Eating in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

“Any arbitrary turning along the way, and I would be elsewhere, I would be different. What are four walls, anyway? They are what they contain. The house protects the dreamer,” thought the American woman writer that Christmas evening, as she got up and looked at the lavishly laid table and her happy guests. She had come a long way to get there. She had left behind her “first” life in San Francisco, where she had been a successful writer and teacher, happy—until her husband had left her, also taking the house, and forcing her to live in a small, depressing furnished flat. Then the unexpected present from her women friends had arrived: a ten-day holiday in Tuscany, to relax and forget everything. She had thought about it for a while, but in the end she had accepted. After a few days in Italy— it still seemed incredible—that impulsive decision to buy an old villa to be renovated right there, in the heart of Tuscany, near Cortona. What madness! But it had been wonderful, everything, renovating the house, working with the Polish laborers, following the love of the youngest of these workmen, Pawel, for Chiara, the neighbors’ daughter. And there was more: learning to cook Italian style, getting to know the country, providing hospitality to her friend Patti who was expecting a baby, having a love story, even if brief, with the very handsome Marcello.