Breaking Bread

Something I call "Alfredo Scallopini", a recent experiment.

It has been a while since I’ve written anything here in the pages of the Lupine Epicurean.  As many of my readers know, I spent the month of May in the Philippines.  I got married while I was there.  And when I got back I found it difficult to get back into the swing of things.  It has been five months since then, and it in reflecting on my trip there and on the writing I have been doing, it occurred to me that this was the perfect time to talk about my feelings on something that I call “breaking bread.” It has long been tradition in just about every culture in the world to have community and family moments of being together; breaking bread together.  I found this to be just as true in the Philippines as anywhere else.  As human beings we value the connections we have with our community.  Whether it be a family dinner, a gathering of friends, a luncheon of coworkers, or a grand celebration, our societal need to gather and feast is a core foundation of our cultures.

Those of you who have watched my web show on Youtube know that it is common for my friends and I to gather to eat and play games.  Often on the Sundays when we get together for a friendly game of Dungeons and Dragons, we start our day cooking out on the grill.  Each person who comes brings their own selection of meat, I throw it on the grill, and then we enjoy a lively conversation over a community meal.  I have always used this breaking bread together to enhance our experience and make hour event more enjoyable.  It will, of course, come as no surprise to anyone reading this that I talk about food a lot.  One of the main topics I engage in with every single one of my friends is food and its preparation.  It is through cooking and eating that I often learn about other cultures.  For years I have had food celebrations where the meal I cooked was a representation of a country or culture on a list of all the countries in the world I printed out long ago.  I remember on one such occasion cooking a four course Argentinian meal, and it even finding folk music from Argentina to play in the background.  Just as language and music are clear representations of culture, so is food.  From the Empenadas of Argentina to the Gyros of Greece, cuisine plays an integral part of culture.

While in the Philippines I found the same kind of communal eating.  A gathering of the family at various intervals in the day to feast is very important to maintaining the familial routine.  I joke about the fact that while there and on a Filipino diet with lots of rice I lost about ten pounds.  My wife- Cherilyn- was worried for a time that when she gets here to the U.S.  she will not be able to eat as much rice as she would like.  Two quote a Filipino friend of mine “as long as we got rice three times a day… we’re good.”  I assured her that she could eat all the rice that she wants to eat.  Like many other Asian nations often a Filipino family or groups of friends will engage in something the Chinese call happy family.  It is the act of ordering several dishes that everyone shares from so that everyone can experience all the different tastes.  This also has the effect of building a communal sense of sharing.  My experiences with cuisine in the Philippines was incredibly satisfactory.  And just furthered my belief in the idea of breaking bread.

Some time ago when Hillary Clinton was still Secretary of Defense there was a story of how she was promoting an idea of sharing of cuisine as a form of diplomacy.  I was actually shocked to see and read about so many protests to this notion of building relationships with other cultures.  I thought it was a brilliant idea based on the same precepts of how food and cuisine is such an integral part of our cultures around the world.  And I applauded the effort.  It seems to me that if more of us who have conflict, and disagreement, and so on could just sit down together over a meal and talk about how great the food tastes and how we would do it and what else we’d like to try; it seems to me the world would be a better place.

And so with this brief yet hopefully impactful treatise on food and culture, I begin again with continuing the Lupine Epicurean foodie site.  I will be once again be posting more recipes, more web shows, more reviews of restaurants I have visited, and sharing my thoughts about food and cuisine with all of you.  Thank you all who have helped to make the lupine epicurean a success as we close in on ending the second year of this website.  I hope you all will continue to come here, and enjoy the articles, recipes and reviews.  Bon appétit!