Spooning you

Playing (havoc) With Food

As a student in gastronomy at the dawn of 2013, I’d like to argue that there’s very little we do not in terms of food these days. In one way or another food is continuously played with. Whether it’s about the choice of snack on your way to work or about the pan-European debates around the Common Agricultural Policy due to be reformed this year, we are taking a part in the highly complex and multi-layered game called the Global Food System.

We have reached a level in the game where the playing field has become a serious labyrinth with dangerous twists and turns made even trickier by abrupt and complicated challenges extremely hard to overcome. Safe to say that food, as the basic nutritional substance that keeps both you and I standing, is something of an ancient understanding. I wonder what my late grandmother – a farmer’s wife and a mother of eight, who always advises me not to play with food – would think of it all if only she were still with us.

I am not entirely sure how it all makes me feel though. On one hand, it is fascinating and extremely interesting to be a player in this game since food is not only my field of study, but its importance and impact in my life stretches from it being my greatest hobby and passion to it being my future occupation and source of livelihood. On the other hand however, I have come across dimensions of this very game that make me physically ill. As most of us have learnt the hard way as children, even the most seemly harmless and innocent games can easily wreak havoc. Now a cruel and potentially lethal game might serve as an entertaining manuscript for a commercial teen blockbuster, but having it happen in real life – taking part of it either consciously or unconsciously, aware or not – is a whole different story.

It’s all very ironic and highly controversial to say the least. Food seems to be the coolest thing to play with. Food labs perform chemical experiments with it; food photographers enhance it to capture its beauty; food bloggers write love letters to it on Valentine’s Day. People dealing with food for a living have almost over night been turned into celebrated rock star-like idols. Unfortunately however, there is – as always – a far less sexy side to it all too. Never before have we had a global food system as rotten and infected as today. In Europe and North America the average plate of food travels around 2400 km before reaching our stomachs (Clapp 2012, I). One third of food produced for human consumption is wasted yet 1/8 of the world population goes to bed hungry every day (FAO 2013).

The facts speak for themselves: we are in the midst of a highly complex food crisis and the game is far from being innocent child’s play. These are heavy issues with a whole range of side effects such as the “unnatural coupling of food and global finance” (Ghosh 2010) and commodification of food causing detrimental effects such as asymmetry, volatility and ecological fragility are more and more present on the game field. At the same time the game is being animated and catalyzed by a wide spectrum of different food-related undertakings such as food styling, food TV, food festivals, food movements and what-have-you.

Here is when it all gets confusing: I thought the common rule was that playing with food was forbidden and wrong.

Come to think of it, I wonder where this staple rule comes from since people have been “playing with food” for as long as food has been a subject of trade and a product of global industry. The 19th century colonialism made Europeans and North Americans hungry for tropical luxury foods and the trading of temperate agricultural products, e.g. wheat formed the early trading companies (Clapp 2012, 24). By the end of the Second World War food was already seriously played with and used for all kinds of unorthodox purposes. The food game had become a powerful political and economical tool slowly developing and creating a serious global ecological crisis that no nation soon would have any control of. But was the game stopped? By no means. New rules, one more contradictory than the other, were added on injury to cover up the cruelty of the game. With the rise of the ‘foodie-ism’ and food porn in mid 2000s, people were blinded and distracted by the fun of it once again. What many foodies are happily unaware of is that they in fact are feeding the same cruel game. For them the game just has a different face.

As I teleport myself back to the mid 1990s and my childhood, I vividly remember getting yelled at in school because I had proudly created a piece of art out of the dry hard rye bread given to us at each meal. I remember observing my teacher’s raging facial expression and thinking that she just doesn’t get it, as she would go on and on about how children like me are dying of hunger in Africa and that I shouldn’t play with the food in that way. I wonder what kind of food games the children born in the 2010s will play and witness; which are the ground rules they will be taught in schools in terms of food. One thing is certain though, it seems that playing with food is precisely what they are encouraged to do.

