Foodie's In Florence!

Today I find myself back in Italy, despite the last post noting "The End." However, if you look closely to the end of the ultimate post, you will see that I wrote that I would never give up wanting to live in Italy. Well, almost 3 years later, and during that time some hard work and personal transformation, I am here again. When I first returned to the states, my plan was to make a lot of money waiting tables and then get right back here. Well, I got a little distracted. I was a fresh college graduate and I had the the urge to develop myself professionally. And I am glad that I did, because now I have some sort of direction and a higher skill set for this challenge to make an Italian life happen. In the last few years, I developed as a sales and marketing multitasking event planning social media networking machine. I also got steered in the right direction into the food and wine sector. I started taking food and wine pairing classes at a local wine academy and an opportunity came up to study food and wine pairing in Italy. I applied for it and not only that, won 2 scholarships to make it happen without incurring even more student debt. In the last almost 3 years, I also managed to obtain an Italian passport and European citizenship thanks to my Italian heritage. So I decided to get a one way ticket, do this program and see if I can truly live in Italy. People ask me "How long do you plan on staying?" My response remains: Until it's not fun anymore.

So we shall see. This is the biggest experiment that I am putting myself through. Lots of friends and family are rooting for me, I know. So many people came out of the woodwork to support this decision, so on some level I think this is part of my path. There are strange moments, for sure. Only time will tell. In some strange moments when I think I left a good life behind, I think of the wise words of one friend who was also very encouraging: "you're only going to make yourself more marketable and more qualified by doing this. There's nothing you can't come back to." So those words do comfort me in my moments of concern.

When I first arrived in Europe (I got to play in Germany for a week) I thought, "Man, only 2.5 years have passed?" then I got to Italy and I realized, "Whoa, it's been almost 3 years." Everything I thought I knew about Italy is sort of outdated and the crisis is felt here stronger than ever. And the air of passion that I once fell in love with seems to feel stagnant. Italy feels different and I feel more like a stranger than I ever did. I realized how much I've changed in the last few years. I'll end on this: my relationship with travelling back and forth to Europe, as I 1st came to live in London in 2005 and have came back every year or two to either vacation or study, is like a case of a good ageing wine. A true wine fan will buy a case like a Riesling, and enjoy a bottle every 2 years to see how ageing has affected its character. So I will continue to taste this bottle and see how it compares to the last and if it's worth finishing. Cheers! 

The End.

Well, I have been home from my gastronomic excusion for about 3 weeks. I have been meaning to write and close this blog off but I have been absorbing and assimilating the surroundings of my original culture and trying to see how my recent time in Italy has affected my perception. I wont necessarily go into all that, but I will say I was quite happy to return home to amazing sushi and experimental American cuisine, such as Saffron Mussel Flan with fried shallots dancing on top. Thats right, Flan.

But no frets, my gastronomic excursions and studies continue to zip around, as I work in a gourmet restaurant that uses local organic ingredients as well as chefs who put their heart from the early hours to make everything from scratch, even their ginger huckleberry ale. And in addition to being a policy intern at the Washington Health Foundation.

At the end of the day, I feel very American. I am by no means nationalistic nor patriotic, but I do appreciate the little things, like dress-up speakeasy warehouse parties in honor of David Bowie. And the fact we have things like experimental vegetarian cuisine. Pomegranate Curry Sorbet and Birthday Cake Ice Cream Sundaes upon request at cutting edge corners of Seattle such as Molly Moon's. And that I can speak a language with complete ease.  But my heart strings will always be attached to Italy, for all its beauty and chaos, for all it has mastered to perfect (like gastronomy), for all the people who warmed my heart and showed me how humans should value each other, and, above all, in spite of all its dark skeletons. I can't imagine, and won't give up, wanting to be anywhere else. Ciao.

The revised digestion of my WWOOF period in Puglia, 2 weeks later.

