Food gifts (2): showdown

Never present an alarm clock inside a crocodile to James Hook!

When we move from speech as a non-spoken gift - able to map our world - to gift as present, we may notice a striking similarity. When we actually are careful about other human beings, suddenly we became mindful about their likings. Gift and present, donation, offer and thought, are somewhat all synonyms, yet each of them declines the idea of giving according to different linguistic roots and core-ideas: http://www.etymonline.com/

This episode in the Walt Disney cartoon Peter Pan is particularly touching,
because Peter never came across gifts in his entire life, he is a castaway, he does really ignore
the implications of gifts.

Where to watch Disney Peter Pan in English with caption

The gift is a way-of-being we impress on an object/a gesture/a segment of time; we have to uphold an accolade so to nominate (and treat) the object as a gift. A gift should be a spontaneous message, an opening we produce to witness our care, as concern or joy. Hence, the gift is opposite to violence: violence is the act of taking what does not belong to us, giving is abandoning something we posses to someone else without wishing to have it back, which would be borrowing. The gift becomes the solid manifestation of the being infused in it: it is the thought we made while choosing the gift itself, it is the Time we devoted to the gift, it is the relinquishment of part of us we make over to the receiving person. Moreover gifts are empowered by the surprise effect that doubles the marvel. Christmas is a tricky moment of the year: everyone, somehow, expects something, yet one does never know what to expect.

Two products from Piemonte (North West Italy): some apricots in Grappa, a phenomenal hard liquor obtained by the grape stalks from the Alps & a boar salami from Cuneo, delivered by Luke a food evangelist!	Pistachio nut creme, to Michelle from Simone: definitely the best choice. Eataly is a new chain that focuses its attention on "alti cibi", high foods, trying to safeguard prices and quality: http://www.eataly.it/
Artichoke pâté, delicious on bread or pasta: to Michael, who looks like Matt Dillon at his best!	First Moleskine of my life, from Isabel & John

Heidegger calls the Ereignis the event in which two beings meet together, a sort of symbolic dialogue between two essences, otherwise not communicating. Ereignis is making something our own, a process of acquiring for instance the presence of a single tree despite the dense appearance of woodland. The psychological evolution of Ereignis is not anymore just the event or experience of spotting something and isolating it from the context, but is the advent of a deeper comprehension, through which we create a bridge between separate unconscious beings – the ring and the finger thorough love, for instance. This is why gifts create bonds!

Legame III, sculpture by Eva Antonini
http://www.eva-antonini.com/

So to sum up, the Being is the living spirit of things, through meditation and listening men are able to awaken this being and receive it as a gift, which gives us conception. Then, as we gain this idea of gift - as a natural form of giving -, we can export the mechanism when we deal with human being’s relationships, where gifts rise to the stage of symbolic conversations occurring amid responsive senses. Giving is a sign and motion of constant remembrance, and it is a pity that in the consumerist era – a degeneration of Capitalism – gifts are degraded to mere objects, commercial entities to feed the void of solitude, worthy for their prices rather than their value, idiotic display of power through money. Giving is also custody: women are averagely better than men in processing and dealing with feelings and emotions. This might depend on structural factors, such the ancestral chance of giving birth, and the social aptitude to remain in the cave, while men were hunting: so whereas men developed a skill based on renewable sources of pleasure, women cultivated the skill of caring better of what was already achieved.

Carve a mandarin with a sharp paring knife and let it dry on the heater for one hour	Add the desired chocolates: here Green & Black organic four tastes (butterscotch, white chocolate, dark chocolate and milk chocolate)
Wrap in an alimentary fancy sachet and secure it with an elegant ribbon: Franceska, the beneficiary, appreciated it profusely.	Nosiola, a refreshing & fruity white wine from Dolomite Trentino (North-East Italy), perfect as a starter, and Marzipan, a thought to our lovely flatmate Andrea from Frederick and I. Valvona & Crolla never leaves us alone! http://www.valvonacrolla.co.uk/

The incapability of giving is not only a symptom of avarice and greed, but is fundamentally a misperception of the idea of relating to others, is the failure of mutual socialization: these people are accounting as a natural instance to get from others and not reciprocate, since they underestimate what they receive and they overestimate what they give back; they take for granted a sort of warship from the others, because they believe they are naturally sympathetic and nice, yet they never consider the importance hidden beneath the gift, they are incapable to see the other out of their pleasure principle; therefore, they perceive gifts as tokens of a shared-codified civilization and not as true channels of proximity. When guests think that it is expected and consequential that I am cooking for them since I love cooking, they utterly misunderstand the meaning of my welcoming and they offend me intensely. Fortunately, I daresay, the majority of guests are as entertaining as those language-speak-processing students Frederick invited over for an exquisite dinner, a couple of days ago.

Self-gift: Hazelnut butter, 100% organic hazelnuts and a French organic Orange blossom honey, both from Real Food: http://www.realfoods.co.uk/	Chopsticks-cutlery from my sistaaa!
Another detail of this fab chopsticks.	Caramelized homemade onion relish for Zinga, who emptied the jar in half a fraction of second!