It would be naïve to think that the nature of food would forever remain the same or that it would stay untouched by the forces that seem to rule the world as we know it. It is also rather ignorant to believe that old rules are always the best and most suitable. Playing with food, literally and figuratively, is de facto a lucrative business and is highly intertwined with global economy, politics and world finance. However, I do think that the Russian roulette driven by a handful of transnational corporations, the few private firms that hold the dominant role in the three main segments of the food game (input provision, trade and processing, distribution and retail) and control our global food system, is a dirty game gone way too far.

I am aware that I have presented two very different interpretations of what can be meant by the title of my essay. Some might even argue that the current food obsession in the creative sector has no direct link to the seriousness of the financialization of food. If there is something I have learned from the classes I have taken so far; it is that everything in the sector of agrifood and gastronomy is in fact about money and business. Why wouldn’t it be? I myself take part in it all by choosing to enroll to a Master’s program on food culture and communication. The University of Gastronomic Sciences in the picturesque town of Pollenzo is, after all, simply riding the same wave of the intensified and extended food game. When food is used, either banally for nutrition or creatively as art, there is a business and a market behind it. Whether it is about seeking the cheapest food in highest possible quantities or about exhibiting a dissolvable spoon made out of sugar, the food-related endeavors have global effects and there is a thin line between creative unconventional application of food and straightforward exploiting adulteration of food.

In class we were asked how we would feel if we were to give up imported foods. Some didn’t feel the least bit threatened by the idea. What if we would all be asked to actually follow the good old rule of not playing with food? If only more people would understand the danger of the food game we are all playing as we speak, consciously or unconsciously, maybe more people would rather obey to the good old rule than keep on playing. As a young and upcoming gastronome, I wish I’d have the recipe for a remedy. The situation can seem, and I regret saying this, rather hopeless. It seems like the forces feeding these two extreme scenarios where food is played with have gone way too far and are way out of control and out of reach for the average John Doe. I guess it is impossible to quit playing at this point. Playing havoc with food can be brought to a halt. That I do believe in. Whether it is yet another set of complex new rules, guidelines and regulations that will make it all better, I cannot say. My guess is probably as good as anyone else’s.


References:

-CLAPP Jennifer, Food (Polity Press, Malden, USA, 2012).
-FAO 2013, http://www.fao.org/nr/sustainability/food-loss-and-waste/en/, accessed February 24th, 2013.
-GHOSH Jayati, “The Unnatural Coupling of Food and Global Finance” Journal of Agrarian Change, Volume 10, Issue 1, (2010): 72–86.
-SAGE Colin, Environment and Food (Routledge, London & New York, 2012). 

Once upon a time in the hills of Piedmont…

Three months into the one-year master program at the University of Gastronomic Sciences (UNISG) in Bra, Italy and I’m sensing powerful forces, far more powerful than I ever could have imagined taking a hold of me. Sitting here in the kitchen of my little apartment in the heart of Bra seems so ordinary. Yet, I’m in the midst of a dynamic process colored by bittersweet growing pains and fervid enthusiasm, profound confusion and exhilarating enlightenment.

On the other hand, nothing in the aforementioned surprises me really. In fact somehow, I was expecting it. Still, it’s rather baffling to feel not only psychologically, but also physically the change – to touch it, to see it and to sense it daily in each little, seemly unimportant detail of my life. Some changes are more concrete than others: my waistline has taken a life of its own and the act of operating a corkscrew on a bottle of Piedmontese red wine has turned into somewhat of a spontaneous reflex. But these are mere side effects. There’s a whole lot more to it.

The laboratory – UNISG – that is molding overly exuberant and irrational foodies from all around the globe, turning them into aware and rooted new gastronomes is, as we speak, producing its effect also on this Finnish girl. It started rather automatically, triggering an overwhelming curiosity for what’s going on “behind the scenes” of the food industry. After only a few weeks of classes, I started seriously expanding my knowledge. The food I ate started talking to me and I was all ears. Then, naturally, the critical thinking took over. Questions, questions and more questions. So many questions that there wasn’t enough time to answer them all – there still isn’t. And then, something more substantial got activated. The more I learnt, the more some choices that had seemed harmlessly necessary suddenly turned into unethical and immoral behavior. Nothing about something as simple as food was simple any longer! And now, nothing is the way it was before. It might sound exaggerated but I truly realized that delicious food means so much more than the usual juxtaposed superlatives people use to define it.

