Episode 33 – What is food for me

After 11 years of blogging, a love born by stirring a ciambellone on a kitchen stool with mum, 5 cookbooks, a podcast, countless projects never launched or lost along the way, and numerous dreams kept among the pages of a notebook, I keep asking myself what is food for me.

I haven’t grown tired of writing recipes. For a while, I wondered if it was enough, if I wasn’t dumbing down a topic bigger than me. Then I realised that food is enough for itself and, at the same time, it crosses borders.

Food has been an instrument of personal growth and self-affirmation, a lens through which I could discover the external world and explore my inner universe, sometimes all the more complex and multifaceted.

Food is tradition: I better understood who I am through traditional recipes, those from Tuscany and those from Basilicata, where the southern branch of my family is from.

Food is discovery. The work of food is a craftsman’s job, in which you progress with small steps, with perseverance, with a clear attention to beauty and detail. Craft is humble, more tangible than art, but it retains a human warmth, dedication and commitment.

What is food for you? Does it have a special meaning, or a value? Or is it more related to planning, or enjoying? Is it a way to release your stress, or to affirm yourself? Or both, as in my case?

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Learn the Italian language of food word after word. Every year more than 200 people join our cooking classes. Speaking with them, I made a small dictionary of important words and pronunciations that can help you navigate through the immense world of Italian food. So, if you love Italian language as much as you love Italian cooking, these are a few words that can be useful for you.

Today’s word is cibo. I don’t know why I waited so long to introduce this word. This is the concept around which revolves all our job, and big part of our lives.

Cibo, means food, and as food it has the most general meaning. The actual food you consume and eat, the philosophical and ethical concept behind it. A short word with such a dense meaning. You’ll find it called food often in our everyday language. When possible, I still prefer to call it cibo.