healthy – Page 23

Good Life: A Mediterranean and Calabrian Perspective

“Well, bread and salt will soothe a rumbling belly. Why so? / The greatest pleasure’s not in costly flavours, it resides / in you yourself.”

[Horace, Saturae, Liber Alter, 2.2]

30.10.2018

THE CULTURAL CHALLENGE TO CONSUMERISM

Mediterranean life style is not simply well nutrition. Mediterranean way of life begins with what people do of the leftovers, here alluding to the traditional admonition that leftover have to be gathered.

It is startling to be told, in a culture as wasteful as ours that Mediterranean way of life begins with what we do with our leftovers. Just observe a typical school lunch program to see the mounds of garbage. “Do not waste” means little to children brought up to believe that if something does not meet your taste or adhere to the current fashion, you can waste it.

Instead, in Mediterranean cuisine all is re-utilized. No need to add that, in the field of personal relatioships, Mediterranean people devolve a great attention to family relationships and to everyone value, no matter if too much young or aged; everybody pays special attention to moral consideration and appreciation of every person.

In this context a familiar statistic begins to ring true: The industrialized countries, with only one-fifth of the world’s population, consume two-thirds of the world’s resources and generate 75 percent of all the pollution and waste products. The disparities between human beings who live in squalor and those who have everything money can buy are glaring in a very interconnected world. This great disparity denies social justice, leads to ecological tragedy, and most of all creates a misperception of what good life really is, which ultimately makes excessive consumption a cultural question.

What and how much we consume manifests our conception, about who we are and why we exist. The spiritual and cultural impoverishment that are the natural by-products of consumerism are evident everywhere. Money talks, but “it has such a squeaky voice and has so little to say.” How can Mediterranean life style helps us to find a more satisfying life for ourselves and at the same time make us more socially responsible in achieving it?

Mediterranean culture suggest three ways: the cultivation of the natural virtue of temperance; the admonitions about the dangers of over-consumption and the fundamental requirement of love of neighbor; and, finally, the teachings based upon the order of nature and the higher demands of spiritual living.

MEDITERRANEAN STYLE AS A “VIRTUE OF LIVING”

More and more ethical theorists give credence to the role virtues play in building character. Virtues are being seen and appreciated anew because their cultivation can provide the inner strength needed to live happily and successfully. Without these well-established habits we are under the influence of external stimuli, and we become victims of our own disordered needs and passions. To be creative and generous contributing members of society we need a structure that allows us to use our gifts in a sustainable way; the virtues provide such a structure. They are a wisdom for living that was recognized as far back as the ancient Greeks and beyond.

Those virtues are honored in the Mediterranean culture as part of a household code of living on earth.

Among our “cardinal virtues” that humans find essential, there is the virtue of sobriety and temperance, both in the behavior, in the cuisine and the way of life; it is regarded as one of the hinges of a happy life.

Herein, the rich meaning of Mediterranean sobriety is not captured by the concept of moderation. Moderation is only a small part of temperance, the negative part. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, temperance gives order and balance to our life. It arises from a serenity of spirit within oneself. The reasonable norm allows us to walk gently upon the earth. Temperance teaches us to cherish and enjoy the good things of life while respecting their natural limits. Temperance in fact does not diminish but actually heightens the pleasure we take in living, by freeing us from a joyless compulsiveness and dependence. Temperance therefore means a lot more than the so-called “temperance movement” regarding the consumption of alcohol!

Calabrian and Mediterranean way of life contrasts the consumerist way of life which multiplies human wants with the simple life whose aim is to achieve maximum well-being with the minimum use of the earth’s resources.

The “logic of production” that demands more and more grown in consumption is a formula for disaster, it can be argued.

“WEALTH AND CONSUMPTION” IN MEDITERRANEAN STYLE

Mediterranean and Calabrian people want to be in the vanguard in favoring ways of life that decisively break with the frenzy of consumerism, exhausting the joyless. It is not a question of slowing down progress, for there is no human progress when everything conspires to give full reign to the instincts of self-interest and power. We must find a simple way of living.

Consumer choices and consumer demands are moral and cultural expression of how we conceive of life. Is life all about working and spending in order to have more to worn and spend? Could not it rather all be about contemplation, what can be called a “disinterested, unselfish and aesthetic attitude” that is born of wonder in the presence of being and of the beauty which enable one to see in visible things the message of the invisible God who created them”.