Walking the 5,2 km to school every morning, I have the most delightful epiphanies (as I’m on the verge of a heart attack due to the semi-mad dogs barking and as I apply my new Italian skills screaming at the middle-aged man who almost hits me as he speeds passed me in his 1980’s Fiat Punto). I see farmers performing their daily routines; I see how the landscape changes with the seasons; I smell manure and start enjoying its pungent odor. Most of all, I feel connected to the land beneath my feet. Never have I felt as connected as I do now. Never have I felt so much gratitude to Mother Earth for letting me savor its exquisite deliciousness. Being able to walk on that coarse countryside road between the two Piedmontese towns of Bra and Pollenzo to fulfill my dreams of becoming a full-fledged gastronome is a gift and I’m a lucky girl. Yes, I’m aware of how this sounds, and no, I haven’t been touched by God. However, what is happening to me is in fact rather moving and phenomenal.

Most of the students at UNISG held food dear even before their enrollment. Some already have a solid background in gastronomy; some simply come from a family that cherishes good and honest home food. Then there are the few who mostly seem to be on an extended (rather expensive) food-related holiday in Italy. Each to his own.  The bottom line is that this opportunity really has the potential of a real opportunity. How and if one chooses to take or not, is another matter. As for me, I belong to the ones who cry of happiness when welcomed to the table at local hunter’s home to share a meal with his family. I also belong to the ones who from the beginning had no intention of letting anything pass me by. Everything needs to be absorbed. Nevertheless, to think that I might in the end actually be able to call myself by the g-word seems still hypothetical.

To me, gastronomy always sounded so awfully elitist and somehow unattainable. But since I’ve been a student at UNISG, I’ve realized that many people around the world calling themselves gastronomes are in fact as far from being one as Berlusconi was from being a credible PM. Jean-Anthelme Brilliat-Savarin aka the father of the discipline defines gastronomy as “the intelligence of knowledge of whatever concern man’s nourishment”. Now, if that translates into drinking Barolos and eating white truffles on weekly basis at Michelin star restaurants, and if the former ends up in nasty drunkenness and the latter in over indulgence, I’m afraid you might have misunderstood the early 19th century French epicure. I believe that being able to stick your fingers in soil, smell manure, meet farmers and recognize the scent of fresh grass in the high quality milk that they use to produce artisanal delights, is way closer to being a gastronome than staging any pretentious culinary extravagance. This is just my humble opinion.

It’s certainly possible that in nine months, when I’ll be done with the program, my friends and family might regard me as a picky food snob ruining perfectly decent restaurant experiences by asking the waitress for (too much) information about the life and origin of the cow neatly turned into an entrecôte on the menu. I might read this article again and think I was a deranged gourmand blinded by it all. I don’t think so though. Neither do I think I’ll ever go back to old habits. As much fun as blind tastings can be, I still prefer keeping my eyes open when it comes to the food I choose to eat and buy. I don’t think I’ll stop asking questions, however annoyed my companions might get. Reading labels carefully and thoroughly, asking even more questions when grocery shopping and trying to trace the origin of each food item has become a hobby, something fun, not something I feel pressured into doing. For this, I have the University to thank, at least to a certain extent.

Where I am now, sitting by my kitchen table in Bra, I might still be a bit raw and stringy.  But like a real robust Boeuf Bourguignon, I also need long simmering to get tender and juicy. My insatiable hunger for more will guide me and further deepen my knowledge. Who knows, maybe my Finnish inborn modesty will eventually allow me to call myself a gastronome. If it sounds like a fairytale, maybe I should just start believing in them again.

Tell me yours...

Special diets are nothing new. In fact, new diets seem to pop up like mushroom on a rainy day; some interesting, some scrumptious, some suspect and some probably lethal in worst cases. To me special diets have been a part of my life as far as I can remember. Gaining either in kilos or in knowledge has pushed me to try all kinds of things. Talking about diets, however, is a whole lot different today than it was in the past. I'd like to argue that before the word 'diet' was strictly linked to losing weight or keeping yourself fit. It was even a sensitive and a very private matter: being on a diet was nothingyou wanted to share with the rest of the world.

