Refettorio (Bread is Gold)

A clear message daring to engage all your senses - we are going to chat how I imagine food, how I imagine sharing a space and its delights, how I imagine discovery and how I get transported to my own “refettorio”. Saying it out loud - this is how I contour and fill in life. In bursts of colours and vibrance.

Oddly enough the story I would like to share with you today would be about a very melow Saturday. You might expect me opening the doors to mi “Casa de la Jungla” to spontaneous loud tables of friends cooking and sharing meals together. That also happens from times to times. And we love it. It is one of the joys we find ourselves drawn to in the midst of this big busy city. Long live the villages though!

The very special Saturday is quite fresh in my memory and I might simply take this opportunity to treat it as journaling pages. It proves equally hard to write as I delete a lot of words embellishments that might try to present anything too poetic or too idealized. I mean it. We are only few paragraphs in and I keep going back and deleting words.

The story will be told only as simple as it has been.

In between my planning of a day and the actual day - there is a fine gap I found myself radically accepting it. There is also this beautiful book by Tara Brach -called “Radical acceptance” where I borrow the term “radical” from. I have been in this dance with acceptance for a very long time now. It is a work in progress at all times. And today is not the day I pick to go to its origins, or reasons or anything big. I mention it because I have to accept at times with more resistance perhaps I would say a simple statement as “it is what it is”.

My day would have started ideally with a wake up alarm at 4.30am as I had some online class I wanted to attend live scheduled in. By the “would have” and “ideally” you probably guessed this did not really happened.

I have been deeply engaged in a dream around the time the alarm set off, I did press stop and went back to my dream as I needed a lot of energy there for some sort of a fight that I could not understand or make sense of. I was asked to let go of something and my answer was desperately “no” while trying to understand why I am asked to do that. You kept me mentioning dreams here, they are almost another life in action. I also always try to understand things in my dreams - and as you imagine not an easy one.

What happened next was that I found myself fully awake only about 3 hours later , pretty exhausted too. Whatever I had planned for my Saturday - as in read, study, write, was now becoming an unfolding mystery as I had simply no energy at all or not a clue. The only understanding I could find while still confused the entire morning was to open my large windows to the weather on our island. She was responding well to my mood, and we were indeed synchronised - bursts of wind, bursts of rain, foggy mountains, almost coldish up here (if we are even allow to use these terms for Hong Kong - as there is no correlation between the degrees and the real feel! ). Well, I felt like winter.

My utmost go to ritual is always the coffees…. Mostly that would involve 1 large and perhaps two smaller ones, Turkish coffees. That would be sipped gently and slowly while literally contemplating the island, taking in all sounds,funny birds and loud mornign chorus while literally restoring myself from dreams and transitioning to a daily life with clear responsibilities. This transition from night to day it is my daily meditation.

This Saturday was not only slow it was beyond slow. And the resistance triggered at first in myself was stubbornly trying to understand what has really happened. How come I am so tired ?What is my body telling me?

I quickly gave up as inquiring mentally myself was not supporting me either. I just had to drop all the resistance and implement promptly the radical acceptance theory instead and say it out loud. “I am tired and I will do nothing today”. Just embrace it. and watch the day unfold. Open up really to all the “unplanned” , to “un- planning”, to “it is what it is”, to “ my body prefers the sofa right now” ,”it feels like winter and I will cuddle up here under a blanket and “far niente”.

There are few essential steps I would take on the way to restoring myself. Besides the little cups of coffee( and saying this has literally prompted me to make yet another Turkish coffee).

Let’s just all teleport in one place and have coffee at the same time wherever you are. Pardon me my sticky notes….you know I love them!

The second step is finding energy in food. And the reason I share that is that while this seems very simple rule to follow,I am not speaking only about the nutrients found in the food and their restorative properties -which I deeply believe too.I am referring mainly to this very very subtly relationship between the act of feeding ,the act of creating, the act of the memories it stirs, the act of sharing or simply the act of feeding myself still with a similar ceremony of sharing. It leads to paying attention more and more to what we do how we do and what do we wish to receive or give.

