Economies are slowly recovering but migration, especially that of children still remains a hot potato to political parties. Language, schooling and peer expectations are all discussed at length, but little is expressed about a child’s cultural food identity. The challenge of children adapting to new food served at for example nursery and school or by the new-best-friend’s Mum is almost overlooked.
My son is British, but the Pasta Machine Kid spent his gestation absorbing sweet snips of peperoncini, truffle pasta and salty ewe cheeses that tasted of sweet dew and wild meadow herbs from sheep grazed high on Gran Sasso mountain tops. The last 18 months of his total 30 in age he’d spent in a small mountain village in Abruzzo Italy, and on work days at a local nursery eating a 3-course traditional Italian style lunch with snacks of fruit, breadsticks and bread, olive oil and homemade cake. Like so many of our Italian neighbours, and millions historically, recession in Italy would be a driving reason to bring us back to our real home.
10,000 Taste Buds to Value
A toddler has 10,000 taste buds, double that of an adult, which explains the face pulling and refusal to eat a humble supermarket refrigerated value egg at Grandmas. It meant that his taste buds were still bright enough to recognise and prefer the taste of eggs from the clutch of the little red hens housed around our village of Bascianella who’d been fed on wild rocket, dandelions and home-grown corn. Each day he’d ceremoniously receive from one of our neighbours the present of a freshly laid egg to carefully carry home and enjoy for his breakfast or an evening frittata.
Bread with Bite
5 months in our new home and eating UK bread remains a no-no (“NO!”). Is it the lack of ceremony that Little A is missing beyond the loose texture of his beloved crusty pizza bianco or an oily but so good frittelle? Our village bread van would arrive and the 2 pre-school children would be given their own roll in a little brown bag to go and munch on with Nonna or an elderly neighbour on the shaded bench. His childminder in the UK considerately buys him ciabatta in an attempt to appease his Italian snobberies but without success! We bake and shop around experimenting on different loaves from supermarkets, bakers, whilst avoiding the suspiciously swollen focaccia that looks like it has swallowed Viagra it’s so inflated. We try the local Italian deli, reputationally one of the best in the South East, but whose bread is too soft, too close in texture to resemble those I know across Italy. Do migrant Italian taste buds weather after 30 years living overseas enough to believe this is now authentic, or is it simply a matter of profit and the Italian baker caters for average though increasingly worldly British taste buds?
The Problem with Olives
More rejection for Grandparents who try hard to accommodate their English boy from Abruzzo, not understanding that briny black olives nor the supermarket olive pot marinated in a spiky overpowering herb essence is like presenting a green monster to eat for their grandson. Soon a little face scrunches up when olives are mentioned; oh to find fleshy water cured olives so good they only need a simple lick of peppery olive oil.
Thank Goodness for the Cheese Man
Cheese …luckily we have a Dutch man who sells incredible cheeses at our local market and seems to have nailed A’s taste buds when we explained where we’d been living. With an acknowledgement of his life before, the cheese man gives him something a little different each time we visit; it’s new, it entertains…we’re back to ceremony once again and a life of not just Pecorino! I nearly whooped with joy when Little A at his first playgroup spat out the creamy, orange cube that some large conglomerate calls cheddar and donates to nurseries on a PR exercise, there was also an inward smile too when told that he’d rejected ‘Cheese Strings’.
Rejection of Kids Menus
We’ve been to a couple of local restaurants claiming to serve Italian where the Pasta Machine Kid has rejected the Vesuvius hot overcooked slurry served on scalding-hot plates. Thankfully he hasn’t had to suffer the wine! With such food I wonder what decade I’m living in, and gasp as I hear locals lauding the chef on the “best Italian food [they’ve] ever had”; is this really what Italian cooks are driven to just 17 miles outside London? Is this the cook’s perception of the English palate, and that digestion is express, each course rapidly pushed onto the table before the previous is finished? Mama sits contemplating what really is the influence of food in media? From now on we’ll have to hunt out and make a list of local Italian restaurants where menus describe pots of honey served with cheese, where there is no mention of a kids menu and the word “doughball” is not even heard sotto voce or seen sotto scritto…
Ugly Truths
Life wasn’t all la foodie dolce vita. No longer is there the ugly truth of explaining where our neighbours’ bunnies have vanished to nor what an enormous buck is doing to slip of a doe. Despite having a strong belief in nose to tail eating if you’re going to eat meat, being invited to watch turkeys being scalded and plucked in wheelbarrows and listening to the crunch of a chicken’s beak being cut off and made ready for the soup pot isn’t high on my enjoyment register. This is life in rural Italy whether you are old or young and you can’t hide, there is no sentimentality shown where food is concerned. I no longer mentally replace my neighbour’s face with the witch in Hansel & Gretel as I listen to the sad bleets of a lamb fattened in the dark that my little boy used to “baa” to after he was introduced to him, nor do I have to attempt a cheery social smile as we are presented with the newly named tethered calf freshly removed from its Mother for fattening that will move no further in its life than the 2.5 metre rope it’s tied to. None of these experiences created pain for Little A, he watched, he listened, smiled but hopefully they have left an imprint somewhere in his sub-conscious to value the life of his dish and that it doesn’t start on a white meat tray.
