Go Places & Eat Things

iPad induced memories of a centuries-old city

I was checking out the offerings served up this morning on my Zite Personalized Magazine app for the iPad  and found this lovely article about Bologna, Italy in the New York Times. It had me pushing aside a few years worth of mental clutter to uncover the Wayback Machine. In I hopped and soon I was transported back a few years and several centuries, ambling along covered walkways, making my way to Piazza Maggiore, where I sat, sipping wine in the spreading shade of a springtime afternoon. There are photos, somewhere, in a box that is in storage at the moment. But I don't need photos to recall the feeling of time slowed, even in the ebb and flow of strolling pedestrians on a major shopping avenue. And somewhere nearby, a church where a companion and I lit candles and sent good thoughts into the universe. The richness of flavors tasted for the first time in a little restaurant - known to some Italian friends, where we ate what the proprietor had prepared - are still on my tongue, though the name of the restaurant is not.

Interesting that these memories of centuries old Bologna were brought to life again by a very modern device. Bologna is one of the many places I experienced while traveling on business, to which I'd like to return with a very different agenda, or no agenda at all.

Good Food and Old Friends

A ride through the country, on a route we’ve taken many times before, takes on new meaning as we head toward my husband’s hometown for a reunion of his senior high school class. He’s quiet in the driver’s seat, and I wonder what’s going through his mind as we pass verdant fields of sturdy corn standing like graduates in a school gymnasium, ripe with promise.

The festivities begin as they so often do, with a gathering at a local bar the night before the main event. Each new arrival is met with hugs and handshakes, laughter and reminiscences. Those who stayed close to home help ease back into the fold those who moved away, teasing a little when a newcomer just can’t put a name to a face not seen for many years. They talk and laugh into the night. Long forgotten nicknames resurface. Old stories are re-aired and family photos shared – children and grandchildren! With decades for forgetting, what is remembered surprises me, including a loud and happy discussion of favorite cafeteria meals.

From our table in the party space at the back of the building, we watch people come and go. Regulars arrive ready to put the week behind them over a cold beer with friends. Others scan the room looking for familiar faces and signs of a party. Many who walk through the front door can remember when the building was a butcher shop and meat locker.  My husband recalls delivering livestock to the back door for butchering and later picking up a roast for dinner from the family locker up front.  We leave the bar late, the ice broken.

The next day, the group from the night before swells with the addition of new faces gathered for the official reunion. Anecdotes from the previous night circulate quickly and take their place in the long story of this group of friends. A raucous auction is held, raising money to help pay for the event. As befits our country surroundings, popular items include local wine, home grown tomatoes and a peach pie still warm from the oven.

The dinner venue is a treasure-filled old home onto which a catering kitchen and banquet room have been added. The charm of the place suggests that the meal will be more familiar than fancy, and we are not disappointed. Our most memorable meals often are more about the people gathered and the occasion commemorated than the food that is served, and that's okay. In the company of old friends and warm memories, chicken and roast beef, corn and mashed potatoes make us feel at home.

Finally, in the golden hour favored by photographers, against a backdrop of garden blooms and picket fence, my husband and his classmates gather like they have so many times before: tall ones in back, short ones in front, and everyone smiling one more time for the camera, already looking forward to the next reunion.

Go Places and Eat Things

It all started when I was just a child, with the great good luck to be born into a family marshaled by two good cooks with keen interest in the world around them. My parents, apt pupils of the hearty pork-roast-and-oven-browned-potatoes school, had done some traveling before settling down, and their stories fueled my early and enduring interest in visiting new places and checking out the menu while there.

Sure, my siblings and I ate our share of breaded fish sticks and packaged macaroni and cheese, but every so often we were treated to home versions of chicken curry, pork chow mien and kielbasa with sauerkraut. These humble forays into global food traditions gave us an early understanding that there was a lot of good stuff out there, waiting to be discovered and consumed.

We joke that my kid brother learned to read as we traveled the interstate highways on family vacations. Clan lore tells that the first word he recognized was EAT!, a command, no less, towering over the cornfields on signs located for maximum impact on weary parents with hungry kids, at off ramps and major intersections right next to the Holiday Inn. We were happy to comply.

In this environment of road trips and roadside restaurants, our family motto evolved. Go Places and Eat Things defined not just what we were doing, but what brought us joy. As the miles rolled by and the meal tally rose, we imagined a family crest of crossed knife and fork on a field of tablecloth checks. “Gravy over everything!” became our rallying cry.

My husband embraced the family watchword early in our marriage, and over the years we’ve managed to strike a nice balance between EAT! and bon appétit! We’ve traveled to some wonderful places and enjoyed some memorable meals both close to home and far away. Taking the measure of a place through its points of interest and its plats du jour is simply what we love to do.

So it is in the tradition and spirit of Go Places and Eat Things that I write about food, travel and life, separately and together, in no particular order. Let’s see where it takes us, and what’s to eat when we get there.