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Posts Tagged ‘locavore’

fruit, and school lunch

Posted in Fruit, Pasta, Trends, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, eat locally, eating locally, Fontana dell Aqua Paola, local eating, local food, locavore, locavore in Rome, locavore Italy, Rome sustainable food, roving locavore, school lunch, Scuola Arcobaleno on September 8, 2009| 2 Comments »

We find ourselves snacking on fruit a lot. There are so many reasons why. First of all, there so much of the juicy stuff in season. I was walking along this morning, not planning on buying food, when I saw one lonely market stall, with the most bulbous figs! I bought a basket, and we ate most of them before I remembered to take a picture:

figgi

What I should have done is have my son hold his little fist on the plate, too. Then, you would have gotten an idea of the size of these gorgeously squishy, heavy fruits.

Jack loves the melon, though. He’s not a fig guy, so far:

melone

Jack had his second day of school today. I went with him again, and left for a short while. Tomorrow he’ll stay through lunch. I’m excited about their lunches. The culture of food in general at Scuola Arcobaleno is no less Italian than you would expect. Every morning, each parent leaves a piece of fruit in a basket by the classroom door. This week we’ve seen bananas, pears, apples, peaches, plums, grapes, and kiwi (some of which are obviously not of Italian origin, but some of which are very local). At 10:00, the teachers cut the fruit into pieces, and one of the children carries around a plate, and like a little caterer, offers everyone a piece.

Lunch puts a food-focused parent like me even more at ease. Each child lays out his own place setting, and pours her own water out of a pitcher. Then, they are all served a primi and a secondi. A two-course lunch, involving fresh vegetables and big bowls of pasta! And this is not the pasta that blubs out of a huge can with some sweet sauce distantly related to tomatoes. This is the real thing. The only thing that will disappoint me will be my four-year-old son’s ability to accurately report what he had for lunch. The usual answer to that question, for any kid, is, “I don’t know.” But I’m hoping he’ll be able to bring home some culinary tidbits in Italian for me.

It’s especially interesting to be having this school-lunch experience at the moment when there’s a parental, grass-roots uprising in the U.S. against the atrociousness of school lunch there. That problem, which I hope schools, cities, states, and the Obama administration will work to solve, is of course part of the much larger problem in the U.S.: the lack of a culture of food, and the economics of food, in which the cheapest food is the worst for you.

Anyway, though, I want to touch on our other fun today: checking out the view from Fontana dell’ Aqua Paola, which is on a hilltop in our neighborhood:

(Is this really my life?)

taking a bus home from a long walk in Trastevere, (which we got to by taking the long staircase downhill from this fountain):

Jack on the bus

and spotting a cool weather vane that reminded me of home:

weathervane

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Gelato

Posted in Dairy, Ice Cream, Sweet Things, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, eat locally, eating locally, gelato in Rome, Italy locavore, local eating, local food, locavore, locavore in Rome, locavore Rome, Miami Gelateria Rome, Rome sustainable food, roving locavore on September 8, 2009| Leave a Comment »

We made our first gelato-destination-trek yesterday, after asking around about the best shops in the neighborhood. Miami Gelateria, conveniently located about halfway between our apartment and Jack’s school, makes theirs in-house, and offers an array of flavors, from the tangiest limone to the densest chocolate, with everything nutty and fruity in between.

gelateria

They serve typical cones or cups with large, melty scoops, and they also make mini, dipped cones. The minis are about 6 centimeters (trying to think metrically, here) high, are dipped in dark chocolate, then a bowl of chopped nuts, then served, to eager little hands. You can eat one in two or three bites.

After contemplating the selection, and learning new words in the process, Jack chose melone and Peter and I shared a creme caramel.

gelato

The texture is airy and fluffy, compared to the hard ice cream at home, and the flavors were undiluted essences.