Couple of weeks back I have been prompted to think of the following question “ How can I give what I am looking for?” At first I kind of rejected this question as I did not really understand it. What is this trying to tell me? Somehow the answers followed in multiple ways and through multiple mediums ever since eternally vibrating in my being.

The act of feeding others or myself it is also a way that I give what I am looking for. I could easily digress right now and bring up our upbringing and cultural inheritance where food takes center stage for caring.It is the expression of caring. And we could all write our own magic stories of round tables we were lucky to share with our families friends or strangers sometimes.

I have let my Saturday tell the story in a different way for me this time.

I have continued indeed my “restore” spontaneous and natural process with a treat of a breakfast, pancakes and a massive fruit bowl with yogurt. The act of feeding myself or others means also setting up a table that looks beautiful , means also mixing up colours and flavours - (side note : I have these new deep blue bowls and funny plates that I cannot get enough of them really ), and gets accompanied by lovely teas and let my senses absorb the beauty of the flowers not only opening in the glass tea pot but also changing and deepening their colours. I had calendula and pomegranate flowers tea yesterday. The taste was a bit on the strong side and I might not repeat the same formula soon, yet just the simple act of exploring this novel combination thrills my heart.

The act of feeding - myself or others- thrills my heart. The art of imagining ingredients talking to each other and maybe beautifully exploding or maybe bitterly disagreeing - thrills my heart. The beauty of such moments is that they make me feel almost lifted and floating in some space I am not able to relay you right now. If it would be to find a word - I would say I feel connected and engaged with all my senses yet also detached from my body refusing to wake up and do things…. “Be kind, rewind” - wasn’t it a great movie with Jack Black? Love him too!

This very act- which might look simple on the outside - thrills my heart. This very act was simply bringing back my senses lost in a battle the dream before and was gradually building up restoration blocks and pockets of energy inside my cells.

This is the story that I am trying to send your way. And there is more of it….

To my surprise, the beautiful and engaging experience I hope I got you all hungry with , just tired me even more! … yes, it happened exactly like this. About 10am I was contemplating maybe going back to sleep again or simply asking what was the message in all that. It is clear that my body has a very strong stance this morning I just have to listen to it.

Wandering in my kitchen/ living room ….I have picked up a recent book my friend gifted me. The book is quite interestingly made, it is a recipe book that would surprise anyone in so many ways. It tells an amazing story in great detail, on very humbling paper and with very humbling real food preparation photos from an amazing journey of a chef determined to bring to world a kitchen for the soul - inspired by a “refettorio” idea. I do say “humble” yet maybe only by ignorance as I am not a specialist in paper quality. It is still a Phaidon book.

For someone like me who believes in the act of feeding, succumbing myself into a recipe book is an act of magic. I will just lay out this concept clear and loud. Should anyone find this ordinary and hard to grasp… It is ok by me. I have never knew any barriers to immerse myself into a great cookery book.

Here we are to yet discovering another step in my attempts of picking up myself and giving back to myself what I was looking for. There was no act of challenging myself or trying hard to feel better or thinking relentlessly on what else could I do to restore some of energy levels. Nothing of this sort at all. I have spent literally all my day by blending in naturally ways to make myself nourished through known or perhaps new waves of discoveries.

The book I am talking about my friends is :

Bread is Gold, Massimo Bottura & Friends

The first cover is cream/ gold colours, yet I loved the magic blue underneath, followed by red, green and gold colour pages. The book tells the story of “The Refettorio Ambrosiano “ which opened its doors on May 28, 2015 supported by Caritas Ambrosiana and continues to serve guests five days a week. Massimo Bottura starts the book with a simple memory where all this idea came from:

Every morning over breakfast my brothers and I fought for the leftover pieces of bread from the previous night to dip in warm milk with a splash of coffee. We called this mess zuppa di latte, milk soup. I preferred the bread grated directly into the bowl and always asked my mother to help me. Then, to my delight, I pour in the sugar, lots of it, until my mother started yelling, “Massimoooooooo -that’s too much sugar!Look at this spoon. It is standing up straight!”. She loved to tell this story to strangers with the additional comment,” And look at him now -a famous cook!”

