Wizard Recipes

The hamburger from Fast Foods was precisely made to offer a first juicy and delicious bite that would be impossible to enjoy if we could imagine the whole aspect of farms, butcheries and of all the workers or if we could know from the first bite that the hamburger is so delicious because of the “artificial barbeque flavors”.

The hamburger must be fast consumed; it would be a pleasure if we could imagine the green grass, the steak from an animal grown on a pasture, a pleasure based on knowledge and appreciation for the work and creatures not on ignorance and indifference.

To eat slowly means, to eat “in a free way” not because of an impulse. In many cultures, especially in those that didn’t lose the bond with the earth, there still are rituals that encouraged this was of eating, for example, there is a food blessing or an appreciation prayer before eating.

I believe that the goal of these rituals is to don’t eat in ignorance or in a hurry, and also to combine the pleasure of eating with the pleasure of thanksgiving and knowledge. I’m not used to express my appreciation before meals, but sometimes I remember Wendell Berry’s words that help me to eat free.

Probably the way to fully enjoy the food- to feel a pleasure without ignorance- is the most profound form of the bonding with the world. Trough this pleasure we are aware of our dependency and we celebrate this, because we eat in mystery from creatures that we didn’t create and from forces that are beyond our understanding.

Such words can help you to be in control of your meals, but the best would be (as Wendell Berry said) that we, the consumers should involve ourselves more in the food production, even if this means just to plant some herbs in a pot, or just to go different plants or mushrooms picking in the park.

Because of the indifference of the consumer beside the food, we have to remember how the food from our plates is tilled, grown and prepared.

Eat slowly, not just because in this way you will better know when to stop. When I say “slowly” I refer to the a quiet, cozy meal that is promoted by SLOW FOOD,  an Italian movement build up around the idea that the only way to fight against the madness of our fast life, is trough a stern defense for the pleasure of a cozy life. Created as a reaction of the American Fast-foods in Rome, in 1980, this organization tries to rediscover (or for some of us to discover) the joy of meals taken together and the pleasure for properly grown and cooked food.

Sounds like an elite club for choosy people, but the SLOW FOOD movement is actually a coherent protest and  an alternative for nourishment, for the occidental way to eat and the whole occidental lifestyle, which is crazy more and more, day by day. Slow food aims to return the  supremacy of the quality over the quantity. For this it’s necessary to propagate a sense of taste and to recreate the relationship between  the producers and consumer, which is now destroyed because of the food industrialization. Carlo Petrini, founder of the Slow Food movement, sustained “The food quality depends on the consumers which value the work of farmers and are willing to train their sense”. In this way “consumers become producer’s allies”.

There is also a consumer policy, which encourages us to value the work of those who produce food and discouraged the superficial pleasure of eating. This movement wasn’t born accidentally in Italy. That’s why we should ask our selves if the American way of eating can be changed whiteout changing the whole American lifestyle. The fast food is the way of eating for people that have the main value and the main goal, the success, for people which have just 2 weeks vacation per year and can not rely on a social protection for unexpected cases.

But the assurance of the Slow Food movement  is that this whole edifice of fast food will start to collapse as soon as we make time for  slowly silent lunches three times a day. To eat slowly, means to be fully aware of everything that involves the whole cycle, the food trail, from the ground to our plate. No doubt, some culinary pleasures are based exactly on the opposite- to know less