SO...! I WWOOF'ed in Puglia, Lecce, in a surrounding town (paese) of Galatina/Salento to be exact. It was a little farming town about 40 minutes from central Lecce, which is at the most southern tip of the eastern italian boot. Carina. So I was also exposed to whats known as southern italian culture. Strange, isn't it? I was gastronomically spoiled there. But also allowed to bear witness to certain food feminist political phenomena that exists in ag-culture. That is, women in farming and rural communities are treated differently than their male counteparts. In my food program, we studied the role of rural women in agriculture from books and articles and here i was learning about it 1st hand. Ahem, i should have gotten an A+ for this ethnographic extra credit. Ahem, moving on...

So this feminist belief is that women in farming communities, most notably in the Global South, are denied serious rights. Such as inheritance, property and salary rights.They are expected to rear the children, tend to the home and still work in the field and receive a fraction of the benefits a man would receive. Well, my situation wasn't like that nor nearly as dramatic, after all I was only there for a matter of weeks and the only babies I conceived were my delicious pugliese food babies. But I did notice how there were unsaid expectations to do "woman" things like work in the field as well as clean the kitchen and do sewing repairs, probably because I have danty little women hands. My boss was quite the character but I ended up loving him and was a huge teacher for me. How could I not? He did Tai Chi for like 8 hours a day by the fire or by the beach and then yelled at me when he realized he was late for his actual Tai Chi class. I was also expected to be a mind-reader, another "woman" task. But man, did I eat well. Pugliese cuisine is pretty interesting. Its based a lot on simple prep. Its not very exaggerated and full of spice. There was this type of pasta we had (which was made from my farms farro grains) that were in the shape of calamari rings called Calamarata, with a simple light tomato dressing (meaning tomato paste and water). Cayenne peppers and peppers in general are more typical to southern cuisines. So there was also a slight hint of cayenne pepper, which was also locally grown. And as a pasta always needs a friend, there were these shrimp like crustaceans that tasted and textured like lobster. Then there was baked fish, that was a interesting breed of trout and salmon. No sauce, little salt and the adriatic sea dancing in your mouth. This meal took place at my boss's parents house who had quite the library that would have made my classical italian lit. professors in Seattle drool. Im talkin' collector items books of Homer, Boccaccio, Machiavelli and Virgil the size of a coffee table with original interpretive artwork slipped inbetween chapters written on hand made artisan paper with the latin or greek version and the italian translation. It was a joy. I studied some classics at the UW so it was a huge honor to have seen and be explained all this literature gold by this sweet little old pugliese doctor who was obviously really loaded and really educated. Its funny how those 2 usually go hand in hand. Anyways, so then for dessert we ate this fish shaped dessert that was made out of almond paste, almond flour and stuffed with fig marmalade and dark chocolate. As my bosses family was spoiling me gastronomically rotten, they made the funniest observation: Ah, ma tu sei golosa? the doctor asks me, which means ah, you have a sweet tooth don't you? I nodded yes in my stuffmyfacewithchocolatefigalmond craze, and then he so humbly remarks "ah, si vede che sei golosa". Oh Italians, they stuff you wild with insanely fabulous food and then suggest you go on a diet. So after this "comment", there was ANOTHER dessert of dried figs stuffed with almonds and spices such as cinnamon, fennel, nutmeg and covered in chocolate. According to some source on page such and such at line bla bla bla, the south was also dominated by the Arabs who brought nuts, figs and spices AND chocolate. But so did the spaniards and everyone else who colonized italy. So basically what page such and such is trying to say is that it was the foreign invasions and colonizations abroad that actually gives Italian Cuisine its stuff. Tomatoes? New World Crop. Wheat? Arabs brought it. Pizza? wheat and tomatoes essentially. and of course cheese. Maybe the french brought cheese? boh! For a day I went to a neighboring farm to make CHEESE! So from fresh milked cows, I was able to witness and enjoy fresh mozzarella and fresh sheeps milk ricotta with local honey drizzled on top. I should dedicate a whole blog to my cheese making field trip. It was SPLENDID and I cried. I cried like a happy fat baby.

