S3 Some Thoughts in Response to Reading

I am presently reading the third book by author Marlena de Blasi. After reading her first book, "A Thousand Days in Venice," I ordered the rest of her books from my favorite on-line book store, Alibris.

Marlena is an American, educated in New York who was a journalistic, food critic, chef, and cook book author. She was often sent to Europe to sample and critique different cuisines. On one trip to Venice in the 1990's she has a chance meeting on the street with a Venetian banker. He pursues her, woos her, and after she returns to home in the USA, he comes for an extended visit. Now, these two are not children.
She is the divorced mother of two grown children. He is a middle-aged Italian who has never been married. But they do fall in love, he proposes, and she sells all and goes to live in Venice.

Her first book tells about her settling in his tiny,bare apartment in Venice, and her adjustments to life in Venice. Her second book, "A Thousand Days in Tuscany," tells how the couple sells the apartment and moves to a renovated stable that has been turned into a very basic home. It is located in the countryside outside a small Tuscan village. The third book, that I am presently reading, tells about their decision to uproot again and move to Umbria.

Each move has its frustrations, hardships, loneliness, and eventual settling in and making close friends. But most of all the books are delicious descriptions of love -
love of two middle-aged folks, love of Italy, the love of discovering a new culture, and the love of food!

Other cultures have such a different approach to life's necessities. It makes me sad that I have such an American approach to food. I really don't cook. We eat out, carry in, or use all the shortcut, prepackaged, precooked, frozen foods that we can find. It is true that I always worked, always took care of others, never had much time to think about meals, and never learned to cook at my mother's side. But
I am ashamed to say that for us eating has always been the shorter, the quicker, the better.

It is fascinating to read how Marlena and Fernando manage to make friends with the cooks, the farmers, the food providers that lead them to learn all about the local cuisines. In Italy they cook what is fresh THAT DAY. Marlena learns to shop at the local farmers' markets, becomes acquainted with the sellers, learns their secrets of cooking. She helps to gather wild herbs, mushrooms. She learns how and helps with the olive harvest. She witnesses the pressing of the oil. She learns how and helps with the grape harvest, and learns about wine making.

In Tuscany they become very close friends with the local villagers - especially Barlozzo and Floriana. He helps them constuct an outdoor baking oven, and an outdoor fire pit and grill. They initiate Friday night village suppers at the local bar, where all the villagers share a supper dish. In all their cooking in Italy every one eats what is ripe and harvested that day. They hunt or raise their own animals for meat. They rely on fresh herbs, wild onions, wild garlic, and lots of olive oil for their flavors. They make their own cheese, and bake their own bread.
It all sounds delightfully delicious.

One farmer at the market tells her that "The earth is rich so we don't have to be."
If you have enough to eat for today, you are rich. If there is some left for tomorrow you may have too many riches." Another tells her, "The less there is, the more important it all becomes." They feel rich having just enough of life's necessities to get them through each day.

I think that our American culture may have it all wrong. Our dependence on industry, labor, high salaries, government care, and all the need for immediate gratification has led us to live lives that are truly less rich. At the same time I am reading these rich books, I also run across the "Amish Cook" column that appears regularly in our local newspaper. The Amish wife and mother who writes the column tells about how the whole family helps raise the food on their farm. She tells how they are all involved in the canning and preserving, the daily washing of clothes, and hanging them outdoors to dry. She talks about how their farms are self-sustaining. I think maybe the Amish have it right, after all.