Safe to say, both of these aspects - the purpose of diets and taking about them - have changed. Nowadays, there might be little or even no correlation at all between diets and weight loss. Neither are they an embracing or an awkward topic of conversation, quite the contrary. Diets are "cool, hip and trendy". It's almost like having no diet at all is lame. Besides, following a specific diet can be both fun and challenging. In addition, diets speak for an individual's awareness, choice and identity in regards to food. Still, as it is with everything, this diet trend has its positive and negative sides.

On the one hand, people forced to follow a strict diet due to a medical condition; a food intolerance or obesity, can more openly talk about their rigorous food selection and thus get motivated and feel more comfortable with it. On the other hand, I feel like (medically conditioned) diets are not taken seriously any more. A person with a gluten intolerance dining out is suddenly considered as a pretentious narcissist making chefs' jobs annoying for no "real" reason: "She's just trying to lose weight or something" was, unfortunately, the response I got from my chef last weekend as I informed him about a customer's request to not have any croutons or breadcrumbs on her dish. I left my grouchy chef to solve this problem - his attitude - on his own. There was nothing I could say or do at that point to convince him otherwise. It's a shame since little did he know that lady in question was in fact celiac, and may I add, didn't really seem to care much about weightless or any other self- indulgence for that matter. Oh well.

...and I'll tell you mine

Like I said, being on a diet of some kind is as common for me as brushing my teeth before going to bed. Choosing to not eat a certain food item or not being able to eat one is like child's play - or so I thought. So seeing as I seem to enjoy testing all kinds of things on myself when it come to food, and because apparently eating isn't complicated enough abstaining from gluten and refined sugars, I thought I'd add a substantial challenge to my everyday eating habits. Why would I do that to myself? Why not! 'Why wouldn't I?', is a more suitable question I'd say. My reasons? For no extraordinary reason other than curiosity and over-eating during the holidays.


I decided to call it my "no SCAM month" (no Sugar of any kind, no Cheese, no Alcohol and no Meat). And no, there's not even a tiny part of me seeking to become vegetarian, vegan or sober for that matter. I simply chose to refrain from SCAM because of my genuine love for them all. If you don't see the point, it's fine, I won't hold it against you in any way. Neither will I encourage you to try it if it seems ludicrous to you. For me, it's like a game, a challenge to measure my self-control.

I had been through a month without alcohol before. It was tough, I won't argue the contrary. Okay, I'll be totally honest with you, I didn't last a whole month. But I did 26 solid somber days. It's still
something. Do I have issues with alcohol? No, I don't think so. I simply wanted to try the (in)famous tipaton tammikuu ("dropless January") many Finn do during the month of January (because they've most probably had a tad too much fun during Christmas holidays...). With the wary memories of that experience, I dreaded the 'A' in SCAM the most. Giving up meat, cheese and sugar didn't sound too bad.

A week into no SCAM, a friend of mine who was curious to know all about my irrational new diet came over. She was hungry. Luckily, I had some leftovers that would be fast headed up to tame her hunger as she would listen to my monologue. A quick stir-fry later we sat in my kitchen with a big steaming plate of food in between us. I gave her a fork and watched her eat with great appetite while I went on and on about my holidays. Somewhere between me describing the delicious tortellini I ate on Christmas lunch and the finger food I had cooked for New Year's Eve, I instinctively grabbed a fork to try whether my food was any good. One bite, two bites, mmm good, talking and talking... "Edith, what are you doing, stop!" I almost choked on a piece of reindeer meat. Damn it! Meat! I had accidentally eaten meat out of reflexes. My first reaction was to spit it out, but that seemed exaggerated. After all, it was reindeer meat brought from Finland by my dear Mother. And to think
that a minute earlier I had told her about my new month long diet. It was going be a lot harder than I thought.

