Living European With Dogs: Long Walks and Gelato, Inspiration from Italy

When we went on a trip this summer, we realized that the best part of traveling was discovering new things we enjoy, then bringing them back to our everyday life...with our pooches.
While we were traveling in Italy, we had a daily, and nightly, ritual of going out for for a stroll, grabbing a gelato, and just sitting.

 While we didn't think the scenery could get much better, everything is twice as good with gelato:

Since walking and exploring is one of our favorite things to do with the pooches, we decided to go on some evening strolls: destination gelato. For humans and pooches alike.

Our favorite is Black Dog Gelato, part of our original dog-walking desert tour. They have all kinds of crazy flavors like Goat Cheese Caramel, Cucumber-Rose Sorbet, and White Chocolate Banana Curry. So we started incorporating an extra evening stroll topped of with some sitting and gelato.

 And if we're lucky enough to find them, Chicago actually has 2 traveling dog ice-cream options. We've tried the Aarf Scarf food cart and Fido to Go food truck. Miss M especially loves the Mac and Cheese ice-cream.

 And since getting so much ice-cream can get a bit expensive, I've also gotten an ice-cream maker, so we can make it at home ourselves. I don't really like to cook, but it is actually really easy and I spent the summer making a variety of sorbets. I've also been learning to make some unique ice-creams and I've made a modified honey-lavender ice-cream that was really good with peaches. And I just made a cardamom ice-cream which is more of a rich, fall flavor. Of course, Levi is always sneaking around the corner, probably hoping I'm going to make pupsicles like Our Waldo Bungie makes for her pooches.

I haven't quite tried it yet, but it does sound fairly easy. Though as the weather's changing, I'm wondering what types of hot foods we might be able to find on our walk.