THE BLOG IS BACK
(had it stopped, by chance?!)
Short
preliminary remarks:
Talking
about well-crafted food does not actually imply to eat better: it becomes a sort of endless bla-bla about art and talent, but
then single individuals may keep eating unhealthily (especially here in the
land of deep-fried-everything). This is clearly a shame, because what we eat is
part of an everyday philosophy: what we eat makes us happier, more reactive, heavier,
more inconsiderate. So, to better analyze this argument, I decided to suspend my blogging activity for two months. Staying away from the blog allowed me to understand how to improve it. There are two images that best represented these two months of stasis. I appreciate very much the distance and the proximity between these two works: they give the measure of how the modernity complexity evolved from a post-classical conception of human faculties to a metaphysical dimension - closer to a basement full of objects:
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I wish to make my message clearer, slenderer and more engaging, sharing my passion for food without being too assertive. Moreover, I had to write hard for the thesis! What a nightmare, what should I have done? Of course, I went back to Italy, to drink at the sources of high cuisine, to observe with a new foreigner’s perspective my native country:
This recipe-guy was a phenomenal,
his recipe book as well:
it is a magnificent dive
into late XIX century cuisine,
but i feel many recipes need to be
simplified and de-fatted,
save during Christmas.
What I came out with surprised me: although
I am personally very attentive to what I eat and how to choose ingredients, I
was a victim of turning food into a mere show too – "food pornography", as
Chelsea, a wonderful Canadian friend, labelled it. Was I close to surrender? Nope. Food, in my view, needs beauty to be appreciated. Its effect, even in pictures, should be
closer to a surprise, such as this flowery cascade:
Bologna city gate (around XI century),
belonging to the second line of city walls:
NOW from a defense device to flowery excuse.
My girlfriend Michelle made me gently notice that
I was pleasing myself too much with this culinary hobby, perhaps showing off a bit when
sharing images of food without an explanation: on a hopefully joke tone, she said I appear as an "exhibitionist". This lighted on a second
thought: we live in a world made of images and these images shape our reality,
also because they are powerful and immediate means of communication. Images
aren’t wrong themselves, their improper use tends to be: nonetheless, what is
not immortalized gradually vanishes, as holidays without postcards. What an
inner quarrel!? My desire is to create a pattern to remember why some things have
been important for me:
Postcard of the Rocky Mountains and Laurent-Perrier cork
This postcard came from the rocky deserts
of America: Katie, a dear friend of mine, made a trip along Cormac McCarthy’s
outposts and she came back with this lovely panorama, but she forgot my home address. Never read McCarthy’s novels? Blame your teachers. You should definitely start: they are perfect even if you do not feel a cowboy! Btw, it was lovely to receive the card from her bare hands, as from a courier in old Wild West villages. I found interesting the juxtaposition
of such a desolate Mars-like landscape with one of the most delicate of the European beverages.
It is also an excellent combined gift!
The cork, instead, belonged to an excellent
Champagne bottle that the irreplaceable Zinga gave me last December, as a graduation present. I
managed to drink it with him - performing toasts over and over agains - , because I like sharing alimentary gifts with the
people that presented them to me:
Zinga brought me again mushroom-hunting and... but wait this is another story-post...
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