After my reindeer accident I realized it. It's not about abstaining from whatever food item per se, it's about all the collateral social difficulties that come with. As long as you eat alone or prepare your own lunch box, pretty much any diet can be respected without a problem. But try attending a dinner party with all your individual restrictions and you'll probably end up not getting many invites in the future. Just saying... Now in my case, I'm lucky being a student at the University of Gastronomic Sciences and being surrounded by people that are nuts about anything food related. My weird food behavior this month has been rather well received. Still, two weeks in my diet I've found it hard to lead a totally normal and ordinary life. My opinion about the importance of food from a sociological point of view is even further reinforced. Food is everything it really is.

Today my classmates and I embark on our very first "stage"/study field trip to the region of Veneto. The focal point of the trip is to taste the gorgeous products that the producers we'll visit make for living. Not only do we get the privilege to gain an insight on the quality, labor and efforts needed to provide the product, but we are also being welcomed to the everyday lives of these people. I seriously have a hard time picturing myself saying no to the adorable elderly man who offers me a piece of cheese made with his bare hands.  And if I would decline, I'd without a doubt seem arrogant, disrespectful and ungrateful. But what if I'd be milk intolerant? It would probably be an awkward situation too, but I'd have a solid reason from my abstinence. And we're back to my core argument. Maybe I spoke too soon. Maybe "voluntary diets" are still a hot potato. Maybe one still needs a medical condition to back up unusual food selection?

Christmas Italian Style

It’s 12 am. She’s running the show like she has done it forever, like she’s on autopilot, like she could do it in her sleep, so it seems. She’s giving orders, she’s checking, double-checking and triple checking each little detail. Everything has to be perfect. And so it is. In fact, no one makes a move without her consent. She’s the Mother, an Italian Mother – a concept unto itself. And it’s Christmas Day, December 25th.

Amazing Italian women in three generations.

 I find myself in the midst of Christmas hullabaloo at my Italian family’s mountain house in Valdipetrina, close to Città di Castello, in the region of Umbria. It’s my very first South-European Christmas.  Back home in Finland, this same scene took place the day before so I’m feeling slightly disoriented. Here, there’s no snow, no Christmas tree, but the entrancing smell of the oven roasted capon fills the house with its exquisite odors and leaves me no doubt that it’s Christmas. Different country, different day, but the heart of the celebration is universal.

* * *

Paola, the Mother, had started preparations early that morning. Even though I could’ve slept for what seemed like an eternity upstairs in the huge warm bed, a higher force made me wake up and carried me straight to the kitchen, for Paola had promised me the night before that she’d teach me how to make salsa verde according to an old traditional family recipe. Not even the sweetest sleep could ever top that.

Knowing my Italian mamma, I had a feeling that I’d walk into a kitchen where everything would be pre-prepared and fully under control. I was right. “Buongiorno Edith! Did you sleep well?”, I got the most loving embrace and kiss of the cheek. The tiny woman cooking in her pajamas, wearing a flower printed apron was the most adorable sight ever! I felt privileged to have been included, to be part of their Christmas tradition, to be there doing what has been done each year, each Christmas Day for as long as the family has existed.

After a quick shot of coffee it was time to get busy, “Edith take out your notebook and pen, you shouldn’t miss one single detail”. Yes Chef! Each step along to way to the final product was precise and handled with utter care: the fresh homegrown parsley, the core ingredient, had been washed and dried and gently swaddled in a white linen towel; the eggs were boiled and peeled and placed in an old porcelain bowl where three eggs fit like a glove; the anchovies lay in oil in a plastic container; the jar of capers was already opened and had a little silver spoon leaning against it.

Paola started picking the parsley leaves and asked me to remove the little hard yoke from the inside of the egg white, “you want to use only the leaves to get the bright green color, and the eggs, we’ll use it all, but in different phases, you’ll see”. I could only acclaim the accuracy of her technics. This recipe has been done exactly like this for decades, it was palpable. Her hands worked with admirable confidence, but on the same time, she was careful to make no false moves, as if her mother-in-law, the woman who had taught her, would be watching her every measure like a hawk. Also, now it was her time to teach. She made sure that the little Finnish girl far away from home would learn it all perfectly and punctiliously.

