Snippets from the Italian Scene
Italian Vegetarianism
Still on the subject of mail, I recently was asked if there are regions in Italy where the cuisine would qualify as vegetarian (even if it it's not called vegetarian per se), "because meat etc. is scarce for one reason or another." The answer to this question is no -- there aren't any regions of Italy one might term vegetarian. This doesn't mean, however, that large segments of the urban and rural populations weren't effectively vegetarian until well until after World War II. The reason: Poverty, so harsh it was simply called Miseria (misery). To give an idea of what it was like, here's a passage describing conditions in Puglia, from "Lettere Meridionali," a book published in 1885 by Pasquale Villari, Senator of the Realm: "The farmers charged with the cultivation of the more distant estates live there almost year round, returning home to their wives and children every two or three weeks. At the estates they live in halls dug into the earth, sleeping in niches scratched into the walls. They do have sacks of straw upon which they sleep dressed; indeed, they never undress. They are commanded by a massaro, who gives each a flat dark loaf of bread that weighs about a kilo every morning; it is called a panrozzo [a coarse loaf of bread], and is supplied by the landlord. The farmers work from dawn to dusk, taking a half-hour break at ten to rest and eat some of their bread. In the evening, once the work is done, the massaro lights a fire in the hall and brings a pot of water with just a touch of salt to a boil. In the meantime the farmers line up, slicing their bread and putting it in their wooden bowls. The massaro pours a ladle of water over the bread, and sprinkles it with a few drops of oil. This is what they eat year round, calling it water-salt. They never receive anything else, except during the threshing season, when they’re given one to two liters of weak wine, which allows them to work even harder. These farmers set aside some of their panrozzo each day, to sell or to take home to the family; in all their wages consist of the bread, about 132 lire per year, and a half a tomolo [a unit of volume no longer used] each of beans and grain, which they receive after the harvest." In the north, Mr. Villari says, the diet was again monotonous, but based on polenta. Unfortunately, polenta is filling but not a complete food, and as a result pellagra, a fatal combination of nutritional deficiencies, was widespread.
Fast forwarding a couple of generations, the late Mr. Cherubini, a retired baker whose eyes would light up at the thought of boiled potatoes served plain he would enjoy as a boy, told me that when he was growing up out in the Tuscan countryside in the teens, his family subsisted on greens and legumes -- they had meat and eggs, but sold both to raise cash. Meat? 2 pounds of boiled beef on Sunday. This for 7 people, and he said he was well off. People living under these conditions are essentially vegetarian. But not from choice. For more on the peasant diet (in the Veneto), see Dino Coltri's remarks.
More on meats and vegetables in the diet.
A presto,
Kyle Phillips
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