I love food, there’s no getting around it. I am grateful that I don’t live with a wheat intolerance because I particularly love Italian food. I love smooshy pasta and Tuscan pastry, the incredible smell of olive oil freshly pressed, a glass of Chianti lightly floating around the glass, and the gorgeous aromatic herbs that find their way into Italian cooking, basil, rosemary, thyme.
I love the hot, thick, gooey cioccolata calda they serve in the winter and the gelato that is seriously heaven sent, in summer. We once had gelato in a stunning little hilltop town that drew us back every day for days, so we could sample each flavour. It tasted what essential oils smell like, blood orange, lemon, rockmelon. There were letters of thanks from celebrities and politicians that lined the walls! SO good!
But I think what I love about the quintessential Italian dream is the long table. The setting for 12 in the vineyard in front of a crumbling, centuries old villa. The family sitting around it with kids running everywhere. The nonna and the mumma who have prepared recipes that have been in their family for generations and would feed football teams at every meal. Everyone is welcome, the stranger and the friend, anyone who needs a meal. The Italians are also great at eating in season.
I love the earthiness of growing food and picking it fresh daily, of seasonal menus that bring back memories of the summer or winter before. Parents and kids with baskets in the veggie patch, pulling off the beans and strawberries. I think we all crave community, we want to know that there is a table setting with our name on the place card and enough food for us to take home covered in foil.
We want to be part of something, known, and missed if we aren’t there. So yes I love Italian food and own a library of Italian recipe books, but more than that I love the sense of family and community that are so beautifully modelled in Italian life.
I want to create that for my family, but more than just our 4, our extended family, our neighbours, our community. Invite someone over tonight. We weren’t meant to eat alone…
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
You have made my dream of travelling to Italy even more irresistible!
‘We want to be part of something, known, and missed if we aren’t there.’…BRILLIANT and oh so true!
I want to go as well. Now I’m excited about my 50th {which is quite a ways away}. Gives me time to work my butt off so we can all go {as families} and enjoy this Italian life familyroom style.
Thanks Janey.
xo
I’m so there SJS! xox
What a beautiful article. Makes me very sad though…my trip to the Tuscan seaside, scheduled for early July has been cancelled. Aaah…the Italian dream will have to wait (a LONG time now!).
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