When all leaves were freed from stems, she took out a curious little devise, a type of manual grinder indispensable for the preparation of salsa verde. Little by little, she pushed down the greens leaves into the grinder, rolling four times clock wards and one time backwards, four times clock wards, one time backwards, repeating the movement over and over. Slowly, like falling snowflakes painting the landscape white, the vivid green grinded parsley covered the bottom of the glass bowl. Halfway through, she added olive oil “this will keep the parley from oxidizing” I smiled and nodded and made a little footnote to the recipe in my notebook. First she added the anchovies, then the capers and finally the egg white one by one, and then again she continued grinding the parsley. As a final step, she mashed the yokes by fork, not the grinder like she had done with all other ingredients. She mixed the yokes to the salsa and continued amalgamating the yoke by fork “I don’t want to see any yellow color, I want it smooth like silk”, so decisive, so determined. And I knew the secrets and all the little tricks and the detailed instructions.

Just as I thought that I had received the most precious Christmas present of all and I sat down by the dining table to fully digest the experience, a priceless scene took place right before me. So far, the kitchen had been the mother’s territory. The other family members, the father and the daughter, were busy wrapping presents and lively arguing to which of the two cars the gifts would be put in. They were suddenly very curious about what was going on in the kitchen. Honestly, I don’t think anyone could’ve resisted that heavenly smell. The capon was done and Paola had taken it out of the oven to rest before cutting. It tempted each living creature. Its power on the hungry souls in the house was undeniable. It was mother’s turn to take off the apron. It was the father’s job to cut it. As soon as she was gone, Massimo and Cecilia were like two little mice around the porridge.

“Vai via! Vai via, cazzo!” the father tried his best to keep his hungry daughter away from the crispy skin. But she couldn’t resist and neither did he have the heart to stop her. The two certainly took care that not a single little piece would go to waste. “Don’t eat the bird!” I heard Paola shouting from the shower upstairs. Safe to say, she knew her loved ones well. Massimo and Cecilia are too busy drooling over the delicacy that they didn’t hear a thing. Besides, I was the amused spectator of a lovely sit-com; I didn’t want them to stop. “This thing, I love it deeply. It’s dense, almost sticky, it’s my favorite, what can I say” Cecilia’s fingers and mouth were all caked with the caramelized capon drippings. “This is the best, best part of all, enjoy!” she fed me with a juicy piece of skin drizzled in jus. I felt perfectly at home to say the least. I knew that despite the “wrong” day of celebration, I’d be eating extremely well this Christmas, but after that teaser I was absolutely thrilled about the culinary experience I had in front of me. A very merry and delicious Christmas indeed!

* * *

It’s 13 pm. Only a few hours to go.

In Umbria, cappelletti a.k.a tortellini are an integral part of the Christmas Day lunch. I got my own gluten-free ones just for me!

Kissed by Cachi*

*I believe the proper English name for this fruit is 'persimmon'. I like to call them 'cachi' as that is the name I've learned to call them by living in Italy. 

There’s a certain beauty in tasting something for the first time. You have no clue what to expect, no previous taste records to delude your judgment. Your thoughts are running wild as you’re determining whether the new edible encounter will please you or repulse you. When you’re about to eat something for the first time many circumstantial factors come into play. You'll probably end up having different kinds of reactions, depending on your whereabouts, your mood, your state of mind in the situation. 

I think being a “taste virgin” is extremely arousing. As much as I love eating a delicious dish that is familiar over and over again, it’s far more exciting when the experience is completely new and thus somehow purer.  When faced with an unknown food item, I observe and I assess, I touch, I feel and I smell. Finally, when curiosity meets the acceptance, I have a taste. I find myself performing this ritual, which step by step builds up an energy inside of me that in the end gets released with the first bite. Most delighting is the very first reaction; the very first response to the interaction of the new food and my taste buds. But how do you describe a taste when you’ve never tasted anything like it before? Theoretically, we are unable to describe a taste without a previous encounter with a similar taste. We simply lack the words for it. But what if the physiological feeling derived from a new food item reminds you of something?