“PEACEFUL” MEDITERRANEAN LIFE STYLE

For readiness to create a greater and more equitable solidarity between people is the first condition of peace. Mediterranean people has such a tradition of spiritual generosity, industry, simplicity and sacrifice that you cannot fail to heed this call today for a new enthusiasm and a fresh determination. It is in the joyful simplicity of a life inspired to Calabrian people by the Gospel and the Gospel’s spirit of fraternal sharing that you will find the best remedy for sour criticism, paralyzing doubt and the temptation to make money the principle means and indeed the very measure of human advancement.

It is because in Calabria and in many Mediterranean countries the poor ones have only their family and friends to look to for their help; thus they are able to recognize the radical human dependency that is the condition of every creature. Wealth, on the other hand, creates the illusion of independence and self-sufficiency, a dangerous posture.

Our tradition demands detachment from wealth and prescribes the just use of monetary resources. This tradition asks that our preferential love go particularly to the poor. Included today with the poor and the exploited must be the whole natural world.

According to Mediterranean style of life, you are not making a gift of your possessions to the poor person. You are handing over to him what is his. For what has been given in common for the use of all, you have abrogated to yourself. The world is given to all, and not only the rich.

In Calabria, the bread we clutch in our hands belongs to the starving, the cloak we keep locked in our closet belongs to the naked, the shoes we are not using belong to the barefooted.

THE “GOOD LIFE” AND MEDITERRANEAN LIFE STYLE

The question of defining more accurately what the good life is has become especially acute. Households go into debt to buy products they do not need and then work longer than they want in order to keep up with the payments. Shopping is the chief cultural activity in the Western world.

Calabrian people loves their families, while it is common in the Western world see a loss of frequent, significant contact among family members, less and less unstructured time, mounting clutter in the home and constant flux in daily activity. Regarding the ever-increasing amounts of clutter, the typical Western family owns more than most Egyptian pharaohs in their heyday. The world has never seen consumption like this on such a scale.

The good life should allow people to work at things that are personally satisfying and expressive of themselves.

The good life should include also a certain leisure for leisure is the basis of human culture. There should be opportunities to contribute to the common good as well as to pursue personal happiness. There should be time for family and friends, for worship and prayer. There also should be a certain asceticism to include a rediscovery of the benefits of fasting.

You can find in Calabrian sobriety many of these styles.

(This post is freely inspired by a real speech of Monsignor Charles Murphy about the style of life of Catholics)

Edible Use of Bergamot

15.6.2018

INGREDIENT FOR MANY FOODS

There are many ways to employ Bergamot and all are a great piece of Mediterranean culture of gastronomy, where Calabria shows all its core of scents and fragrances.

A first, non negligible example, is a digestiv liqueur derived from bergamot, called “Liquore al Bergamotto” and produced by Carpentierbe, a company based in San Giorgio Morgeto.

Then, there is a considerable edible use in Earl Grey tea. It is a long time that this tea is used as a drink mixer, in particular for gin, within the British Isles.

EARL GREY TEA AND BERGAMOT

Somewhat similar in principle to the Irish coffee, though this is seldom practised today, Earl Grey Tea is flavored with Bergamot. Although the drink was never to achieve the ubiquity of the Irish coffee, it continues like many retro cocktails to be offered as a niche item in some contemporary bars and restaurants. This tea blend which has been flavoured with the addition of oil of bergamot contains that Bergamot variety of orange, which is the well known citrus fruit often growing in Italy and France. Its rind’s fragrant oil is added to Black tea to give Earl Grey its signature pungent punch.

Historically, the Tea flavoured with bergamot was used to imitate the more expensive types of Chinese tea.

Earl Grey Tea was been known in England since 1820 and the first known published references to an “Earl Grey” tea, flavoured with Bergamot, are advertisements by Charlton & Co. of Jermyn Street in London in the 1880.

The origin of the name is “Earl Grey’s Mixture”, so called after Charles Grey, British Prime Minister, received a diplomatic gift of tea flavoured with bergamot oil. The story is that a Chinese mandarin gave to Lord Grey a bergamot oil flavoured tea, but it is reputed a legend, even if, according to the Grey family records, the use of bergamot in the tea was made in order to offset the preponderance of lime in the local water.

The Grey tea, which employs Bergamot orange (Citrus bergamia), has the following versions:

Cornflower Lady Grey
Citrus Lady Grey
London Fog
French Earl Grey
Russian Earl Grey
Earl Green tea
Earl Grey White or “Earl White”
Rooibos Earl Grey.

For example, Lady Grey tea is a black tea scented with oil of bergamot, but it is very recent. Lady Grey tea is a modern invention, created by and trademarked by Twinings in the early 1990s to appeal to the Nordic market, which found Earl Grey tea too strong in flavor. Lady Grey differs from Earl Grey in that it contains additional lemon peel and orange peel. It first went on sale in Norway in 1994 and in Britain in 1996.