I would like to share a story, an American story about the good old apple pie. That one night, I made a bet with one of my bosses friends that I could make a pretty convincing american apple pie and he said he would come willingly with apples to meet my challenge. WELL instead of letting an american make an american apple pie, he kept micromanaging everything i did from the amount of flour to the amount of butter and the time in the fridge in order to attempt to corrupt me with an old time recipie of his Zia (aunt). WHICH seemed to be an apple tart which is like a thicker crumbly crust rather than a buttery flakey firmy crust we americans kinda like. And then this joker tried protesting to me adding cinnamon and nutmeg.AND then my boss, bless his carbon footprint reducing heart, insisted on "baking" it on this sort of dome pan that went on a burner, ON THE STOVE essentially. I swear, why the hell did he ask me to make an American pie?? 2 reasons: 1st he was the exact replica of John Belushi and the 2nd is that he was a proud southern italian that cant imagine that AMERICA does in fact have a gastronomic culture. I cant express how much I LOVE hearing that all Americans are fat and we dont know how to cook and we basically have failed the world with the exception of Obama.

Anyways, I ended my WWOOF experience with a bitter sweet taste in my mouth. On the one hand, I learned a lot about organic productions, tasted some amazing food, wine, and artisan beer which is just gaining steam in Italy, but also intrigued by social roles and its relation to women in the south. In Italy. And also interested in doing more research on dialects in Southern Italy.

Prima settimana as a College Graduate. On a farm.

So thanks to my lack of monies, and pouring all my savings in that joke of a overly forced academia study abroad program, I am volunteering on a mostly olive and clementine farm in a region called La Puglia. Its hard to describe except the city where I am most near has a rustic lack of urban design as southern development is far down on Berlusconi's finance agenda, since flying his private escorts in to his villa obviously take more presidence than cleaning up the south. Sound familiar? give or take a prostitute, add some corruption, cocaine and/or corporate kickbacks/sponsorship and a pinch of empty promises. And thats the story of a lot of peoples lives.

Anyways, the people im working with are pretty awesome, very seattle-like for what concerns lifestyle. Good music, homemade stuffed pizza with olives from the backyard (not exactly Seattle...), a sweet pair of drums, matè, and napping by the fire. Its sort of inspiring to live out on a farm, work for your room and board but working in a way thats in syncronation with the sun and the dirt.  So I guess me being really broke and curious about food and doing that program actually has a brightside to it. Is it possible to become a traveller for profession? I think it would gross me out to settle and become a number at a job that wont make any sense just so that I can buy a car to drive to work and then drive to work to pay for that car. I know there are cool jobs that exist, but the chances of me finding one with a Bachelors in Italian in a economic crisis and the unemployment rate steadily increasing makes me shiver with pessimism. che brivido.

Anyways, the point is that when i get home, I think I want to figure out a way to learn spanish and go WWOOF in South America. Go see some mountains and go puddle jumping. It would kinda be neat. I can feel it.

Im getting pretty savvy into listening and attempting to decode various italian accents and dialects wherever I stay. And since Puglia was influenced by the Greeks, its dialect is a huge fridge for my linguistic appetite. Sometimes I catch my "boss" speaking in dialect and ask him to repeat and explain, and he usually tells me the words came from Latin and or Greek and I giddly mwahaha like a total geek. I also spend my free time reading old pugliese poetry, random italian contemp. lit. that reminds me of Kerouac and Palahniuk and cookbooks. Then nap by the fire.

Food in Puglia is wicked good. The cuisine seems to dig almonds alot, my 1st  treat when i got here was a almond flour pastry with dark chocolate coating filled with a orange marmalade with a spreads' worth of marzipan inside.  Fried Stuffed Foccaccia and Calzones is also one of their specialties, I ate a foccaccia that was made out of fried rice and stuffed with artichoke tomato and prosciutto. It was hearty. Then eating freshly butchered pork chops grilled on the fire from the neighboring farm who just slaughtered it maybe 2 days prior is also pretty fantastic. And, juicy.

I better go, its time for my nap by the fire.

p.s. please excuse my spelling. no spell check!! is ruining my life!

last 2 weeks= biggest whirlwind of my frickin' life.

