Eat. Pray. Love.

I dried the last plate ten minutes before my coach turned back into a pumpkin. The thing with hosting an authentic Italian meal, Tuscan style, are all the courses (and all the dishes).  Those Italians love to eat. And I’m sure it’s because the food is so amazing. Not that I’ve ever eaten an authentic Italian meal at one of those long, never ending tables with a million bottles of wine and candles in empty olive oil bottles with wax dripping down on all sides. Everything I know about Italian cuisine and culture I learned from the movie Under the Tuscan Sun. Sure, I’ve been to Rome, Florence and Venice. When my daughter and I arrived in Venice on an overnight train from Paris, we were so stunned by the heat that we ate gelato all day. A thin crust margarita pizza on the board walk at night. We ran around Rome like crazies trying to see everything in a day. Maybe it wasn’t built in a day but we proved you can see all the highlights in a day…. if you don’t stop to eat. When we hit Florence we decided not to remember it as a blur… so after a short morning sight seeing tour we were left in the square with naked David to have lunch at an outdoor cafe. Then we just wandered around the shops listening to street musicians in the afternoon. So really, Italy was not a food experience for us. It was not ‘Eat, Pray, Love ’.

However, I believe our Night in Tuscany dinner with our ‘first responder’ friends, was. First of all, first responder friends are those people in your life that respond first when you have a crisis or a joy. They are our safe people. And we have so much fun with them. Anyhoo, we had our valentine potluck last night and I offered to host since I could and I wanted to play a bit.

We eat with these folks. We pray with them. And we love them. So cleaning up the dishes and by dishes, I mean every dish in the house, was a joy for me. As I scrubbed those cheesy, tomatoey pots and pans I had a direct line view of our long Tuscan table with greenery hanging above. And I relived the laughter and the tastes and the smells and the music (which was supposed to be a romantic Italian restaurant playlist but bordered on circus music at times). Such a good memory made. There were talks of going on cooking class vacations to Italy or France. We reminisced about trips any of us had made to Italy. We ate too much food and drank too much wine and had an Italian good time. So this experience WAS Eat, Pray, Love.

Here’s the thing about food. We are very needy and vulnerable when it comes to food because we can’t live without it. We have to eat. People do die from starvation. It’s a basic human need. So when we gather around the table to eat, we make ourselves vulnerable once more. So if we eat in a safe, loving environment our physical needs are met under the guise of our social and emotional needs. It’s a sweet harmony. I adore this harmony and am committed to making it happen as often as I can.
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