For the next month or so, I will be writing from Talamona, a small town just east of Morbegno, as if that will tell you anything. Morbegno is a somewhat bigger town that is at the mouth of the Valtellina, just east of Lake Como. Bellagio? Where George Clooney has a house? At least I think he still has a house there. He did at one time.
In any case, it is very cold here, and it is nice to hear the local dialect, which will come in handy in creating my Franco Fasiolo character. Frécc! is what one hears out on the street often: Cold! And boy is it.
Typical for small towns in Italy, there are three grocery stores, one that rivals any supermarket in the United States, and two smaller ones, one of which is very good in both quality and price, all within walking distance in this town of 5,000.
It is in this nice small one that I set this post. Something about the change of scenery, and the extreme cold, has given me my appetite back. Before I left, I could barely eat a peanut butter sandwich, and had cut out wine and coffee all together. I actually felt quite good.
But something about the change made me instantly begin again with the wine, coffee and tea, and I actually bought a two-pack of canned tuna with which I made pasta, and then another single that I used to make a sandwich.
Today I was in the market and saw other things that looked appealing: sausages, a pork roast, slices of veal . . . I almost bought the veal, along with butter and white wine. I already had capers at home, to make veal piccata. Somehow the tuna was the gateway protein, leading first to veal and then to pork, a dangerous path.
Then I thought of the poor baby calf that was slaughtered to make the veal, probably after leading a miserable life, and I just couldn't do it. I sadly but also solidly put the other makings for the dish back on the shelf and continued with my shopping, worried that I might get to the point where I just can't eat anything anymore because of the moral and ethical implications.
So why, I thought on my walk back to my apartment, can I still eat vegetables, given what I know, from the latest research, about their sentient abilities? Certainly a big part of the difference is that many plants can be eaten without harm; in fact, they thrive on it. See my earlier post on pruning roses. And if I am going to be completely honest, I don't think any amount of research is going to make me feel bad about eating an onion or a clove of garlic. I am not a Jain, after all, as much as I admire their philosophy. Briefly, Jains will not eat any plant that must be killed to be harvested: so no root vegetables (garlic, onion, carrot . . . ) but certainly apples and things like peas and beans do not present a problem because these can be picked without killing the plant from which they originate.
I think it all goes back to a philosophy I developed when I was in my early to mid twenties or so, one of a sensual morality. If doing something repulses me, it is wrong, and no amount of rational thought will change my mind about it. Could I or would I kill a calf so that I could eat its meat? Not a chance. I would starve first.
But there is something about the ontology of an onion that removes it so far from the realm of my senses, the theater in which my sensual morality flourishes, that it does not pose a problem for me to kill it and eat it. And I doubt if any amount of scientific research on the sophisticated lives of onions will change how I feel about it.
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