Letters from a 300-year-old Italian farmhouse. July 13

Slow Food, good food, and a surprisingly beautiful life.

The beauty of a rough around the edges life.

My Piemontese town is not perfect. There is not a smooth, level footfall to be found, anywhere. We have armies of ants, all year round, but especially now. Our one big supermarket has closed for renovation until December, requiring a 25 minute trek over hill and dale if I really need dishwasher pods or something exotic, like bananas, and my favorite toothpaste can now only be found on line.

Mind you, I am not complaining. Our heat spell has broken and we enjoy sunny days in the 70’s again, with an afternoon breeze off the distant Alps. And the evening light that kicks off the old church steeple as the sun goes down, is a golden pink.

Our oldest son describes our life here as “authentic,” rightly so, and in a way that I love.

Sometimes things take a little longer to get done, or take more signatures than you can imagine to complete a simple transaction. On the other hand, whenever I encounter a friend in town or on the street, they pull the car over and we talk for a good ten minutes during which I often learn a new Italian word or gesture from the conversation.

And for the most part, shopping for food in Monforte is pure pleasure. Every Monday morning there is the mercato, the outdoor market, rain or shine. It is fairly small, but it has three or four interesting fruit and vegetable stands, at which no single armful of produce ever seems to amount to more than a couple of euros.

At the heart of the market is an admirably stocked cheese truck run by a gregarious family that willingly works with my husband as he practices his Italian on them: “Due etti Parmesan stagionata, et un mezzo chilo di prosciutto cotto, per favore.” There is a fish stand where no one ever buys anything because it is Monday and everyone knows the fishermen don’t fish on Sunday. And then there is the guy who sells spit-roasted chickens and short fat French fries, whose provocative aromas make you salivate and the idea of eating a bag of hot fries at ten in the morning suddenly sound sensible.

Piemonte is home to the Slow Food Movement, so you can count on most everything being picked fresh and in season, and apart from the bananas and an occasional pineapple, it is all grown and raised nearby.

The etiquette is to never touch the produce. That would be rude to the customers who follow. Instead, you point, tell the seller how much you would like, and he or she picks the best ones for you and places them in a little brown sack.

By contrast, in a large Italian supermarket, the produce rules are quite different. You put on plastic gloves to protect the food, gently select your own fruit and vegetables, weigh them, put them in a paper bag, then place the ticket with the weight and price on the bag before putting them in your cart. If you forget to do this, I happen to know, you arrive at checkout, the checkout person raises her eyebrows at you, and everyone in line behind you frowns at you while she clicks her heels walking all the way back to the fruit and vegetable section of the store to weigh and mark the fruit for you. This is not a pleasant moment in your day, nor in the day of the people behind you.

Fortunately, in the outdoor markets, there is no danger of this happening.

When I wash the vegetables and fruit, I notice that they often still have clumps of soil clinging to them, almost as an assurance of freshness. Our perfectly cleaned and comparatively sterile produce in America must feel suspicious to these folks who nearly all have abundant home gardens and orchards. I always need to rinse and scrub the carrots and potatoes two or three times longer here, like the ones I bought yesterday for dinner, that roasted up so beautifully. It is a small price to pay for such an authentically fresh taste.

In all of the markets, outdoor, local, and even the supermarkets, the flavors are rich and true. Even with packaged goods or frozen, branded products, if the food is not absolutely delicious, it doesn’t sell. Italians won’t stand for mediocrity, be it in a canned soup or a frozen entrée, or what we now call artisanal foods. It is simply how they eat. All the time.

Taking the time to grow the best food, cultivate, cook, and enjoy it, is just one of the things that makes life here such a pleasure, every day, at every meal It is how it has always been in Piemonte, and hopefully, how it always will be.

Spending time in Italy is teaching me, firsthand, how something as primal as eating, and as simple as shopping, as essential as being part of a small community, creates a life.

Living like this, more slowly, more purposefully, and more enjoyably, changes who I am. It means I, too, slow down and truly listen to the sounds around me, better savor tastes and smells. When I am here, I am more aware of the people around me and laugh a little more fully, love a little more unguardedly.

I enjoy what I eat, what I drink, and how I feel because of it.

I realize that each moment in the Langhe is truly a treasure. And so many small, incremental moments in the day add up to this joyful new life.

What about you? How are you feeling these days? Tired? A bit weary? Or are you finding hope in even daily life? With family? Friends? Your community?

Tell me what you are doing, and how you are feeling. Are you eating well, and enjoying what good things there around you? It is so important to find the time to bring joy into our lives. I want to see how we are all making these times, be the best of times.

And keep looking for my posts. I’ll be right here looking for you. It is so nice to be back in Italy and hearing from you.

Thank you for spending time with my letters. And if you enjoy them, I would love for you to click the little heart at the top of this letter, and comment or share it with others. It means more to me than you know. These letters are how I stay close to everyone, near and far. I will be writing every week or two, with stories of Piemonte, recipes that I have fallen in love with, tales of people I meet, places I discover and anything else that I think you might find amusing, curious or worthwhile. It’s a way to connect with you, look at the world from a different window, and hopefully let a little Italian sunshine into your day.

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