You Don't Have to be Chained to the Stove all Day, Just Set the Timer and You're on Your Way!

I'm perplexed. Nearly fifty-five years ago, Frigidaire produced this film about the Kitchen of the Future.

If this was their vision in the 50's, then surely they must have intended it for my mother's generation, the baby boomers. It therefore should have been the kitchen of my childhood. This was not the kitchen of my childhood.

WHERE were the eggbeaters descending from cupboards? WHERE were the cakes that came out of the bubble-top oven with their icing and candles already on? And my mother? WHY wasn't my top-hat-wearing father escorting her into the kitchen where she'd twirl around and press buttons then dance off to go play golf and tennis while the meals cooked themselves?

Frigidaire, I'm seriously disappointed.

Oh Yeah.....

Sometimes I forget to mention Big News. Lately a few friends have been asking what I’m up to in January, and I realized that I never blogged about having my school internship sorted. I'm going to India!

I’ll be in the southern part of the country (about 10 hours west of Bangalore), interning for three months with an agriculture/seed-saving collective called Vanastree. It was founded by a woman named Sunita and supports local women in their work to maintain biodiversity. I’ll be living and working with Sunita on her farm, spending time in Vanastree’s office helping with their communications, and on weekends will be visiting other farmers and producers to learn about what they do.


Interns will include myself and two American students whom I’ve been in touch with and am looking forward to meeting. Currently, I’m staring down an endless list on my wall entitled Things To Do, Buy and Pack Before India. Number 1: Get an Indian visa. I dropped off my completed application forms a few days ago in Milan and am really hoping to have my passport - in one piece and newly adorned with an “Entry Permitted” sticker - back in my hands again soon.

I’m terrified and excited at the same time, and you can expect more blog posts of the “I’m-in-a- new-country-and-frequently-embarrassing-myself” variety starting January 2011. Whatever this next adventure brings, I know I won’t be under-stimulated. Nor will my digestive system, so sorry ahead of time dear stomach.

Hungry Hungry Planet.

A friend of mine sent me the link to this fascinating series of photos from the book Hungry Planet. Photos are taken of families surrounded by the total amount of food they consume in a as well as the amount it cost them. The visual differences between various cultures' consumption patterns are fascinating and rather shocking. You can have a look at Time's photo essay of the project here.

Grab My Hands and Tiramisu!

Eight months have disappeared since school began, and I’m not entirely sure where they’re hidden. We just finished our sixth (sixth!) and final school trip, closing up our travelling schedule with a journey to Tuscany. We drank a lot of wine, ate a lot of food, then drank more wine and finished up with some vino.

My favourite stop on our tour wasn't a vineyard, however. It was Spannocchia, a farm and agriturismo that runs an amazing educational program and hosts up to 24 interns each year. One of the current interns is a UNISG student named Chris, and part of his work includes chasing after Cinta Senese pigs, a rare black breed unique to the area. Unlike the pigs bred for Prosciutto di Parma, these swine roam freely in the forests around Spannocchia and use their snouts to forage food from the ground. I bet these pigs eat more truffles each year than the average person eats in a lifetime, and I'd envy them if it wasn't for the fact that they eventually become salumi.

After the trip I stayed in Tuscany a few more days to visit Elisa and Gabrielle, my old hosts from Podere Le Fornace where I wwoofed last year. They’ve sinced moved off the farm but welcomed me into their new home, a hill-top farmhouse with vineyard views out of each window. On Saturday afternoon we picked up Gabrielle from his grandparent’s land, where he is helping with the olive harvest. Though their grandson now runs the operation, at 84 and 80 Nonno and Nonna still work long days to relieve the hundreds of trees of their ripe fruit. We drove to the frantoio (mill) to pick up the first batch: 52 litres of bright green olio nuovo that we struggled to lift into the trunk. In the evening, Elisa toasted slices of bread for us to rub with garlic, sprinkle with salt, and eat drenched in the spicy new oil.

While playing outside with their 4 ½ year old daughter Priscilla, I had another of my Italian Linguistic Moments. As she jumped up and down on the yard's mattress-turned-trampoline, I held her hands and lifted her up on every third jump. I stopped when my arms became tired, causing her to exclaim “Tiramisu! Tiramisu!” and me to wonder why she was suddenly shouting a dessert at me. I was tempted to shout “chocolate cake!” back at her, but then realized what she was saying; tiramisu literally means “lift me up,” a fact I’ve heard many times before but have never applied to my life beyond the dessert buffet. After figuring this out I summoned what strength was left in my arms (the only exercise I've had lately is raising wine glasses to my mouth), and lifted her up as high as I could. She laughed and laughed and I was a hero.

The moral of this story: an obsessive love of all things sweet can be useful in the real world.

All Spruced Up.

Happy November to all. Here's my latest entry to the UNISG student blog......


This summer I needed to get out of Parma. Desperately. A girl can only sweat so much before she sits down, books a trip to she can’t afford, and flies off to Norway.

I landed in Bergen, mercifully cold enough to warrant a sweater, and walked through its medieval wooden quarters on the harbour. Further south in Preikestolen, I hiked to the imposing Pulpit Rock and peered over its edge to the Lysefjord below. At the tip of this fjord I chased BASE-jumpers up to the famous Kjerag Boulder, which I climbed upon for a picture (but didn’t jump off). Norway’s landscapes were wild, unpredictable, and already I long to return.

