Arancini, which translates to "oranges." Rice balls the size of oranges stuffed with, traditionally, meat sauce and peas. But there were so many more interesting flavors too.

Different sodas! Chinotto tasted like Coca-Cola except very bitter and a little citrusy. Spuma tasted just like cream soda. Orange and lemon tasted like San Pellegrino soda that you can get in the states! Gazzosa I forgot to go back and try; I originally thought it'd be plain fizzy water because of this picture. Anyway, even though we can get San Pellegrino in the US doesn't mean it's cheap. These were extremely reasonable, and I loved it. I'm not usually a soda person because I think all the US favorites are too sweet.

Marguerite pizza, pizza with sausage and potato, pizza with olives/artichokes/argula...

Cannoli with orange or hazelnut filling! You see those green cakes? Cassatina. I guess some saint was martyred by having her chest cut off, and, yeah that's how they remember/honor her.

Breaded swordfish rolled around rice and more breadcrumbs seasoned with citrus and anchovies. My grandparents always cooked with a lot of breadcrumbs too. It was cool that swordfish was so cheap, but that's an island for ya.

Pizza diavola, meaning devil or spicy. I knew that before I went, thank you

Italian aperitivo: before or after dinner, a drink and small snack of olives, nuts, potato chips, and crackers. I don't drink so I got pear juice :)

Regina cookies!!! We've had these in New York before when visiting family. "Regina" means queen, and sesame seeds are another Arab influence. Sicilians put them on most all their bread too.

Ricotta lemon cake with chocolate chip topping

A dessert arancina, which is not traditional but was like a cross between rice pudding and a donut. It was filled with pistachio creme, which, why don't we have it in the states?! It was just like Nutella but without chocolate, and with pistachios instead of hazelnuts. I brought home 4 jars, thank you.

Another cake like the cassatina. It had marzipan. Not my thing.

Spiedini, which my dad says was a favorite that his mom used to make. Meat skewers.

Panelle e crocchè, aka more Sicilian street food like arancini. The former are salty chickpea flour pancakes, the latter are mashed potato croquettes. So, Sicilian answer to French fries.

More spiedini, some of these chicken with savory ricotta filling

Meat-wrapped asparagus

Antipasto. No one in my family has ever included hummus, but I appreciated it.

Sfincione, or foccacia-style pizza with anchovies and onion sauce. There may also be some grated cheese and breadcrumbs in other versions, but it was interesting to have pizza that was so flavorful without being covered in mozzarella.

Sandwich on pizza dough with eggplant, primosale cheese, tomato and arugula. One of the best things I ate.

Jalebi!!! The only cuisine we could find, besides Italian, was American at the one McDonald's and then Indian/Bengali. See what I said about Mussolini, ugh. But I've had these before, just never so cheap, a quarter for one. It's like Indian funnel cake soaked in honey.

Peanut curry dish at Moltivolti

Your potato chip options are paprika or "nature," which is I guess plain salted. This photo was from the Zurich airport.

Fried salt cod (baccala) on sfincione sauce with lemon peel. My parents tell stories of their parents soaking, draining, re-soaking, draining again the baccala on Christmas Eve for the Feast of Seven Fishes

More than just limoncello. Lower right, that's cactus fruit flavor

Another one of my favorites, Pesce Spada (which just means swordfish). Pasta with swordfish, eggplant, and... mint?? Not basil?? Well, it really really worked.

Insalata di mare, squid/"ocean" salad

Porchetta sandwich. Porchetta is pork that's been rolled up with other seasonings before being sliced

Proof of arancini fame

If you ask for water, they'll assume you want it sparkling

SO MUCH BETTER THAN GATORADE

Another fun soda! It was labeled "cedrata," which Google translates to "cedar." It depicts a lime... maybe. And IT TASTED EXACTLY LIKE MOUNTAIN DEW.

Pastries. A lot of things with ricotta

There's your gelato display

Peach and cantaloupe

Salted caramel and salted peanut

Strawberry and stracciatella, which is like vanilla chocolate chip except the chocolate is in shavings so it's not as hard/hard to chew

Coffee and lemon ice

Baci McFlurry from McDonald's. Baci means kiss and refers to a chocolate hazelnut candy... man I want this in the US

Amarena cherry (which is way better than maraschino) and chocolate pistachio

Walnut fig. Absolutely wonderful

Tiramisu-flavored and baci again

Pistachio granita & brioche, traditional Sicilian breakfast. In America, the difference between sorbet and ice cream is the former cannot contain milk. It's icier, while ice cream has very small, imperceptible ice crystals. Then sherbet is like sorbet in terms of texture, but contains milk that makes it opaque. So in Sicily, granita is like the sherbet or sorbet while gelato is like ice cream (gelato actually has even smaller ice crystals, that's why it's richer than ice cream). Woo! Good lesson? Pistachio granita is going to contain milk like sherbet. Lemon granita is a smooth sorbet. And where it gets really confusing is, America has granita too. It's made in a pan with the top scrapped repeatedly while freezing, as opposed to an ice cream maker used on the other three.

Watermelon or Anguria

Coffee granita, which was a sorbet but then topped with whipped cream

Mulberry! If I had to describe it, it's like the 70% super dark chocolate of the berry world. I like bitter chocoloate, but this wasn't my thing.

All the little brioche rolls :) The top is called the tupelo. America has brioche but this is the origin evidently, and the traditional shape.

A Genovese cookie. It was really heavy, filled with chocolate chip ricotta cannoli cream. But cannoli shells are light and crisp; this was very dense and not particularly buttery or sweet. Would not recommend, just buy a cannolo.

Best sfogliatella ever. What's that? A Naples thing apparently, not Sicilian. We get them a lot at New York Italian bakeries. It's like a crispy croissant dough around lemon and orange flavored ricotta.

Italian sausage pizza... just thrown on there

I drink coffee occasionally because America turns it into milkshakes, with whipped cream and chocolate sauce and blended granita ice. But espresso with nothing in it but sugar was enjoyable for just a couple sips. That's all you get; they don't have giant cups of coffee like America. If you ask for a latte, which means milk, they're going to give you milk.

It's Nutella but pistachio flavor instead of hazelnut, and no chocolate.

They call croissants "cornetti" and every cornetto is stuffed with filling

My mom loves tarals, which is how Italian Americans say it. We always thought Italians cut off the last syllable of some words, but nope, that's like an immigrant/Spanglish thing. Anyway, crackers flavored with fennel or in this case, oregano, olive oil, sundried tomato.

Mango granita, sorbet-style. Love how they labeled it very clearly.

I've decided white zucchini means less flavor than green. Still good though! What's more interesting is anytime zucchini was translated to English, they wrote "courgettes" how they say it in Britain. Because Palermo seems to have mostly European tourists...

All those apricots for $2. Amazing.

Mackerel and tomato sandwich

Shrimp pasta with squid ink ricotta sauce, topped with pistachios, that dot of sugarless lemon curd is the chef being creative not giving you a lemon wedge