The endless bowls of milk soup that I devoured for breakfast and before heading off to bed were a memory like any other until my mother passsed away. Only then did that flavour become and obsession.How could I transform a memory into something tanglible,edible, and most important, emotional?”

Massimo Bottura went on creating amazing dishes and has added on the menu at the Osteria Francescana in Modena also this dish called” Il pane e oro” or Bread is Gold.

There are a lot of emotions and a very strong story on how the refettorio originated in the first couple pages that serve as introduction to this book. It hooked me entirely, I found myself cuddling under a blanket and absorbing page after pages of this really connecting story. Massimo Bottura saw an opportunity during the Milano exhibition in 2015 which was forecasting to bring many world renowned chefs to Italy and he set up in engaging a lot of those to cook with left over ingredients or donations and for plenty of people. Designers and architects stepped in a have contributed to rearranging the space, furniture was donated and a simple welcoming warm large kitchen has been created. That was the very first photos of the letter - and I hope you understand the word “humble” that I have tried to refer to earlier on.

The concept is around food waste and trying to create solutions and this was only one projects that was aiming at reducing food waste another world by also cooking and sharing a meal around a table. His foundation “Food for Soul” continues to address this a multitude of programs and refettorios.Under the slogan “Culture is transformative “ they sum up their mission in very simple beautiful words “ Through our projects ,we rebuild and restore a sense of value and purpose .Our impact lifts up both those who are in greatest need and those who have enough to give”

Food for soul

I would like to add one of the photos from the book- part of my rituals too, as I love to open randomly to one page and see what’s in there for me. This just transported me right there in that kitchen when the magic was happening. In the way I connect with books, I was simply there. Supporting Viviana in making the bread crumble or the meatloaf. Needless to say, stale bread or bread of any sorts is a big part of whatever the ingredients were delivered with the morning truck to the kitchen.And all of these chefs bring new life into everything they touch.

I cannot remember how many hours I have been captivated by this book and its very spirit of collaborative efforts and creating magic with what you have. It leads to an amazing power of unity and care for the people and for the planet. Being in that book, in that refettorio made me often think of my personal refettorio I tend to and how in fact I live by similar principles.

It restores my energy to enough levels to go back to my fridge and concoct a lovely lunch with whatever I had. Often times, I would use Saturdays to clear out the fridge and improvise dishes. I made a lovely “baked chicken red rice pie with parmegianno and parsley.” If you ever think that was from a recipe- forget about it. But it has been touched by this “cultural transformation” and brought back influences from whatever countries I have lived in or cuisines I loved. It is playful too and it brings me a lot of joy.

I have started now smiling more inside and new levels restoration were revealing.

So you say? Surprise again…rain was kind of flirting heavily with the village and I really do not know about you but if I eat rice ,I become very sleepy. So, while somehow still dreaming and resisting mentally and telling myself that I could have more resources to engage nicer in my day, suddenly found myself pulling down the curtains and taking a deep deep nap for about 3 hours. I guess that my dream about “letting go” was even clearer now in a very sweet ironic way.

This again - I was giving back what I was looking for- nourishment. I have found all ways possible to attend just to that - no more questions asked.

As I came back to my senses again, with a second chance during the day - I could feel that a fog has been clearing out from my shoulders.

I now then turned to the simple step of listening to music and discovering some new artists. I really do not know why, from listening to Ludovico Einaudi on youtube I was then introduced to videos by Cercle. I am still new at everything however I would encourage everyone to find them on youtube and see the programs they are doing. Not only they also take you to amazing locations like Iceland’s volcanic backdrops to some historical locations for example in Paris, but they also engage what might be called neo-classical music with electronic and sometimes perhaps hip hop. I have discovered Hania Rani in a live concert in Paris, and also Sofiane Parmart live under the Northern Lights in Lapland, Finland. The recordings offer both the concerts and also interview with the artists at the end addressing questions from the audience.

As the evening grew on me and the village and forest around me lit up - I have also found myself restored, remade and thrilled I could take all the messages seriously and choose far niente by letting go of any pressures I had imagine for myself that Saturday. If we could feed our souls with everything we know that works - let that be and enter your space.

I hope you could find the same melow flavour of a day to replenish your hearts.

Love you……… stay well.