Everything I ate in Puglia and how it made me feel

food as an emotional state

Sunday

I arrived feeling sleep deprived, hungover and troubled. It was mid-afternoon and dinner was planned for 8pm. I took a shower and drank a lot of water.

We met for a ‘welcome circle’ before dinner, where everyone on the retreat shared a bit about why they were there. There was a bowl of fat green olives, easily the best olives I’ve ever eaten. The staff handed out plates of strawberry cream cake which I could not eat being allergic to strawberries and in my preventing-of-my-gallbladder-freaking-out diet.

At dinner the first thing we were served was a piece of deep-fried bread topped with sweet tomato sauce and really pokey basil. I was frightened of the fried bread, but I was ravenous, and I ate a portion of it in a mad, cautious way, half cutting, half tearing at it as though I did not know how to use my knife and fork.

I then ate orecchiette in a sauce that seemed the same as the tomato sauce on the scary fried bread and I lined up the little ears, nesting them on my fork with a gentle push. This was followed by a neat, shallow square of parmigiana, which definitely had cheese in it, and I tried to wrestle the aubergine away from the cheese, but I ate some cheese anyhow and I hoped it wouldn’t haunt me in the night. I took a supplement that is supposed to help people with gallstones to digest food without it causing them problems and its possible it worked as I didn’t have any issues during the night.

orecchiette

Monday

Breakfast was a flotilla of cakes – fruit, cream, chocolate, pistachio, vanilla! I felt so depressed that I couldn’t eat any, but I mean also that I felt depressed. I’d been to the yoga and breathwork session and sobbed silently all the way through. My body and brain often refuse to align, and yoga always reveals that. Fiza, who led the movement sessions said several times as we stretched and breathed you are sovereign in your body, you are safe and confronting how far away from that I felt was revelatory but painful. I had to wipe my tears away from my yoga mat with the edge of my tote bag. I made a mental note to do more yoga. I had the desire to cut little slices of different cake anyhow, just to feel the knife sinking through the various textures of crumb. I ate some pineapple, kiwi fruit, cherry tomatoes with salt and pepper and a couple of pieces of bread. There was fresh peach juice, and I drank half a glass of it in two large gulps. I then ate two marmite-flavoured rice cakes in my room. I lamented not being able to eat several slices of cake for breakfast. Or the large, noble, church-like mound of ricotta, bright white like the sun was bouncing off it in the centre of the breakfast table.

cake flotilla and Matilda the dog

For lunch there was a lovely salad with chickpeas, potato and beetroot, followed by trofie in a courgette and mint sauce. The pasta had the most wonderful texture, soft but chewy in a way that slowed down my eating of it.

trofie with courgette and mint

In the afternoon, Jade, who runs the retreat business offered to take me to the local beach. I had a swim and a float and felt a little more in my body, held by the buoyancy of salty water, it was safe to let go. The sea was so clear. The ocean is a church that makes me understand what it means to worship.

At dinner we were served a little bruschetta followed by pasta. The bruschetta was courgette and ricotta and so I was given a variant on the gluten-free option, which was a half roll, toasted, topped with avocado and courgette. The roll was very brittle and when I bit into it, it shattered, sending half onto the floor, a quarter into my lap and the remainder on my plate. I ate the lap piece and the plate piece and the cats under the table enjoyed the rest. For the pasta course I was given an option because it was cheesy, so I ordered prawn spaghetti. The pasta was in a rich coral pink sauce topped with a single raw prawn, that was so sweet and fresh I almost cried again. Lemon zest beautiful against the pink. I asked for more bread and left green bowl as clean as a hungry cat might. We were then served a small plate of smoked salmon topped with finely sliced apple. It was rich and fresh. It was late when this last course arrived and as soon as I finished eating it I went back to my room, sleepy and wired in equal measure.

magical prawn spaghetti