To some it up:

*Halloween in Naples with flippin awesome dudes that had way cooler hair than me.

*Harvesting Olives in Umbria

*Week in Spannocchia, a organic self sustaining farm estate agritourism, hiking and playing with wild heritage Cinta Sinese piggies and piglets

*Roman Coma for 2 days

*Perugia for my smart little sugar muffin Serena's Master's degree in Linguistics Graduation (Laurea). She got a perfect score. 110. Auguri. Yeah, here you have to do a public exam about your thesis, which she took 250 pages to write. Congrats. She is a linguistic Buddha.

*Discovering Rome. Outside the tourist zones. San Lorenzo. Love it. love...IT.

*Went to a nudist meditation agritourism farm retreat in Tuscany that I may be a WWOOFing at after this program ends. While there, stumbled on a quant little village town while on a hike with other WWOOF'ers (who btw were flippin wicked, one been WWOOF'ing from New Zealand to Japan to Czech to now Italy and the other just WWOOFing in Italy to gather research for an Italian "taco" truck he wants to open in the states). In the village town, in a small speck of Tuscany, we taste AMAZING wines from a cantina/cellar who happens to export to Seattle. Nice.

*My friend Elvi came to visit and discovering yet ANOTHER side of Rome. Circolo degli Artisti. Capital Hill in Rome. ahhhhhhh

Today? PEOPLES SOCIAL FORUM ON FOOD SOVEREIGNTY!

yes.

im stuck in a whirlwind called Italy, and i love her ever so much.

La prima....Eurochocolate and Midterms from inferno.

Last weekend, I went back to Perugia to visit some of my most lovely wonderful friends that i had the luck to make when I studied here 2.5 years ago. My motivations to go were of course to see them but also to experience: Eurochocolate. A ten-day long festival that converts the entire downtown area to a chocolate wonderland where you were bombarded by hot chocolate stands, cakes with hot chocolate sauce, bulk artisan chocolates, chocolate truffles, chocolate salamis,  handmade pistachio cardamom chocolates, chocolate beer, chocolate novelties such as chocolate kebab (not on a stick, but shaved chocolate inside of a crepe to simulate a pita like kebab) fair trade chocolates, free chocolates, dog treat chocolates, fruit dipped chocolates, chocolate making classes, chocolate liquor shot bars, oversized lindt balls the size of volleyballs, etc. Basically I carried a chocolate baby in my belly the whole weekend. At the end of the weekend I was annoyed with all the crowds since I realized that YOU COULD BUY ALL THIS CRAP IN THE STORES! AND GET THIS! FOR CHEAPER!!! Uffa!!!!!
It was ridiculous that this commercialized festival that was basically hosted by Perugina (recently acquisited by the Nestle world-ruiners)  and Milka, people all batcrazy to fill any public walking space, shoving thru crowds shoulder to shoulder in order to navigate this small quaint etruscian city. Let me sum up the food politics as to not completely bore you: Chocolate quality? i doubt it. Were all this chocolate producers in africa, asia and latin america properly compensated for supplying the magic that makes Eurochocolate possible? Ha. maybe for the one Fair Trade stand out of the other 600. Sugar? tons of it, also probably from exploited countries. There was a section of the festival that was dedicated to fair trade and sustainable chocolate production and we got to taste some delectable indonesian chocolate sweets from a gemmed heart gentleman who made them in his house the morning of. This sweet looked like a creme and brown striped block of glycerin soap, but when you bit into it you felt the perfect dance of coconut, vanilla and chocolate and with a texture that reminded me of a smooth like firm jello.

This midterm week has been pretty pointless. We were assigned 3 presentations and 3 coinciding research papers. Really? all in one week? Whatever it is what it is and I guess its not all that bad. Well, yes it is. Why should we have been stuck becoming laptop zombies for the last 2 weeks preparing for this nightmare week. Again, whatever. its going to get better. i think.

On a more positive note, we're going to chill out in the Tuscan countryside on a agro-tourism farmstead next week. Makin' pizza, goin' hiking, learnin' farming....its gonna be fab, i can feel it. But first, I get to harvest olives to make olive oil at one of my friend's family olive grove in Umbria this weekend...YES!

