Contadina
Welcome to my new substack! I have been planning this for about a year but have yet to get into the habit of writing every day for various reasons. Ideas run through my head and then, like old plumbing, back up, turn into sludge, and I lose my ability to articulate myself. When it really is just practice.
2022 disabled me. I caught Covid in February while in Tbilisi and lost my sense of taste and smell. I also developed excruciating headaches and cognitive loss, and I probably didn´t help myself by scrolling on TikTok for hours because I couldn´t muster enough mental strength to read anything or watch a movie. Everything tasted dull; I had to rely on texture and sugar; otherwise, I could not eat. This went on for months.
Then in March, my mum was hospitalized with Covid, Atrial fibrillation, and a severe UTI, which caused memory loss. I had to go to the USA to help manage this new chapter in my family´s life. One in which my mother requires full-time care. Fortunately for my sister and me, she took out long-term health insurance years ago, a real gift to us because elder care is a for-profit industry in the States, and it is fucking expensive.
While in San Diego, I stayed with my friends who grow Psilocybin mushrooms. Over lockdowns in Italy, Ettore and I took mushrooms and frolicked in the garden with our dogs and cats. I communed with bees and took up beekeeping. I decided to start microdosing while I was in California, and after only a few days, my prolonged covid headaches subsided, I felt a bit more clarity, so I could function. My olfactory system started to heal, and I began to recognize aromas in food and could taste them. It wasn´t 100%, but it was a start. It took a good six months of regular microdosing to regain my sense of taste and smell, and when I came back and took time to actually think about it, I noticed that I didn´t physically feel smells in my nose as I used to. Instead, I felt them in my brain; at least, that was my perception.
I wrote one article in 2022. An article about Lazio´s wine for Alice Feiring. I am very proud of that article because I put a considerable effort into it, but I am also ashamed because what should have taken me a week or two ended up taking me four or five months. I just could not read or write for the first half of 2022.
This is all to say that though I had planned to have this substack going last year, I haven´t felt able to until now. Does anyone need to read what I have to say? Probably not. I know I am not the strongest writer at the moment. However, over the past few years, I have met some of the most exciting people with stories that need to be told. Feminist winemakers, a group of people who saved their local territory from becoming a golf resort, people putting in work to create a better, more sustainable future that is inclusive.
My substack is intersectional and feminist and focuses on food, wine, and agricultural practices that are sustainable, nourishing, and with purpose. I want to write reviews on cookbooks I love, interview amazing people, and give a spotlight to radical women and men in this field. I will throw in a few plant-based recipes here and there. I live in Italy, and my primary focus is on Lazio, but I have a deep passion for Georgia, California, and all traditional food cultures. The word Contadina means peasant woman in Italian. Today it implies a person of the land, of the earth, with roots, and of the countryside. These are the people who fascinate me. Those who spend their lives tending to their small piece of this earth develop inner wisdom. They know they are stewards rather than owners. Im interested in that legacy.
You seem like a pretty good writer to me. I think the best words are the ones that come from the heart. Looking forward to following along to hear more about the important things that you have to say!