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bread and melon

Posted in Baking, Fruit, Shopping, Sweet Things, Vegetables, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, biscotti, eat locally, eating locally, local eating, local food, locavore, locavore in Rome, locavore Rome, markets in Monteverde Rome, pizza bianca, Rome sustainable food on September 7, 2009| 1 Comment »

On Jack’s first day of school, I stayed there with him for a couple of hours, to ease him into the experience of a new school in a new language. We left just before lunch, and took a looping, indirect way home, stopping at market stalls and shops along the way. One of my destinations was a half-block of street closed to cars, where vendors were selling fruits, vegetables, meat and cheese, and household odds and ends.

mkt st

We bought bags of the pink-and-white-swirled fagioli borlotti, and of blackberries that taste as sweet and meaty as pears. Not a trace of tartness, which is a surprising sensation! To be honest, I only bought the pricey 3-Euro basket because Jack fondled them. The unspoken rule of etiquette at the markets is: you touch it, you buy it.

veg mkt

Next time, I think I’ll get some of these elegant peppers:

peppers

The most delicious item we bought, though, was the melon. Sweet as honey and juicy as, well, juice:

melon

Next, we went to the bread shop, which is the most nondescript shop I think I’ve ever seen. What you have to do is follow the scent of baking bread with your nose, and look for a bunch of people standing around chatting happily, and moving in a constant stream in and out of a narrow door. That’s the line for bread.

bread store

Once inside, I was crammed shoulder to shoulder with people buying multiple bags of bread, biscotti, pizza, and cornetti (croissants). Jack stood in a corner, with his backpack and sunglasses on, eating an apple. He looked as nonchalent as a true Italian. The only proper name of a bread I knew was pizza bianca (what we call focaccia), so I asked for that and used gestures and alternate “grazie”s and “per favore”s to indicate how much I wanted. Then I asked for quattro biscotti, and pointed at these cute little lemony-almondy cookies:

biscotti

Oh, boy, were they good.

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an escape from processed food

Posted in Shopping, Trends, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, eat locally, eating locally, green checkmark food label, Italian supermarket, local eating, local food, locavore, locavore Italy, locavore Rome, processed food, roving locavore on September 6, 2009| Leave a Comment »

This is one of the aspects of living in Italy I’ve been looking forward to. There is such an onslaught of brightly packaged processed food at kids-eye level, (ok, and grown-up eye level) in American supermarkets, that it’s difficult to avoid loading your cart with boxes of convenience food. The array of breakfast cereal is astounding, and hard to resist. Breakfast cereal, to follow this example, is also very expensive, considering the ingredients, and is loaded with sugar and sodium—even the “healthy” varieties.

I was thinking about these things as I walked through the aisles of the GS—the big supermarket near Jack’s school here in Rome. There are a lot of crackers and bread products that are far from “fresh,” but in general, there is a dearth of processed foods in an Italian supermarket, compared to those in the U.S. You certainly won’t find any large jars of pre-made tomato sauce (loaded with high fructose corn syrup and sodium). And breakfast cereal? Instead of a gazillion choices, there were just a few. And if you want to spend 7 Euros, you can get a small bag of honey-coated puffed farro. Farro!? That would only go over in a natural food store of some sort, in the U.S. Also, note the price (don’t forget the exchange rate). My conclusion is that Romans don’t eat much cereal for breakfast.

I was also thinking about these observations when I read this article in today’s Times, about a new green checkmark label that is supposed to lead consumers to healthier food choices. Froot Loops apparently received the checkmark. The idea that consumers are so stupid as to need a green checkmark to tell the difference between a Froot Loop and an apple in the first place, and that they are too stupid to know that Froot Loops actually aren’t a healthy choice, is astonishing, and really depressing.

