Primi, first course

The kitchen windows have fogged over. It’s time to eat.

Empty plates are passed around and returned heavier. Everyone sprinkles a spoon or two of freshly graded pecorino cheese on top, even though a few handfuls were already mixed into the sauce.

Pasta is best eaten hot so the only words said now are the routine compliments to the chef. News is grumbling on an old TV in corner of the room. Something about a politician everyone hates and this weekend's cherry festival. Above the TV hangs a small wooden statue of the Virgin Mary. Judging by her veil of dust, she hasn’t been touched in years. Bells outside ring less at this hour. The animals are settling in for bed.

Today was a long day and everyone is glad it’s over.

I’m the first to finish my pasta and turn my attention to the glass of vino rosso. It came from the neighbors. Everything seems to come from some neighbor if we don’t produce it on this farm.

What happens next is fairly predictable considering where I am in the world. It’s one of those stereotypes that actually holds true. Upon noticing my empty plate, either my host mom, dad, or sometimes both, will rapidly say, “Mangia Zane, mangia!” (eat, eat!) and before I can spit out a quick “no, grazie” my plate will be weighed down under a heaping scoop of pasta, again.

Truth be told, I’ve been testing different strategies to prevent this from happening. Eating slower in hopes someone else might receive the leftover scoops. Subtly building a wall in front of my plate to block my host’s line of sight (the big green salad bowl and one of the wine bottles in combination were most effective). For a couple days, I even tried pulling the ‘I think I have a minor gluten allergy’ and showed off a tiny skin rash on my arm (I cringe at the audacity of that one).

It would be a dirty lie to claim the pasta isn’t delicious in Sardinia. Yes, it may be over-romanticized by everyone who ever passed through the boot, as evident in your Instagram feed, but even an average bowl whipped up in 10 minutes by nonna will often surpass whatever you can find in an upscale restaurant back home.

So why my defiance? Is it because of the extra 10-pounds of butter that sneakily found a home around my hips?

No. It’s because no matter how good a dish is, after eating it 7-10 times per week, month after month, you will get sick of it.

In other words, I’m sick of being spoiled.

Tonight, it’s my host mom’s all-seeing eyes that spot the unforgivable naked plate lying before me. I didn’t even try to hide it. I haven’t all week. My strength to defy was beaten out of me long ago.

Pass the pecorino, per favore.

Secondo, main course

With roughly a pound of carbs and cheese behind me, I loosen my belt a notch and prepare for the main course. It’s the day after Easter so a special goat was butchered in celebration. For two years, this castrated fellow did nothing but enjoy life and eat food. Animals like this are expensive for a farmer to keep and tonight everyone seems eager to finally have the roles reversed.

Especially considering we can keep our balls.

A thick scent of roasted rosemary rolls through the house as mom pulls the big platter of meat and potatoes out of the oven. A feast.

My mouth is watering like I haven’t eaten in days. Why does that happen before every course here? I claim a large chunk of meat with a bit of fat melting off it and fill the remainder of my plate with lemony potatoes and carrots.

A voice in my head tells me to wait. It’s piping hot. I pay it no attention and promptly burn my mouth.

Compliments to the chef.

When people asked why I was moving to Sardinia, a perfectly valid question to ask your server in a restaurant in middle-of-nowhere Montana, I would casually mention something along the lines of learning to sail, practicing Italian, and crushing the island’s mystic centurions in bocce ball matches on the weekends.

I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t know a thing about Sardinia besides that it is a popular Mediterranean yacht hub (from my well-traveled aunt) and a blue zone (from a YouTube trailer for Zac Effron’s Down to Earth).

Blue zones are regions where people live far beyond the average life expectancy. There are five in the world: Sardinia (Italy), Okinawa (Japan), Nicoya Peninsula (Costa Rica), Ikaria (Greece), and Loma (California).

With promises of sailing and longevity in mind, I booked a one-way ticket.

Unsurprisingly, nothing went to plan.

I’m not in the ocean on a sailboat. I’m on a farm.

Speaking Italian? No. Trying to speak Sard, the island’s native tongue which is not a dialect of Italian.

As for my weekends, no time is spent relaxing with the gents playing bocce ball. Maybe there would be if there weren’t so many damn goats to milk.

Often we hear a single story or statistic about a place we know nothing about and allow it to completely shape our frame of reference. Which makes sense. Generalizations help us simplify life. It’s hard to understand everything, so we settle for an ounce of the truth, or for at least for what we believe to be the truth. The problem arises when we cling to generalizations so hard that we become blind to the reality in front of us.

Instead of seeing things as they are, we look for ways to fit experiences inside a box constrained by our expectations.

So no, I’m not sitting on the dock with a group of 120-year-old nonnos knocking back vino and slapping each other on the back while we trade dick jokes. But I’d be quite the ugly traveler to let that strange fantasy get in the way of me trying to understand the people I’m with now.

