Tip of The Week: Episode 48
It's Tip of The Week Day!
I've been away for a while, as it is Summer and even if everyone seems to be on vacation, I am actually a busy bee...I even went on a work trip, in the middle of a very hot summer in Italy!
And since traveling is so confusing nowadays - post pandemic - with flight delays, lost bags, etc, I thought this could be a good theme for a Tip of the Week. And no, I won't be addressing the lost bags and tell you to put Air-tags everywhere... I'm actually talking about meal planning!
Going on vacation to another country means being open to explore other cultures - the way they live and especially the way they eat. You can learn a lot about a country just by the ingredients they use. However, since globalization effects generated an impact on foods, even when you travel to another country you risk ending up in tourist trap restaurants, or even choose a known fast-food restaurant just because you aren't so sure what you will get in your plate.
So if there is a generic suggestion I can give you, is to be open to the unknown of other cultures, and look for the raw and most simple restaurants, where you can taste food with real ingredients and a true heritage from the different country's ways of cooking what mother earth was locally giving them.
And so this week, having been in Italy, I am talking about decisions I made ahead of time in order to enjoy my trip. One of the things that helped me was defining some "rules" in advance, like agreeing that it would be ok to have pasta there. Many of the homemade pasta in Italy is made with ancient grains, which doesn't have such aggressive glutens like the pasta we know around the world nowadays. I found that there are studies about the cultures with most centenaries around the world (those areas are called "blue zones"), and one of them is Sardinia - and they do have pasta and bread on their diet. So I decided it would be ok if I had pasta there.
What happened was that I ended up having pasta only once, the whole 6 days I was there! The moment I gave this permission to myself, I ended the dialog about pasta... I cannot tell you how many times I went to Italy and abused pasta! Well, not anymore... It tasted good, and that was it. I focused more on their seafood, and cured meats (like prosciutto) and really didn't feel the need to eat much pasta this time!
Want to know more? Watch this Tip of The Week episode to learn about:
- How I prepared
- What I included in the list of occasional foods to have
- What was below my freedom line
- How it went
That is it for this week. I hope you are having a great vacation and enjoying being out there traveling again. Don't let this Summer be hectic and plan for every single detail.
Xoxo, Marcia