italy I had to get adjusted to “grocery culture.” In Italy though, there was no weekly grocery run; you had to go every few days. Produce, for example, would begin to go bad in only 3-4 days especially in the hot months of September and October, but even when the weather cooled, because there are less preservatives in the food, it still would not last a week. It is also reflected in the storage options since the refrigerators and freezers were much smaller than anything I was used to.
While initially that frustrated me that I had to walk to the grocery store multiple times a week, think multiple times about what to buy, and then repeat every 2-3 days, eventually I grew accustomed to it. Once I adjusted, I stopped into the grocery store on my way home from classes because I packed an extra tote bag into my purse. The location and distance became a natural part of my day rather than the separate “grocery run” I had always done in the United States. I also learned to plan less at a time, so I did not overwhelm myself.
Since I could not stock up on food, I also started cooking more frequently rather than making big batches to microwave throughout the week, so I have gotten much better. Check out my take on pasta alle checca, a traditionally Roman dish!
Leave a Reply