THE BEST FOOD IN THE WORLD

I’m sitting in bed as I type with a mug of lemon tea as I seem to have caught a cold or some sort of bacteria this past week. It’s easy to understand why I have all these germs after spending a full 7 days with my classmates, either on a bus, intimately snuggled in a quasi-2 star hotel, feasting at numerous dinner tables, drinking vino, being out in the cold, taking photographs, butchering pigs, eating different cuts of pigs, cheese, laughing, and more travel. That doesn’t sound that great neither does it begin to describe the whirlwind visit our class made to the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy.

Lunch on day 4: Cured Meats

If I were to use one word to describe the trip it would be, it would be passion. The food producers we met in the course of the week had passion written on their faces and you could see it as they spoke about their jobs, none the less when we tasted the fruit of their labour. No wonder the common statement “This is the best-insert product- in the whole world” was applied to all their products. I don’t blame them, they have reason to be proud of what they do and anyway there is a blury line between fact and opinion when it comes to food products. My personal favourites this week were the Award winning Marcello Lambrusco, which I had at Ristorante Cocchi  in Parma, as well as the home made balsamic infused strawberry jam I had at Agriturismo Bosco del Fracasso.

It was a fascinating trip: learning about of the food we love, their stories and the traditions involved in the production and the consuming, meeting the producers and having a glimpse of their lived experiences. A joy for the anthropologist in me. The only problem was my lack of Italian to express myself. I’m slowly trying to solve that problem. But for now I must rest as I am tired from a week of eating “The best food in the world”. More to follow this week about feasting in Emilia-Romagna. 

Some of the terrain in Emilia-Romagna