Go kindly next time you sigh and tell an ex-pat child or immigrant child to eat up as you think fussy eater. Their combined hyper alert taste buds and the ceremonies they associate with eating deserve more than you simplifying your dishes as the greater and tastier. Ask “what, how & why” for a foodie adventure through a child’s eye.
Sam Dunham
@midlifemumme
Latest posts by Sam Dunham (see all)
- An Invite to Lunch at Jamie’s Italian St Albans - February 22, 2016
- Candelara’s Light & Christmas Cheer – Italy’s Unusual Christmas Market - December 11, 2015
- Bostrengo – No Ordinary Little Rice Cake from Le Marche - November 28, 2015
Italy and the UK explored via travel, food and folklore blogged by a Mid-Life Mum.
14 Responses to “Pasta Machine Kid Tales –10,000 on Cheese, Bread and Olives”
September 4, 2014
Francesca StillNever realised this about developing taste buds. What a gourmet kid!
September 3, 2014
Pasta Machine Kid Tales –10,000 on Cheese...[…] What happens when you move a child from Abruzzo Italy to a new land with different food? Where does the consideration of food cultural identity sit in society? […]
September 2, 2014
Helen FreeSo interesting.
September 3, 2014
MidLifeMumThank you so much Helen
June 15, 2015
AnnaI am not the Facebook etc generation so I hope this is the best way to reply to you Sam? Having had to relocate from Umbria where we lived for 15 years, to St Albans, and knowing the Abruzzo because some of our family were born and live there, may I say that it was a big food shock for us too and we are in our late 60’s!!!
The article was excellent at highlighting the difference in the eating habits of Italian children and English ones. We have found that a stall in St Albans market opp Vision Express does sell vegetables which are as close as you can get to vegetables sold in Italian shops, unless you grow your own. Nowhere locally offers Italian food as you would know it but Pizza Express in St Albans can produce a good one for little A and for us. too.
Another local girl, now with a small son, lives in Rome and has produced her first cookbook. I weep with longing as I read her blog called Rachel eats. One can follow the recipes but never the same is it?
We are in the Abruzzo next week and will think of you and try out some of your recommendations. In the meantime we are enjoying your MidLifeMum blog as we are grandparents to 2 small children who live in St Albans too.
June 22, 2015
Sam DunhamWe must meet up Anna Maria! Thank you so much for taking the time to write such a lovely comment and give such good advice! I know the market stall you are talking about! Rachel’s blog is wonderful isn’t it, I love her cookbook, I take a sly 5 minutes out a day just reading its great stories, hopefully I am going to be seeing her and Lucca in July.
June 23, 2015
AnnaSiamo in Abruzzo vicino Alba Adriatica e poi Loreto Apruntino….fa caldo! Anna
June 23, 2015
Sam DunhamFortunato! sono andatoa Skye la settimana scorsa e freddo da morire!
September 2, 2014
HelenI witnessed little one year A. eating prosciutto and ravioli and everything L’Aquila and Teremo had to offer.
September 2, 2014
Sue FirthThis mad me feel quite sad. I’m sorry you’ve had to relocate to the UK. I’m sorry A is having to endure the misguided interpretations that pass as ‘real; authentic; organic; zero miles’ or whatever new tag the marketing/food industry are attaching as the mode of the moment to get us to try and eat the tasteless fodder passed off as food in the UK. Having an attachment to Abruzzo myself and having been involved with the food industry for several years, I became so disillusioned with the UK ‘food industry’. Industry being the operative word. Anything for a quick buck. So many ethical small producers start out with good intentions and good products. Only to either fail because they won’t/don’t play industries’ games, or eventually sell out to the larger conglomerates giving them a handsome profit. But the product becoming an ‘all-so-ran’ with quality ingredients being sacrificed to fit in with profit margins. The only loosers are the consumers. I hope you will return to Abruzzo to feed the body, soul and the mind. We can always find a place for you!
September 2, 2014
Sam DunhamI think in the UK if you have a huge purse you can shop really really well at local farmers markets, there are some amazing products but who in the current climate has £5 to spend on bread multiple times a week? Amazing food doesn’t come cheap, and we both know that in Italy with the amount of work it takes, but I am always surprised at just how much extra that costs in the UK. I think the saddest thing is Italian restaurants what you’d think a food revolution never happened outside London. Don’t worry we’ll be back to Abruzzo for a top up soon, and we can always go down to London which we did recently to the Abruzzese restaurant there and where A ate every single thing on his plate 🙂
September 2, 2014
Sam DunhamMatilde thank you so so much, Michelle yep came back in April, an easy life beckoned, it’s actually been wonderful so far even food wise generally I’ve been enjoying the variety!
September 2, 2014
Matilde BusanaGreat piece !
September 2, 2014
Michelle FabioI didn’t realize you were in the UK! Have to agree with him on the olives…… 😉