Communal eating

The feast ended with everyone happy, content and an inbox of new friends

Food has always been the right place for people to sit around together. You can use it to take away the worst tension when you need to discuss serious stuff with business partners, have a relaxed evening with your new lover, or have a chat with long-time-no-see friends or family.

That food is a good place to sit around and spent some time together hasn’t always been acknowledged. During the last centuries the time we spent on buying, preparing and eating our meals has decreased seriously. While the amount of food we consume in the short breaks has grown.

To compensate for our hastily meals on normal weekdays we tend to spend more time on eating during weekends and festivities. The most well-known in our Western society are Christian festivities like Christmas and Easter.  As will be confirmed today or tomorrow when you have an Easter brunch with friends or family.  

But with the declination of religious people the importance of these get togethers’ also decreases. As soon as there is an opportunity we tend to go on holiday thereby ‘leaving behind’ the rest of the family not knowing who to share the table with.

In exchange for these family meals there now is a new trend going on. In 2011 for the first time a restaurant day was organized. There are numerous apps where you share meals you couldn’t finish eating yourself and – the latest trend – there are people who invite others to their houses to share a breakfast, lunch or dinner.

On a rainy Sunday morning I spent some hours at one of these events. I knew I was going to spend my money on a delicious breakfast but I didn’t know who I was going to share it with. So it was quite exiting to enter the apartment of a stranger full of other strangers.

But besides the strangers – which appeared to be all very kind and as curious as I was about the happening – there was a table full of home-made foods. We guests were supposed to try as much as we liked; granola, breads, soft-boiled eggs, pancakes, ciambelline and fresh orange juice.

It was this table and food that made us feel comfortable immediately. We chatted, we exchanged experiences on all kinds of themes and in the end we all exchanged addresses. It was a perfect example of an event where food helped to make strangers friends within seconds. And that’s exactly what makes food so interesting for me.

Have a happy and shared Easter.    

Publicity

Authentic of large scale industrial production? Foto from this blog

Most food publicity has been done by the big companies selling their products on the world scale. Products which are usually so called processed foods: some ingredients put together to create something which always has the same flavor and appearance and which we all seem to like and which off course contains a lot of fibers, less sugar or whatever can add up to your good health. Things I usually don’t believe before I’ve read what else is in the package. More fibers but also lots of sugar? Real chocolate but without a good life for the farmer? Authentic flavor added through hypermodern chemicals?

Last weekend I visited a luxurious food event. It was set up in a big room in one of Milans biggest museums for modern art. Already from the posters which I’ve seen in the city I knew it would be kind of posh.

The event was well sponsored. This wasn’t only visible on the posters, flyers and the ‘Welcome to the event’ signs but also in the program. Round table ‘discussions’ with three persons all from the same company explaining how well they are organized, how many years they already produce organic products, etc. doesn’t lead to real discussions. After 10 minutes I couldn’t stand it anymore and walked away to have a look at the other stands.

Then something got my attention. I saw some flyers from Italian producers producing typical Italian products as it has been done for centuries. I suddenly realized that during the last months I had already visited some events where producers and vendors tried to sell me these kinds of products. And sometimes I even believed it because it all looked so real, so original and so well meant.  

But this time I was skeptic. Normally commercial budgets are only available for producers with high outputs and which can create a strong (inter)national market position. Will that be different in Italy? I don’t know but I don’t think so. A good product does sell itself. It doesn’t need to be published in glossy magazines and flyers to be attractive.

So what did I learn? I need to be more careful. Not every type of publicity is bad and means that I might be caught by a large producer. But also not every producer telling us how authentic his product is, really is authentic in a way that he produces on a small scale with only the help of his family. But also this isn’t bad. Stay alert. 

Green it yourself

‘Everyone disappointed’. ‘European Parliament votes for de-greening CAP’. The headlines tell the truth: the new CAP will not look very green. But what does this actually mean? And what can we (consumers) do to support a ‘green farmer’.

At first I might need to introduce the CAP, or Common Agricultural Policy, created by the European Commission 50 years ago. It served to make sure we Europeans could all eat for a reasonable price while the farmers where paid a decent ‘wage’ for the work they did each year. Over the years this dream ended up in something which you could call a disaster; many products were in excess and thus prices went down a long way.

But mankind learned from its mistakes and step by step the CAP became a policy which helped consumer and producers to live a normal life. Sort of, because the CAP has (for example) caused the sugar being really cheap and – with some steps in between - this has caused the problems with obese people these days. You can find more detailed information on the history of this policy on this website.

And now it’s 2013, the year in which the CAP reforms are prepared. One of the aims of many was to reform the policy in such a way that we all would profit: the farmer a beautiful farm with an honest income, the animal and the plants a healthier life and the consumers quality food grown in adorable environments. But last week this dream has come to a sudden end. The European Parliament has carefully listened to a group of lobbyists which apparently had convincing arguments to vote against the de-greening of the new policy.

So what’s in it and what’s not? Instead of seven percent ecological focus (‘unused farmland’) we will only get three percent of free- growing-nature (going up to seven percent only in 2018). So less space for the bees and more room for food production. Another important measure not executed will be the mandatory crop rotation. Less rotation means more monocultures so less diversity in the landscape and the flora and fauna.

Luckily Europe is a democracy. And even that our voices were not heard during the CAP votes, we could do other things to make our environment better and the quality of our food higher. As it is not done with our tax payments we could do it directly while doing our shopping or when going out for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Choose local food, if possible grown organically. Make sure that your local bar or restaurant makes the same choices as you do at home. Ask him when in doubt. And if you really want to be sure about the origin of your food or want to contribute to diversity: Green it Yourself.

Abundance

Last saturday in Milano, the line before the gelateria

Each religion has something with food: Muslims shouldn’t eat pork meat while for the Hindus a cow is sacred, Catholics avoid meat on Friday and Jews only eat something when it is raised and prepared Kosher. But besides all the difference they also have one thing in common: all of them avoid eating food – or fast - for shorter or longer periods every year.

The principle of fasting dates back to the origin on many of these religions. It reminds the present-day-man of the periods when their almighty decided they had done wrong and therefore had to suffer. But there are more reasons why people may decide to cut back on their daily food. It is to remind them of the ones that do not have daily access to (sufficient) food, to remind them of the times things weren’t that easy or to proof themselves that they can do without it.

For the Catholics the period of fasting is halfway. After the feasting during carnival (it ended on the 12^th of February this year) the disciplined believers should have started a period of 40 days in which they only take the highly essentials of their energy supply. No sweets, no fat and the rest only in limited quantities.

In Catholic Italy I would also expect the people to slow down on their food intake. But in this country full of sweets it doesn’t seem that pastry shops are having hard times. On the contrary, if haven’t seen it as busy as during the last weeks.

Where did it go wrong? Where did we decide to only celebrate the good times and forget about the times which were more difficult? Because we can?

I have never ever fasted. I am not a religious person and there hasn’t been any other reasons why I decided to do it anyway. But the idea to at least try it seems interesting. Why not force yourself to at least not eat any luxury products – likes jams, cakes and other sweets – during a certain period. Just try to eat only the three meals a day, maybe complemented with something ‘sober’ in between. You can find a reason. It might be your diet, the beggar in front of your supermarket, your colleague which cannot eat sugar for whatever reason or just because you’re curious to try it.

I’ll take the coming days to consider a reason and find a way to fast my way. See where it brings me.