Norway tasted wild, too; one night we had dinner at Hanne på Høyden, a restaurant in Bergen owned by chef Hanne Frosta. They source or forage nearly every ingredient from Norway, and even make their own wines from a variety of local fruits.

I ordered the beef filet, butchered from a peculiarly small breed of Norwegian cow and served with spruce-tip butter. This topping was simple, just butter smashed up with the supple ends of spruce branches, and like lavender, the spruce tasted just as it smells: woodsy, earthy and green. It complimented the beef beautifully, and oddly enough, tasted familiar.

When we had the chance to meet Hanne, I told her a story: every summer when I was a child, my father took us camping on an island in the middle of a lake. When we weren’t upsetting nature’s equilibrium by digging wells or damning creeks, one of our many projects was to harvest spruce tips. We’d stick them in a can of water and leave it on the campfire to boil. With enough sugar stirred in, this tea-of-the-forest was drunk without qualms, though my mother, happy to abstain from these trips, would have had a heart-attack if she knew what we were cooking up in rusty metal.

I couldn’t have guessed that seventeen years later I’d be eating spruce-tips again, this time melted over beef and served on a plate rather than in a can. It is a rare and curious moment when taste elicits such a memory, and I love Norway all the more because of it.

What a day, what a day.

My worst nightmare in school has occurred. Glad to have that out of the way.

This week we had a writing workshop with Corby Kummer, a well-known food writer in the US and editor of The Atlantic’s Food Channel. He asked us to write a three-page piece about a food producer and have it ready for critique.

On the second day he discussed our pieces, citing them either for the excellent qualities they possessed or as examples of What Not to Do.

With regards to some writing that fell into the latter category, he declared to the class that it sounded “like it was written for a magazine for women in their twenties and is full of clichés.” He then read the article’s opening paragraph aloud, and I realized with horror that it was my opening paragraph, they were my words. It was happening, that thing I most feared – criticism in a public setting, and not being good at something I so badly wanted to be. My cheeks burned hot, then cold, and breakfast threatened to come up.

Resisting the urge to crawl under my desk and assume the fetal position, I waited for my ‘one-on-one with Corby time’ and began writing this blog. As soon as it happened, I for some reason had the incredible urge to share my humiliation with the entire world (or rather, my parents and small circle of friends who read this). I was finally called in for my chat. I walked into the room and managed, with difficulty, to hold back tears as he talked. I listened to what he said, wrote it all down, then relaxed ever so slightly when he found the paragraph – the one paragraph – that made him say “I know you can write. So why aren't you writing like this?”

Failure. Why must it exist? To make me better, I know, and that is why I’m here. I came to school to be criticized, hear harsh words, and see if I still have it within myself to keep on writing.

Fortunately, I do. My innately stubborn side rose up and went to battle, fuelling an intense and terrifying re-write; before lunch I marched back to Corby and asked him what he thought of my new intro.

It went well. I was OK as soon as I lost the “perky narrator’s voice” I had adopted, and I realized I had written for Corby the way I thought I was supposed to, rather than in a way that felt natural. I have by no means found my way as a writer yet, but in the last 48 hours I’ve learned far more about writing – and myself – than I ever expected.

Another thing I learned is that my classmates are writers. Exceptional writers. I have always known they are intelligent, well-read, and talented people, but nothing could have prepared me for the things I heard as Corby read their pieces. They were witty, eloquent, and made me dizzy with awe. They are also kind souls. A friend of mine declared her faith in my writing the moment it was shot down, then gave me one of the warmest hugs I have ever received after Corby read my piece again, this time in praise.

It is for this, and not my writing trauma, that I will allow myself to cry.

It's Never Really About the Movie.

Last night we saw the un-subtitled, original version of Eat, Pray, Love at a small theatre in Parma. It was the first time I'd been to the movies since leaving Canada, and the experience was just what I'd been craving. This was for several reasons, though none of which was the actual movie. Sorry Julia.

Firstly, I was with great people.

Secondly, the theatre was quaint, the tickets cheap, and the seats red and plush, the kind that swallow you up when you sit down and start assembling the many many.....

SNACKS that you've brought. So very many snacks. What else did I expect from a group of UNISG students? Between the six of us we collected an embarrassing bounty of salted caramels, oreos, nacho chips, chocolate covered digestive biscuits, peanut M&Ms and pretzel M&Ms (hey-yo Shannon's mom!), and popcorn.

But Emily didn't just make any old popcorn. This was popcorn drizzled with lots of butter and salt, then tossed with a generous handful of finely grated parmigiano cheese. I am telling you, if you need a little pick-me-up in your life, then MAKE THIS. That giant hunk of parm in my fridge doesn't stand a chance; I am utterly and hopelessly hooked.

You could also add freshly ground black pepper, sautee your butter with rosemary before pouring it on, and/or toss some lemon zest in there too. Try using grana padano instead of parmigiano, which works just as well and is kinder on the wallet. Once you've made your bowl:

EAT it all up.

PRAY that no one asks to share with you, and

LOVE every bite. I promise you will.