With this in mind, I ask the question that many researchers and Zac Efron have tried to answer:

“So, what’s the trick? How are you Sards living so long?”

Unsurprising, I get a mixed bag of responses.

“The food we eat is the food we can raise. That means we only eat what is in-season and natural.” Alessandro, the head of the farm, says from behind his dark beard which looks to be holding some notable-sized bread crumbs and maybe some cheese.

“Because our food is fresh, we don’t over-sterilize anything. Too many chemicals and antibiotics damage your gut”, adds my host mom as she picks out a different cut of goat for me to try.

Matteo, who looks 15 years younger than his age, partially agrees, “Sì sì, these are good things, but the real trick is to never eat sugar after lunch. Including fruit!”.

This raises a deep grumble from the corner of the table where Uncle Vincenzo always sits. He mumbles something in Sard and pours himself another glass of wine, his fourth.

“Look around,” Matteo smiles, “we have community”.

Taking note of the spread we have in front of us, it would be hard to deny that food isn’t playing some sort of role in Sardinian longevity. The goat I’m chewing on was butchered that morning. I led him out to pasture the day before. The pecorino cheese is a result of our work a couple months ago. The fresh ricotta was from yesterday’s sheep milk. The wine came from one neighbor, and the oil we freely drizzle on just about everything came from another. The red sauce that blanketed our beloved pasta came from last season's garden tomatoes.

This level of freshness extends to the eggs, vegetables, jams, most fruits and desserts, and even the water. Once a week, Uncle Vincenzo squeezes into his rusty 4x4 Suzuki and drives to a mountain spring where he refills the 20-liter jugs. Processed food in this home is a rarity rather than the norm. I’ve seen it only a handful of times in the form of gelato, cereal, and bologna.

Some may imagine this life as the life they want to live, calling it, “simple, and ideal”. I might describe them as “clueless, and possibly doomed”. The dream of quiet farm life is often held by those with once again, unrealistic expectations.

Except for the crow-eyed mother who is always overfeeding everyone, this life is nothing like the Pixar movies. In fact, it may be the farthest thing from it. You will sweat, bleed, burn, have blistered and splintered hands, slip in goat shit, get rammed by a goat while you’re slipping in goat shit, smell like it all day, hurt all day, lose gardens to bugs, chickens to foxes, sleep to storms, and when tomorrow comes, you’ll rise with the sun and do it all again.

The days are long. This seems to justify another glass of wine. The same wine we drink every day, but tonight it tastes better.

***

If food is one component of Sardinian longevity, the tough mentality is another.

The lifestyle requires it and the further inland you go, away from the glitzy hotels and yachts, the more apparent it becomes. You can see it in the way they carry themselves. A certain steadiness. Like the lone cowboys from the spaghetti westerns. A confidence born from knowing that no matter what happens, they could take care of themselves. It’s the most attractive form of confidence. Probably because it’s the hardest to fake.

To them, it wasn’t a long day. Just another day.

I remember my first conversation at this table a couple months ago.

“Is it your first time here?”

“No,” I answered promptly, maybe even arrogantly, and continued to share how I explored Italy two years prior while on a study abroad trip.

The family laughed. Embarrassed, my mind raced to find which Italian word(s) I botched. There was a long pause before anyone spoke. My host mom politely offered a thin smile which poorly hid the daggers in her eyes and spoke slowly to ensure I understood.

“We’re not in Italy. We’re in Sardegna. Capisci?”

“Ho capito.”, I nodded until my head almost fell off.

After visiting the island for nine days, D. H. Lawrence published Sea and Sardinia in which he described the island as,

“Lost between Europe and Africa, and belonging to nowhere”.

Maybe belonging to nowhere, or more accurately no one, but certainly not lost. The island’s position in the Mediterranean made it a strategic point in the Phoenician trading network as far back as the 8th century BC. This marked the start of a long and brutal procession of intruders who include, but aren’t limited to, the Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, and Byzantines.

As recently as 1943, in an effort to destroy Axis airfields, the Allies bombed Cagliari and left an estimated 1,000 civilians dead and 40,000 homeless. Cagliari’s population at the time was about 100,000. Intense bouts of internal struggle caused by infamous mountain-living bandits raged on from 1960 to 1997. It’s reported that within that period they made 150 kidnappings.

In one infamous case, the bandits shipped an ear of a boy back to his family to prove they meant business. Talk about an offer you can’t refuse.

I’m told this history is the reason everyone, and I do mean everyone, carries a traditional shepherd's knife (pattada). Uncle Vincenzo carries two.

The long history of this island may very well explain why the natives value autonomy and grit over everything else.

