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Sensorial overload
Hard to find coherent words to report on an overwhelming couple of days. Here are some sights:
I found my long lost love, Testarolo; said to be the earliest pasta, it’s named for the large flat pan it’s cooked in. Cut it into strips, cook in water and toss with pesto. Heaven…
Some of the educational displays in Terra Madre include a map of the world’s Presidia products.
These are characteristic, traditional food products that are singled out for promotion; Slow Food helps with product development and marketing. I sense Canada’s not exactly pulling its weight here…
All kinds of everything at the Terra Madre World Market; vendors lay down blankets and sell whatever they’ve brought from their countries. Here, some vegetables:
there, some education on the Jamaican view of the world:
or some Austrian cheese:
And some other stuff:
A few more forays into the Salone. Here’s one pig with a sobering outlook:
Melanzane rosse di Rotonda from Basilicata. Tiny red eggplants that look like tomatoes:
Some very large, very interesting looking cheese from Abruzzo:
Coconut truffles:
A display of the woods used in the barrels that balsamico tradizionale are aged in:
Dear olde England didn’t quite get it…
Dutch oyster shucker:
Red onions from Spain:
German potatoes:
French crepes:
Norwegian herring:
Still two days of food – and several hundred more photos – to go.
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Terra Madre opening
The first day of anything is chaotic, especially in Italy. The first day of a fair expecting 150,000 especially so. And the logistics of herding some 5000 very international delegates to the opening ceremonies for Terra Madre were handled with something less than military precision. But like all many-peopled events in this country, you can only stand back and admire the scope of the vision and the success of its achievements. That is, after you have tended your blisters, or picked yourself off the floor where hours ago you wept with fatigue and hunger, or exhausted your repertoire of bluster at the elegant shrugs and lengthy excuses of whatever group of officials you were dealing with. The queues are almost hilarious in their orderly beginnings and their scrum-like property when the gates open.
I especially enjoyed crossing three lines of traffic to get to the bus…
But then you taste the food, and see the pride in the faces of its makers, and you are suddenly enraptured; helpless in fact. Where else in the developed world can you still find so many labels that don’t yet all say “Made in China”? Food, shoes, clothing. You sense it’s a culture, like all of them, poised at the brink even so, but for now, we embrace it with gratitude.
Terra Madre opening ceremonies were all about indigenous. Spokespeople from many endangered cultures talked about the fight to preserve their traditions and languages.
The Sami reindeer herder pointed to the difficulties of maintaining a culture when your traditional territories have been appropriated by four different countries (Russia, Finland, Norway and Sweden), but invited the world to a conference on indigenous issues there next summer. Carlo Petrini was last up, of course, preaching fraternity and tolerance.
Lots of flags…
Generalised dancing and bopping about by the 161 flag-bearers at the end.
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Starting with Salone
What can one say about Salone del Gusto? The world’s largest artisanal food fair is how I describe it. We attempted to have a quick look round in an hour or so, but barely managed to tour one small corner. An interesting corner though.
We started in Sardinia, where there were lots of interesting shapes and sizes of cheese:
Sicily had lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of things on offer as well, including pastries and cheese.
The caciocavallo stall was nicely decorated:
They don’t hesitate to choose interesting ways to wrap their cheeses either:
The capers were incredible:
The salt was stupendous:
The plums were plump and perfect.
We passed France which had stunning cheeses of many shapes
The nougat was popular,
but the armagnac stand is going to be hard to pass by again. I feel sure my bags are going to be heavier by at least one bottle.
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In her latest collection, Rhona McAdam navigates the dark places of human movement through the earth and the exquisite intricacies lingering in backyard gardens and farmlands populated by insects and pollinators, all the while returning to the body, to the tune of staccato beats and the newly discovered symmetries within the human heart.
“…A beautiful, filling collection, Larder is a set of poems to read at the change of the seasons, to appreciate alongside a good meal, and to remind yourself of the beauty in everything, even the things you may not appreciate before opening McAdam’s collection….”
Rhona McAdam is a writer, poet, editor, and Registered Holistic Nutritionist with a Master’s in Food Culture from Italy and a deep-rooted passion for ecology and urban agriculture. Her work spans corporate and technical writing to poetry and creative nonfiction, often exploring the vital links between what we eat and how we live. Based in Victoria, BC, and available via Zoom, Rhona is always open to new writing commissions, readings, or workshops on nutrition and the culinary arts.