The Twinings blend contains black tea, orange peel, lemon peel, and citrus flavoring (bergamot).

Finally, we can not pass in silence that Earl Grey tea flavours many types of cakes and confectionery, chocolates and sauces.

BERGAMOT INSIDE SWEETS OF OTHER COUNTRIES

It is quite strange learning that any Turkish delight, lokum or rahat lokum, are a family of confections based on a gel of starch and sugar, which employs Bergamot. But it is real, and let us know the huge importance of Citrus inside Mediterranean culture.

The traditional varieties of these Turkish sweets are mostly flavored with rosewater, mastic, but often with “Bergamot orange”, or lemon. Other common flavors include cinnamon and mint.

This Turkish delight is eaten in small cubes dusted with icing sugar, copra, or powdered cream of tartar, and it is known to have been produced in Turkey as early as the late 1700s, suggesting a Persian origin.

There is also a Greek variation, λουκούμι (loukoumi), which shares a similar etymology with the modern Turkish and it is marketed as Greek Delight.

Also in Cyprus, the same scent of Bergamot, is present inside dessert protected by a geographical indication (PGI). Known as Cyprus Delight, the same sweets are present also in Armenian and there called lokhum, while Bosnia and Herzegovina and Israel have their rahat lokum, and Serbo-Croatians have “ratluk”. The entire area of ancient Persia, therefore, knows this Bergamot flavours, inside the famous sweet called “rāhat-ol-holqum”.

In any case, this Calabrian fruit and its scent wanders through the European world, even in Bulgaria, where the same Turkish Delight is known as lokum, and, as said, in Greece, where Turkish Delight is “loukoumi” or λουκούμι.

In Greece this delicacy is related to the city of Patras, with the name “Patrina loukoumia”, and to the island of Syros, to the towns of Thessaloniki, Serres and Komotini. Here Bergamot, the very essence of Mediterranean culture and gastronomy, is a common traditional ingredient, combined also inside biscuits.

JAM OF BERGAMOT

Another way to employ Bergamot, this great piece of Mediterranean culture of gastronomy, is producing marmalade.

Generally speaking, marmalade is a fruit preserve, made from the juice and peel of citrus fruits, boiled with sugar and water. It can be produced not only from Bergamot, but also from kumquats, lemons, limes, grapefruits, mandarins, sweet oranges and other citrus fruits, or any combination of them.

Our preferred citrus fruit, Bergamot, is employed for marmalade production, primarily, in Britain, where is also used Spanish Seville orange, Citrus aurantium and other fruits, in order to attain typical consistency of marmalade, – but also in France, near Nancy.

The peel of Bergamot imparts a lively bitter taste to the marmalade.

Bergamot is certainly more recent than the ancient recipes of marmelade, but since the Romans learned from the Greeks the recipe of μελίμηλον (melimēlon, “honey fruit”), today transformed into Portuguese “marmelo”, and since the Greek word μῆλον (mēlon, “apple”) stood for all globular fruits, – we can conjecture that Romans knew jam of citrus.

The most famous Roman cookbook of Apicius gives a recipe of marmalade for preserving fruits, inside a bath of honey diluted with defrutum. The mix, known as Roman marmalade, preserved also quince and lemon.

A similar recipe appears in the Book of ceremonies of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos, a real catalogue of the foods available and dishes made from Byzantines.

Afterwards, since the Middle-age to Renaissance, the marmalade of oranges is a long lasting recipe. We arrive to the age of the Scottish grocer James Robertson, who created Golden Shred marmalade in 1864. This Scottish maybe made reference to a previous English recipe book of Eliza Cholmondeley of 1677 (recorded in the Cheshire county), where there is the earliest British marmalade recipes of oranges (so called “Marmelet of Oranges”).

There is much to say about bergamot, citrus and the term “marmalade” and its variations in Europe, but everywhere when we say Marmalade the word is used as a generic term for preserves of all fruits, whereas only in Britain it refers solely to a citrus preserve. This show an ancient tie with citrus (maybe Bergamot) and jam.

This relationship is maybe reinforced by the history of the Scottish city of Dundee, where is a long association between marmalade and lemon or citrus or bergamot. The story tells of James Keiller and his wife Janet, of their preserves shop in the Seagate area of Dundee and of the factory producing “Dundee Marmalade”, a preserve of “bitter” Seville orange rind. The business is still alive today.