Corsello Butcheria Blog

This is our first post in the Corsello Butcheria blog. Going forward, we will use this blog to share with you — our customers and community — our skills, knowledge, and expriences. We will share recipes, cooking techniques, and various other insights and stories. Check back often to see what we are doing, and thank you for your support of Corsello Butcheria!

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In a world where it seems few agree, and in which differences of opinion are an issue, food is something we all have in common. We can all enjoy good food, regardless of our affiliations, our motivations, our experience or our values.  Food is something that can always bring us to the same table and good food is universally recognized as such. No matter our education, our sophistication, our religion, our roots, good food is good

I always say there are two types of people in the world: there are those who eat to live and those who live to eat. I count myself among the latter. Food is such an important priority in my life, where it comes from, its impact on the world, its quality. I have always been interested in food, from its origins to its consumption. I read books about the contributions the New World gave to the Old. I raised my own vegetables and dreamed of being self sustaining. I learned the edible and medicinal qualities of wild plants and fungi. Cooked and experimented with preparation, taking whatever opportunity to learn from others different techniques and options for preparation of basic foodstuffs.

But it wasn’t until I spent so much time in Italy, with people, normal people, the average Joe, or Giuseppe, mind you, that I came to understand how good and central, food could be, even in the most mundane of situations, to our social lives and well being. First thing was that everybody, and I mean everyone, had an enormous knowledge about their food as well as incredible skill at preparing it. Second, getting together, as a guest, as the host, every aspect of the meal was in comune: contribution, preparation, and consumption. Lots of time preparing together, lots of time eating together, and lots of time sitting around talking after the meal. Finally, folks went to great lengths and paid incredible detail, to the quality.

When I came back to the United States after having lived in Rome for seven years, I really missed that aspect of shopping, of the beginning preparation, gaining inspiration, based on my conversations, of going to my butcher, seeing what is quality. Here we don't shop that way. The trip to the grocery store to me is a very lonely experience whereas when you go to a market and you're dealing with a small food purveyor, you're talking to them. Right off, you're encountered with this case that's full of different cuts, different animals, things that for me I'd never seen before. The experience was a little bit overwhelming but also being part of the preparation of a meal it started when you were going to buy. 

I stand for a transformed world and that includes our food system. I can't do that by doing what everyone else is doing. If I start participating in what I call the meat grinder, the large scale, huge distances of the food supply chain and industrialized production of our food in this country, then nothing will change. My intention for this blog is to share with you my experience. Of the food production and distribution system, the food itself, it’s preparation and what makes it quality.