A friend and I had been sitting at a café for hours working on a project here in Bra. I felt weary and under the weather and was in desperate need of a little tasty snack to bring me back to life. In Italy, something as easy as having a quick bite can be surprisingly challenging for a gluten intolerant person like myself. The café we were at only served bread based snacks. A quick look out the window didn’t make me feel any better either; bakery after bakery after bakery. Typical. I felt defeated and cranky. Right when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, another friend walked into the café with his hands full of groceries. I couldn’t help my hunger so I suggestively glanced at what he had in his bags. Among all the yummy fresh ingredients, a strange fruit that I didn’t recognize caught my eye. I guess my hunger and my curiosity were rather explicit, “Do you know cachi?”, my friend asked me. Since my answer was negative, I was intrigued. He was kind enough to give me one.

Even though I was prepared to eat just about anything at that point, I took my time to perform my ritual in order to understand what I was about to eat. I had seen the fruit before, but a hard version of it. I learned that there are two types of cachi – the soft one and the hard one. Back home, it’s one of those exotic fruits that sit untouched on a little pedestal on the fruit shelf. All of them seem plastic, misplaced and are ridiculously over priced – a list of reasons that speaks for my disinterest to ever purchase one. In Piedmont though, the cachi season was at its peak a few weeks ago and the fruit looked luscious. I was pretty sure the beautiful fruit and I would be friends. I took a bite.

I got goose bumps, butterflies in my stomach and I blushed. I recognized that feeling, it was one of the loveliest feelings I know. I think the cachi and I became more than friends. I had just been kissed! At least that was exactly what it felt like taking a bite of a cachi. Who knows, maybe it was due to my raging hunger and my gray mood, but that the moist and soft flesh of this vivid reddish orange fruit felt like the lips of the most passionate lover. I lacked better words than ‘sweet’ to describe its taste, but there was no doubt about my feelings for the fruit I held in my hands.

I closed my eyes and stole another kiss.

Going in for a Kill

Being a hearty meat eater, I’ve many times pondered over whether I’d actually be capable of hunting down my own prey and doing the necessary “dirty work” in order to savor the end product. A beautiful steak is a beautiful steak, but before it sat on the plate in front of you to satisfy your lust for bloody juiciness, it was an actual living creature that hopefully had a happy life. My intention is not to raise a discussion on the moralities surrounding the issue, but I strongly encourage you all to reflect on it as I did a few days ago, when I found myself hunting wild boar, somewhere on the Piedmontese fields at 5.30 AM.

My excitement gave me no sleep the night before the big day. It was going to be my very first hunt. I flounced around in bed, restless, like a dog chasing a cat in his dreams. When the alarm rang, I was already up. Vincenzo, my hunting mentor, had knocked on my door earlier to tell me that he was waiting for me downstairs. I got dressed for the occasion; proper boots and other hunting gear. I ran down to the garage to help Vincenzo, I didn’t want to miss a single detail. He threw me an apple and gesticulated that I should hop in the truck, “Andiamo al bar”. For a minute I got confused, hunting under the influence of alcohol didn’t sound wise. My brain must have been still asleep at that point, since normally I know that ‘bar’ means a coffee shop here in Italy.

When we pulled over by the bar, it dawned on me. The rest of the hunting gang was already there, eating sweet puff pastry, drinking strong black espressos and talking wild boar talk. The vivid conversation came to an abrupt halt when I stepped in. A girl! A Finn! What? Why? I definitely created confusion in the highest degree. What a comical scene is was. An icebreaker was badly needed, so cracked a few stupid jokes with my mediocre Italian skills. It worked. I felt that most of the elderly men came around and accepted my presence. First test passed. I could enjoy my cappuccino with extra foam with comfort.

In a flash, we were back in the truck, driving on little curvy countryside streets. The air smelled of smoke and the fog characteristic for the region covered the whole landscape in its gauze. Vincenzo lit up his first cigarette of the day. No words were spoken – a moment of soothing tranquility. Just as I sat back relaxed to take a bite of the beautiful red apple that I had tucked in my pocket, Vincenzo made a sudden turn and drove off road onto the field. He had spotted five deer and was ready to get them. Before I knew it, there was a riffle horizontally right across my lap, “Can you shoot?” he asked me. My nervous laugher spoke for itself, “I can try”, I answered pathetically. Vincenzo laughed. He was only pulling my leg.  We had been too slow anyway, I understood, the deer had already lifted their heads. I assure you, I was now wide-awake.

