It Must Be the City Kid in Me

It must be the city kid in me.

I am completely enchanted by the fact that food in Europe (especially in rural areas) remains so close to its sources.

My first brushes with this were last summer in Paziols. I posted about the wild figs, but I have yet to show you the pictures of fresh almonds that pop out of their downy, fruit-like exterior to reveal the shell we know so well from supermarkets, and only after removing this can you reach the creamy white almond inside.

I still haven’t told you about the afternoon that the kids and I spent picnicking by a vineyard where, afterwards, we found wild raspberry and blackberry bushes, and how we spent the rest of the day gathering them and carrying them back in small plastic bags from our lunchtime sandwiches, trying to resist the urge to eat them all.

I never told you how incredible it is to see the vineyards that made the wine you are drinking, to touch the grapes that you know you will drink next year. It’s impossible to explain how incredible it is to feel part of a cycle like that, a natural pattern that has existed for years.

I have been meaning to tell you about all of these things, but I’ve never had the time. In cities, it’s all about time, isn’t it? Time to get things done, time being cut short by other people: waiting in lines, waiting for the bus, waiting, waiting, always waiting.

But now I’m in Santanyi, Mallorca, and I have the time. I have time to sit in the sun with the dog all day if I want to. I have time to sit outside with my sketchbook and draw. I have time to write blog posts upon blog posts, saving them for a rainy day where, instead of writing, I’ll want to curl up in bed with a book and just listen to the thunder.

Now I can tell you how incredible it was to see oranges growing in the middle of Naples, huge, fresh oranges worthy of the name. Most oranges I see in supermarkets are some shade between beige and yellow and taste more like bland lemons. These offered themselves forward, smelling distinctly of Christmas.

Now I can tell you what it’s like to see the “massive bulk of a pig” as Peter Mayle called it in A Year in Provence. I never quite understood the phrase until I saw the pigs here in Mallorca, as big as horses. Vegetarians, turn back now, but there’s something so fulfilling and right about seeing the live animal and knowing that that’s how you got salami or prosciutto that day.

My attraction to this sort of thing can’t be for naught. I dream of the day when all the food I cook and eat can be as fresh as what I’ve seen lately. I want to own a farm, a vineyard, or at least work on one. To feel the soil and to touch the food as it grows, to tend to it and see it become larger and riper until one day I’ve decided that the tomatoes I’ve been caring for for weeks and weeks are ready to eat. To pull them off the vines at that instant and dress them with salt, oil and fresh basil. Fresh basil like we grew (the only thing we ever grew successfully) when I was younger, and my mother would send me out to pull five “good” leaves off the plant. I loved that job. I’m sure I’ll love it again when I’m ready to have it.