The Tastebud Reader

There are
days in the
summertime
which are
so hot and
humid that
there is
nothing to
be done
except lay prostrate in a hammock with a good read.
Always a sucker for a beautiful cover photo and catchy title, Gary Paul Nabhan's Songbirds, Truffles, and Wolves: An American Naturalist in Italy practically leaps off of the shelf into one's hands. From the title alone a promise of Italian countryside, rare foods, and nature lures the reader into its pages. Gary Nabhan is an ethnobotanist who embarks on a journey from Florence to Assisi covering the footsteps of Saint Francis along a two hundred mile route. The story that emerges from Nabhan's thoughts and walk gives the reader much to ponder. One theme in the book is that of a food's Mother Country. Nabhan, because of his vocation, knows much more than the average person about the origins of foods and the food lines into other countries as the result of migration from place to place in human history. He is struck by the Old World and its assumption that certain foods have been there always. The world, for example, readily links tomatoes with Italians but it is a native of Peru. The fruit spent a few hundred years being cultivated and cooked to perfection in Europe, and even though it is a New World contribution, this fact has been largely forgotten. Nabhan takes us on a walk of change, change in the environment, change in food thought, and change within himself. His "stories within a story" stay with the reader for quite some time as he relates how United States immigrants take big risks to smuggle in seeds from their homeland, sometimes sewn within their hemlines. Nabhan tells of the dangers of eating unknown foods with trials of growing fava beans and the perils preparing corn maize when it first landed in Europe. As with many things that transfer from culture to culture, the Indian method of preparing maize did not accompany the seeds. The book allows a very personal entry into Nabhan's emotional and social make-up during his stay in Italy and it allows the reader to slip easily into his thoughts and movements along the trail. Don't be surprised if you find yourself having cravings for pasta and truffle oil or gazing at the Italian wine section a little longer than what was once your norm. This book teaches the reader to think about food in a whole new light.