We parked the truck on a field in the middle of nowhere. It was time to inspect the ground, search for paw prints and half eaten corncobs. Not a single trace would pass Vincenzo’s hawk eyes. There were prints everywhere, “only deer, damn it!” he grouched, “where are the fat bastards?”. After a while we spotted the first wild boar prints, “These are from last night though. See, the grass straw in the middle of the print is already standing up again”. Fascinating! Not only could Vincenzo tell how long it had been since the animal had walked there, he could also tell the direction it had taken and approximately how many they were. The city girl was stunned. We kept walking and I kept on learning more and more.

For a while I felt bad, worrying that I had brought bad hunting luck. We had walked around for hours and there were no wild boars insight. Maybe the others had caught them all during the time I was taught the ABCs of hunting. I was about to express my sincerest apologies, as the half time report echoed from the walkie talkie in Vincenzo’s pocket. It was something in Piedmontese, the local dialect with a slight French sound to it, but I understood that it was coffee time.

Again, the whole gang reunited at a roadside bar for a hot energy booster. It seemed that I hadn’t been the only one half asleep earlier on. The magnitude of gestures and volume of conversation had at least tripled. Many were also curious about why there was a Finnish girl tagging along. My reasons were simple, “I’m here because I want to learn everything there is to know about the food here and all details related to it. I love to eat and I’m extremely curious”. For a second, the elderly men looked at each other in silence. And then they all clapped my on the shoulder, “BRAVA!!!”. I believe it was the second test passed.

At 10.30 AM we were back on the hunting track and the sun was embracing us with its warmth. I was picturing in my mind how the wild boar would be dealt with once we’d caught one. I wasn’t quite sure how I’d feel about watching the beast getting killed. I don’t know whether it was the three espressos I had had within four hours or the adrenaline rush of the situation, but my heart was beating hard. I clung on to my camera with both hands ready to document each bloody detail. It was calm and the air stood still. The only sound I could hear were the bells around the dogs’ necks clinging as they ran frenetically back and forth with their noses in the mud.

At 12.30, like clockwork, rifles were stacked away. There was only one thing on everyone’s minds. Food. It was lunchtime. I must admit that it was the sweetest part of the whole experience. All the big, tough, manly men had a little cooling bag filled with nicely wrapped food items. Before I knew it, I was enjoying a full-scale picnic composed of leftover from the night before, cheese, bread, salami and other cold cuts. Everyone had something in their Tupperware that they wanted me to taste. Did I mind? Guess! I was having the time of my life, sharing food and talking about the wild. My hunger was satisfied and I was good to continue. I stood up so as to make a gesture suggesting I was ready to rock, but I was stopped by Vincenzo who handed me a plastic bottle, “Have some wine, my friend here made it”. Without hesitation I took a sip and handed the bottle to the man standing next to me, “No, no, it’s just for you. We’ll have some later”. With gratitude, I took another sip. “Brava Edith!”. A third test passed. Life was sweet.

A few hour later, still no wild boars. I could feel the hunters’ disappointment. Honestly, I was pretty bummed out too. I had prepared myself for a kill, physically and mentally. Nevertheless, I felt content. I had experienced something very special. It became clear to me that these Saturday early morning hunts were much more than just that. Being the inquisitive observer I am, in the end, I didn’t really mind just taking the experience as an anthropological inquiry. To perceive the different moods, roles, phases and routines within the group were utterly fascinating. Unfortunately, most of the dialogues didn’t open up to me as they were spoken in the dialect, but somehow I still understood. It wasn’t about what was said, it was the atmosphere and the experience as a whole that moved me.

As we hopped in the truck and drove toward Bra again, Vincenzo looked at me at asked “same thing next week?”. My response was positive. He smiled, I smiled. I got home, dozed off on the couch and dreamt of killing wild boars.