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Someone once said that ‘poetry is made up of memories and the act of recalling a special moment and without remembering or the act of recalling experiences there is no poetry’
A pizza is a pizza or why all pizzas are not the same, or where have all the great pizzas gone… Last night I had dinner with friends in a local pizzeria. As is typical to have before a pizza, an appetizer known as a a ‘suppli’ which is sort of a fried rice ball with mozzarella cheese in the center and sometimes a sauce inside. As I don’t like a meat sauce in my suppli I asked if they are made with meat sauce. I knew we were in trouble when the waitress told me that she must look on the box they were packaged in to see if they have a meat sauce inside. (Pre-packaged ‘suppli’) not a good sign, not freshly made…
The local pizzerias that were run by families always made everything from scratch, nothing prepackaged. The pizza I must say was a disappointment; my stomach this morning reminds me of the acid-y flavor left over from a wood burning oven that may have not been properly cleaned and the ashes left over leaving a bitter taste to the pizza, no olive oil on the pizza, no flavor, just the flavor of flour, water, mozzarella cheese.
Unfortunately this is the way things are going here, many restaurants are opting for cheaper ingredients and compromising flavors, with most restaurants and eating places not using extra virgin olive oil because of the price of olive oil today, the flavors of the foods have been really compromised, or should I say not many flavors seem to be present, except in a few restaurants that are ‘die hards’ and insist on not compromising quality for cost.
I fear I have become my grandparents; preferring to eat mainly at home, knowing that all the ingredients I use will be ingredients I choose, and so returns another ‘old fashioned’ but so timely habit of preferring to eat at home, now where did that come from? And how boring and old fashioned I used to think of that when my grandparents used to profess to the advantages of preparing things fresh at home, ‘so slow’ I would think..my grandmother spending all day to make a great tomato sugo to sit atop our pasta or the dough for a ‘tomato pie’ as they would translate ‘pizza’ in English.
Never understanding why they couldn’t just go out and ‘grab a bite to eat’ like the rest of the families I knew.
So this situation brought to me many memories of full mornings of preparing a meal by a team of people (aunts, parents, grandparents) then sitting down to eat the highly anticipated meal, stomachs growling in anticipation from the odors coming from the kitchen and then remaining there at the table for hours with courses almost never stopping, of course this was Sunday or Holiday meal.
“Memories are like poetry and without memories there is no poetry.”
Mangia Bene, Vivi Bene,
Maria
http://twitter.com/Marialiberati
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