So, what did we have for breakfast here in Rome? Whole-grain toast with honey (or, ok, I admit, a bit of Nutella), coffee, and milk. Good food.

breakfast

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first day in Rome

Posted in Pasta, Shopping, Water, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, eat locally, eating locally, local eating, local food, locavore, locavore in Rome, Roman supermarket, roving locavore, Trastevere sights on September 5, 2009| 1 Comment »

Disclaimer: I didn’t sleep at all on the way over, and I walked about 7 miles today, so I don’t have much of a mind to write. But there’s so much to be excited about. And I did forget my camera in the supermarket, but that’s just as well, because I would have wanted to post about twenty pictures: of the twenty-two varieties of ham at the deli counter, of the low, low cheese prices, of the interesting juice selection (I bought a lemon-orange-carrot blend), and of the cute little carts that you tow behind you, rather than the “buggies” of the U.S. that, according to a John Cheever character, “unsex” you when you push one.

My new friend Antonia also took me to the market stalls this morning, where I practiced my Italian phrases associated with purchasing, etiquette, and numbers, and bought beautiful greens, figs (figi), eggplant, peppers, a microfiber sweeper, and a citronella fumigator.

I’ll bring my camera next time.

Later in the day, after a lunch of arugula, wheaty bread spread with tapenade, prosciutto, and fresh asiago (not hard due to age, and lighter and sweeter in flavor), we took the stairs down to the hipster neighborhood of Trastevere with our new friends. I spotted the sticker of a like-minded person, on the window of a hand-crafted wooden instrument store (mandolins, tambourines):

omg sticker

We bought “pizza” for the kids along the way–and it isn’t quite what you think. Some of it looked like its American progeny, but “pizza” also refers to thin bubbly bread sandwiching sliced cheese or prosciutto and mozzarella. (Actually, Jack had this variety of pizza for breakfast, while Peter and I had nutella-spread cornetti (croissants) and cappuccino at “Cafe G.”)

We bought umbrellas for the boys, Nicholas and Jack, and they tried them out at a fountain, out of which flows rock-cold, clean, fresh water, with which we also filled our bottles:

umbrellas

We crossed the Tiber, and saw the remnants of an ancient Roman bridge:

Tiber

We saw a fountain, with fish, turtles, and men involved in a choreographed effort of ease:

turtle fountain

And, finally, we came back to the apartment to cook dinner. In the fridge was a two-liter plastic bottle filled with Sardinian wine. Really. Our new friend Cory gave it to us last night. He’d bought it—and had the emptied water bottle filled—at a local wine store that offers two whites and two reds—out of casks with taps. Can’t wait to find that place.

I made a bowl of pasta with all of the local veggies I’d picked up: round, bacci ball sized eggplant, fresh onions, zucchini, red pepper, Roma tomatoes. Nothing unusual, really, but everything was fresh and local.

1st dinner

At the table, we added freshly grated parmigiana reggiano and anchovies, both of which were shockingly cheap at “the GS”!

anchovies

I like it here.

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a Roma!

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, eat locally, eating locally, local eating, local food, locavore, roving locavore on September 3, 2009| Leave a Comment »

J suitcases

We fly to Rome tonight.

Tomorrow, we’ll have to eat, and there will be markets nearby. I’ll try to overcome my jet lag enough to snap some pictures and write a short post.

Until then….

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broiled fowls

Posted in Poultry, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, broiled butterflied chicken, eating locally, grilled whole chicken, local eating, local food, locavore, roving locavore on August 31, 2009| Leave a Comment »

You don’t really think “food writing” when you think of Moby-Dick. Has blubber had a comeback in the foodie kitchen as lard has?

No, but here’s a statement about food from the whale-obsessed narrator. He’s explaining why he goes to sea as a sailor instead of as a cook:

…somehow I never fancied broiling fowls;—though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses, the pyramids.

I love the historically-incorporative tangential prose of this passage. Even more, though, I love the enthusiasm of appetite that is balanced with the sense of taste as judgment. Reverence, judiciousness, cookery. These three should go together.

When we were on the Cape, Curtis cooked up some scrumptious, judgmatically salted and peppered broiled fowls. In other words, chicken on the grill. He brined and butterflied two fryers, preheated the gas grill to 450 or so, and broiled those fowls for 45 minutes. Moistness of meat! Crispness of skin! I was reverential.

