Travelers have always come to the Mediterranean in search of secret knowledge: the unblended wine, the cove no guidebook has yet betrayed, the recipe in which sunlight, salt and stone seem to have been quietly folded together. Yet of all the quests that have drawn outsiders to these shores, none is older, more universal, or more touchingly optimistic than the search for substances that might persuade the body to love.
Continue reading The Mediterranean’s Long Romance with Desire: A Brief History of Love PotionsTag: Food
Of First Fruits and Late Summers: The Long Memory of the Mediterranean Harvest
There is a particular hour in the Mediterranean autumn, when the heat has loosened its grip but the light still falls thick as honey, in which one can almost believe that nothing has changed since antiquity. A man bends over an olive tree. A woman lifts a basket of figs onto a low stone wall. Somewhere a bell rings, calling no one in particular. It is in this hour, more than in any museum, that the region remembers itself.
Continue reading Of First Fruits and Late Summers: The Long Memory of the Mediterranean Harvest