Ciao!

"Te Ne Dico 4, Non Sono D'Accordo!"

Prima visita al'UN FAO x l'occasione di World Food Day

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is located in Rome and October 16th was World Food Day. Our program had originally arranged for us to visit the FAO for World Food Day to witness a talk given by Marion Nestle, a leading food activist that has written several books concerning food safety and the perils of the industrial diet and is a nutrition professor at New York Uni.

I have mixed feelings about Nestle's talk. It was refreshing that she discussed the local food movement and that small scale organic farming is one of the most logical solutions to a clean and equal food supply that would feed and nourish the world, and showed a documentary called "Fresh" the exemplified these solutions. But when it came to the issue of GMO's, she hid behind her microbiology degree to proclaim that she couldn't fully believe it was a harmful technology and sang the progressive praises for the US Secretary of agriculture, Tom Vilsak, who happens to be pro-Monsanto. Of course she was in front of the US ambassador to the UN Agencies for Food and Ag, Ertharin Cousin, whose track record includes her once high management position at Albertson's and pro-GMO stance. I did however win a door prize, a book on the the dangers of our current regulatory FDA standards and how they lack enforcing food safety (e.coli, etc). and she signed it at the end of her session.

BUT in addition! Our teachers announced that we were FORMALLY invited to the UN Ceremony commemorating and recognizing World Food Day, with UN Ambassadors! I couldn't believe it that we were able to enter the room shown on the news when reporting on UN talks/events!  So I already was thrilled to be able to see Nestle in real life speaking at the FAO, but then we were able to exclusively attend the opening ceremony! I have to say, after sitting down and sitting through 2 hours of various foreign ambassadors including: The director/general of the FAO Jacques Dioff,  The 1st lady of the D.R. who is also a Goodwill FAO Ambassador, The italian under-secretary of state of the ministry of agriculture, food and forestry policies Antonio Buonfiglio, and the secretary general of the Ibero/American Summit Enrique Iglesias.  I was not as impressed as I thought I would be. They all seemed to repeat the same thing about being devoted to ending world hunger, but the solutions as they saw seemed to come back to "technology" and expanding the 3rd world to the global "free market". No talk of creating sustainable solutions that would promote self-sufficiency, local economies, and eliminate the need for foreign meddling, such as "technology", the World Bank, the IMF, and Monsanto. These are the institutions we are learning that have helped CREATE world hunger. No such talk was given on solutions to eliminate poverty but to increase food production with the help of technology. I wonder if anyone has ever told them that food production is well above par with human need, the problem is a lack of access caused by poverty, a problem that could be solved socially with the help of local uncorrupted politics. And there is not only no proof, but hard proof that industrial agriculture does not increase yields but actually leads to less food produced per hectare. But yet this is what policy is subsidizing and supporting rather than small scale sustainable agriculture.

here are some facts that I gathered from the talk:

80-90% of cereal prices remain 25% higher than 2 years ago. Affecting mostly the food security of Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.

As of 2009, fertilizer costs are up 175%. Seeds: 70% and animal feed 75%.

The question we should pose ourselves is how can productivity, the answer that the UN FAO proposes to alleviate hunger, increase with cost increases like these?

In addition to these staggering rates, FDI (foreign direct investment) has taken a 42% nose dive that should have been used to invest in roads, infrastructure, development, food, etc.

So tell me, mister directors/generals/secretaries: how will technology and higher production solve hunger when FDI is down and cost inputs and grain are at a record high? How is it that most of the ambassadors at this talk are more than well-clothed (some with servants) and eat the organic food in its cafeterias yet suggest conventional farming and keep your wealth to yourself?

I will end this post with some wise words, the only sense spoken of during this ceremony, by the FAO Goodwill Ambassador, The 1st Lady of the D.R. Margarita Cedeno de Fernandez:


"What we need is social justice and structural change. We need to address the problem of inequality and improves access to more nutritional food. We need to change worldwide consumption patterns."