More on how to achieve this effect, coming soon.

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all about shellfish

Posted in Restaurants, Seafood, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, Cape Cod local food, eat locally, eating locally, local eating, local food, locavore, Mac's Shack, Mac's Wellfleet, roving locavore, Wellfleet clams, Wellfleet oysters on August 29, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Tropical Storm Danny is pouring long ropes of rain down the walls of the Truro Public Library. I’m taking advantage of the wireless, while Jack negotiates with the hordes of other kids for a few more minutes with the trains. He’s into non-fiction lately, so we’ve just read books about tornadoes, hurricanes, the first railroads, and kittens.

We had a good meal last night, at Mac’s Shack in Wellfleet. Mac’s original restaurant is more the shack—right on the sandy shore of Wellfleet Harbor. It’s all take-out from a window, picnic tables, paper and plastic, and BYOB. It’s a kid-friendly spot that also serves excellent food. The story about the more expensive and relatively fancier “Shack” is that they hoped it would be less of a kid and family destination, and more of a date or dinner party spot. But last night—Saturday at 6—almost every table had a child or two. The building’s facade is pretty inviting to those little people for whom reality and fantasy are often blurred:

macs shack

(Jack asked if the fisherman was real, but he knew the lobster was pretend.)

I haven’t been able to persuade Jack to eat fish except in highly disguised forms, so he ordered a bacon cheeseburger. Good boy. While he waited impatiently for his fries, I let him have the camera. He took portraits of everyone, but I won’t embarrass Peter, Anne, or Curtis by posting them here.

me at macs

Local shellfish was flying out of its shells, due to the fast, professional shuckers:

clams

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roadside veggies

Posted in Salads, Vegetables, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, Cape Cod local food, eat locally, eat locally Vermont, eating locally, local eating, local food, locavore, Mass. local food, Truro on August 28, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Late August on the Outer Cape is like one long lazy day. Mornings and evenings are cool, but the sun warms everything in between—except the Atlantic waves.

collecting tomatoes

We’ve eaten fish, of course, but the food fun I had yesterday we found by the roadside instead of the seaside. Just down Long Nook Road from Jack’s grandparents’ house, we stopped at a little farmstand to buy some things for lunch. Jack wanted the pumpkin, but I picked out sungolds, a squash, and the tiniest red potatoes I’ve ever seen.

prayer flags
pumpkin

Then, we went to the playground.

the twirling tire swing is the best!

resting, alongside a bluefin

Back home for lunch, I boiled the potatoes, warmed some scallions and leftover grilled chicken in olive oil, and then tossed it all together in a bowl with some vinegar and mustard. A quick, warm salad makes a delicious lunch.

bite-sized beauties

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Bread Loaf

Posted in Beer, Poetry, tagged Amy Campion, Amy Campion food, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, eat local Vermont, eat locally Vermont, locavore, Robert Frost After Apple Picking, roving locavore, Vermont beer, Vermont breweries, Vermont local food, Vermont locavore on August 23, 2009| Leave a Comment »

No, not the food staple, but the writers’ conference. I went up to Ripton, VT, to spend the last night of the conference with Peter. It was a great evening. Peter gave a late-afternoon reading of poems from his most recent book, The Lions, in the century-old clapboarded Little Theater.

After the reading, some went to change into their party-wear, while others ambled across rural Route 125 to one of the little yellow cottages, where the cocktail party was happening. There was plenty of imported gin going around, along with some local beer. The choice: Otter Creek Copper Ale.

Peter with friends, old and new

The dinner that followed was full of local yummies, including nasturtiums, though not much grows on this Green Mountain ridgeline but trees.

The conference began as an idea of early-twentieth-century-poet Robert Frost’s, in the 1920s. I love so many of his poems, it would be hard to choose a favorite, but here is one that has to do with a local crop:

After Apple Picking

My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.