Be it the pillaging Phoenicians or floods of flashy tourists arriving on the crystal clear coastline, the Sards will endure.

Contorno, side dish

There’s plenty of meat left, but in the spirit of adventure, I reach for the mother of all cheeses, Callu de Cabrettu. Translated from Sard as “little stomach", this is a cheese that originated in a time before handy containers and refrigerators when shepherds would store milk in the stomachs of young goats. Left in long enough, the fresh milk reacts with the rennet and creates cheese. An intensely spicy, goaty cheese.

Holding the leathery yellow stomach in my hand, I scrape out a chunk and spread it roughly over a thin sheet of the island’s ancient bread, pane carasau. This sparks a chuckle between Alessandro and Uncle Vincenzo.

“You know what you’re about to eat? That’s the shepherd’s viagra.” hackles Alessandro as he takes his own massive bite and shoots a wink over to his wife.

“With fewer side-effects,” says Uncle Vincenzo raising his bushy eyebrows for a moment, “most of the time”.

He shakes his big head and pours another glass of wine.

Maybe this shepherd’s viagra is the secret to why Sardinia is the only blue zone where men live longer than women?

With this new hypothesis in mind, I choke down another slab. This time careful to avoid any straggling goat hairs.

“Listen, food is important. But before we can eat this food, we need to grow it. And it’s hard for one farmer to grow everything. So we specialize.” Matteo is further explaining why a sense of community is important for health span. “Remember how we traded goat meat for olive oil last week?”

I certainly did. One kilo of meat to three liters of oil. Square deal.

“It’s completely different in the cities of course, but here in the mountains, we are largely interdependent. This makes it really hard for us NOT to get along with each other.”

He’s on a roll.

“Community is like food. You make the cheese, I make the wine, and we both agree that cheese and wine are best together.”

The table likes that example. Everyone is nodding in agreement.

I’m still struggling to dislodge a goat hair from somewhere between my molars.

Dolce, dessert

Finished with her food, Elena the six-year-old of the family calls out for tiramisu. We made it last night and now it is chilled and ready to eat. I loosen my belt another notch and clear the table. The paper products are tossed into the same fire which heats the house. Most of the scraps tonight are bones, so I toss them to the dogs instead of the pigs. I put on a pot of coffee and return to the table where Uncle Vincenzo is telling another one of his mountain stories. This is the only time I hear him talk at length. He’s got a wild look in his eyes.

“At 19, no 18! At 18 I left with nothing but my rucksack and a knife..”

He’s holding up the same knife now. It looks so tiny in his hand.

“Eight months. Eight long months before I returned. And when I did, I knew how to work with goats, make cheese, build shelters, survive” his deep and raspy voice draws out the last word.

“Hundreds of goats. Quarantacento! My uncle and I took care of all of them.”

I shudder at the thought. No wonder he’s got a set of bear paws for hands.

Since he doesn’t eat tiramisu or really anything besides meat and cheese, he’s cutting slices of a homemade salami onto a wooden board using his thumb as the blades stopper. He should probably add 'knife work’ to his list of skills. It’s obvious he’s clocked in his 10,000 hours of salami slicing. Elena recently received her first pattada and is watching him carefully imitating the smooth rocking motion on her napkin. Uncle Vincenzo gives her a pointer and continues.

“Mio padre also lived in the mountains. When he came back, his favorite new skill was being able to roll a cigarette in his pocket. A perfectly rolled smoke would just appear after a minute of his hand fiddling around in his pocket. Like magic!”

I have trouble figuring the logistics of that. Maybe his dad had smaller paws?

“The only difference between my dad and I, is he stayed for two whole years..” there’s a dramatic pause (he’s got this part of the story fine tuned) “Two long years… after he was already married!”

He roars a terrible laugh that shakes everything on the table. I can’t help but join in.

This was his hero’s journey. The departure from comfort and routine into the abyss where adventure and challenge await. With newfound skills and knowledge, the hero returns home better able to serve the community. Joseph Cambell’s, The Hero With A Thousand Faces, popularized the term, and it’s since been used to analyze characters such as Odysseus, Luke Skywalker, and Shrek.

Uncle Vincenzo is like Shrek. A Shrek with a goat that follows him around instead of a donkey.

Digestivo, last call

It’s nearing midnight. Empty glasses are passed around and returned heavier with everyone’s preferred nightcap.

Matteo sticks with his coffee. Alessandro pours himself some mitro, made from the leaves of the myrtle bush that sits just outside the still steamy window. Mom is in the mood for something sweeter and asks for the limoncello. Elena sips a glass of warmed sheep’s milk. The chilled bottle of nocino, a dark brown liquor made from unripe walnuts, sits between Vincenzo and me. A bead of sweat runs down its side. It seems to know it won’t be sharing the same happy ending as our hero.

A toast to the long day. To another day.