Tracey LawsonBesprekingen

I loved this book. I've been trying to improve my family's eating habits, and keep seeing references to the virtues of a Mediterranean diet. The medical papers always say something like, "and yet the food is not the whole story; the benefits of the Mediterranean diet are also attributed to the lifestyle, the sources of the ingredients, the social aspect of the meals," and so on. And the cookbook I bought (The New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook, by Nancy Harmon Jennings), like most sources I have found, has wonderful recipes from all over the Mediterranean: Greece, Tunisia, Spain, Morocco, Italy, France, Lebanon.

Yet each of these places (maybe each area in each country) has its own typical cuisine based on its own lifestyle. This book is a complete story of one of those cuisines. The town of Campodimele is an Italian mountain town built around a medieval walled city. It is famous for the longevity of its inhabitants, who are frequently active and hard-working into their eighties and nineties.

The book follows these people month by month through a year, each chapter focusing on one component of the diet (olives, greens, bread, game animals, etc.), how it is produced, gathered, preserved, prepared, cooked, and eaten. Yes, there are recipes, or more accurately, instructions for preparation, but it is not a cookbook. It is a way of life.

Maybe I can't replicate this lifestyle, but my local farmer's market is today. I will look at it with new eyes.

This is a book of praise to a lifestyle that is, for most of us, unattainable. In the Italian village of Campodimele the residents enjoy an unusually long lifespan. And it's not just long, but the elderly residents enjoy an active old age. this has caused them to be investigated into what causes them their longevity. There are clearly going to be a mixture of factors, but food and diet has to be one factor, which is where this books, part documentary, part cook book, comes along. The author visits the village to discover the cause of the long lives and falls for the lifestyle and food. And I can see why, it's all very idyllic. Sugar coated, in fact.
Presented as a year of events related to growing their own food, harvesting, preserving and eating it. the residents are, almost universally, over 70 and still spry. No-one seems to have an office job, no-one seems to have a lack of time, the sun is always shinning and no-one ever suffers from a failure of the crop to take, or snow until March. It is a continual praise of the self sufficiency lifestyle, but the problems of that are never touched on. It was interesting, the history of the food they cook, the methods of preserving and attitudes to food, but it's noticeable that it makes no effort what so ever to work out how this would be compatible with the life that most of us lead. The cynic in me thinks that this praise of nature and self sufficiency is written by someone who has the money behind them to be able to cope with the vagaries of a crop failure.

Very enjoyable travel/cookery book. I haven't tried any of the recipes, but they certainly sound good!

Half travel book, and half cookery book. A real pleasure to read, but makes you hungry!

To my Italian Nona,food was life. Not just the preparation and serving, but the growing, harvesting, preserving, and to a lesser extent the shopping, kept her going. In fact, I have fond memories of rolling, squeezing, peeling, chopping, cutting, tasting, picking from the garden.

So I really appreciated the sentiment and story in this memoir cum cookbook celebrating food as a way of life. The residents of the town of Campodimele Italy, a small town in the mountains between Naples and Rome, are noted for their longevity. Tracey Lawson, an English teacher who had been living in Tuscany heard of the village and set out to learn more. As she says on the back cover:
I came to Campodimele hoping I might learn how to live longer, but discovered something much more important -- how to live well.
For over three years, she visited with the residents, was allowed into their pastures, their gardens, their vineyards, their olive orchards, their kitchens, their cantina, and their hearts. By observing, then working as she was instructed, she was able to see the value in living off the land, eating seasonally, but still preserving the bounty for times when fresh was not available. She pressed olive oil, made sausage, shelled beans, picked various greens, made goat cheeses, rolled pastas, and climbed mountain roads with 80 and 90 years olds to tend the goats, pick the olives, and call the hens home at night to roost.

Her mouth-watering month by month description of food, recipes and traditions brought back many memories of the Italian kitchen of my Nona, and gave me a deeper understanding and appreciation of the hows and whys of many of the foods. It held a few surprises e.g., the inhabitants of Campodimele, who regularly live well into their 90's, use very little salt, but are very generous with peperoncino, a red chili pepper they grow, dry and sprinkle liberally on everything. I don't remember that ingredient in my grandmother's repertoire, and she did love her salt. I suspect it's a perfect example of regional differences. Each area used what grew well there and was readily available.

Subtitled The Lifestyle of Longevity in Campodimele, Italy, it's a treasure of a book - particularly if you love Italian food, have an Italian ancestor, or just want to learn to, as Lawson says, "live well." It's yummy, it's interesting, and it's a definite plus for your food collection. Even if you don't want to try the recipes, the philosophy of living off the land, living simply, and looking at your food as an enjoyable gift will light up your reading day.½

Wonderful memoir and cookbook. A year spent in the village of Campodimele, Italy...where the residents have been known for their long lives, staying healthy and active into their last years. Dividing the book into the 12 months of the year, the author recounts the seasonality of the foods available to the people and the ways they are prepared. The text is peppered with Italian sayings that give life to the reading. The recipes are very simple and basic. There are numerous colored photographs of the people who share their knowledge and their village with the author.