The New Gastronomes

Good, clean, and fair, bien sûr

To all the friends who envy us, I offer some consolation: being a UNISG student in Parma/Colorno can be as hazardous as it is joyful. Premature signs of aging, funny belly, hangovers, anxiety—long is the list of injuries that slaughter us on the battlefield.

But we cannot have that, can we?

On the other hand, we cannot resort to heavy medicine every time we are hit by one of the above. We should instead patch ourselves up with natural remedies and healthy food. I just so happen to have a couple of tricks up my sleeve.

Puffy eyes

After an intense week of work, or several, you wake up one morning and as you brush your teeth, it hits you: since when do I have bags under my eyes? Since you work and go out on the same night, darling. Night after night after night. Grab two cotton pads al più presto and soak them with cornflower water. (You know, the one you don’t have in your bathroom cupboard right now?) Put the pads in the freezer for five minutes. Pop them out and right on top of each eye. Leave for ten minutes and enjoy the break. (And if you don’t have cornflower water, no problem: just freeze two slices of cucumber instead, and indulge in the same way.)

Stomach plague

It happens. Especially around here or on study trips—we don’t speak about it, but word spreads. If your stomach decides to finally protest against your mistreatments, you should take it easy for a while and restrict your diet to the following. (Don’t panic, Gastronome, it’s only for a couple of days.) Cooked white rice and its cooking water (for starch), fennel broth with some salt (i.e. more cooking water but fennel-flavoured this time—a special treat), and bananas. Drink a lot of mineral water, and herbal teas made of rosemary, thyme, and sage. (You might want to have some honey with that.)

Garlic/onion slayers

When you eat out so much, whether at ALMA or restaurants or on study trips, you eat a lot more bulbs than you would think. Parsley, basil, and spinach have a reputation for their capacity to capture certain components responsible for the persistence of garlic/onion flavours. One hundred points for whoever can procure some for us during the next study trip.

Before going out

You should never go for aperitivo on an empty stomach. So: either have dinner at one of those places where they have the little pizza pieces and all (then you’re fine), or have aperitivo for a while before dinner, but definitely eat something before. Try to go for some lipids (shouldn’t be that hard in Parma): if you have time to eat something cooked, fine, if not, have a couple of spoonfuls of olive oil with bread and salt.

Stress/troubled sleep

Anxiety can be part of our life here as the timing for assignments is usually very short. And stress is the slippery slope to troubled sleep, which means enhanced anxiety. Should that felonious felon hit you along the way, go to one of the shops that sell plants (the one on Via XXII Luglio in Parma is perfect) and get four of the following (according to your taste and to what you will find): hawthorne, orange blossom, passion flower (sorry, nothing but sleep in that promisingly named plant), verbena, melissa, valerian, lime blossom. Mix them together and brew as a tea every evening (one spoonful of plant material per cup). Drink one cup before dinner, and one more an hour before going to bed.

Hangover

The main problem in this case is dehydration. So drink a lot of liquid (before and after), but not just anything. No coffee (it’s a diuretic), no orange juice or any acidic drinks (seems you’re going to have to stay awake by yourself). Just mineral water, or even better, salted meat broth (if you happen to have made some last night—otherwise don’t even think about it). Forget your grandmother’s miracle mix of coffee and salt, or tomato juice and Tabasco. There is no miracle remedy: only water, broth, water! And, you might also stop falsely promising to yourself “never again.” You’re just hurting yourself more.