LA: You were traveling in some of the places in the world that have some of the best food and are famous for their [00:21:00] incredible diets. What did you eat and what role did food play in this, um, in your odyssey?
LC: Food plays an enormous role in my life, generally, not just travel. But yes, I was in the world of culinary delights. I was in Italy, in Sicily, and I was in a place called Castle Breno, which is known for its mushroom pasta and they forage for them with dogs, not pigs, uh, like they do in France. And I got into a massive argument with a restaurateur who refused to believe that I don’t like to eat mushrooms and he sort of forced me to eat his mushroom pasta, which was completely delicious and a total revelation. Um, and he ended up sitting next to me at the table and bringing out all of these amazing rare truffles from the kitchen and explaining how to find them in the woods. And their unit costs and the different tastes that they have.
In Minorca I stayed at a little town called Sant Lluís and I ended up cooking for myself a lot there. You go to [00:22:00] a- a shop where you can buy eggs and they roll them in newspaper for you instead of putting them in egg boxes. So it’s all very locally grown and delicious in Minorca. In Favignana there’s a restaurant called La Bettola where they sort of adopted me and you can get the most delicious spaghetti there. And Lorenzo, who is, uh, the son of the owner, goes out every morning at 4:00 AM to catch calamari.
LA: Coming up, Laura took six months while Odysseus in the poem was wandering for 10 years and he’s encountering temperamental gods and goddesses.
LC: In my book, Enchanted Islands, it’s all about making this intimidating text very accessible and very non-academic.
LA: [00:23:00] And so you kind of describe these scenes in this myth. They’re all scenes that I’ve kind of, like, have been, like, fragmented for me and I’ve never realized they’re all in the same poem.
LC: It’s a very long bloody poem.
LA: [laughs]
LC: So there’s loads of different scenes and things that happen.
LA: I mean, I guess it was a famously long journey, so it had to be a long poem.
LC: O- one could even call it an epic poem, perhaps. [laughs]
LA: [laughs] Um, you know, on a journey of that length, one hopes that Odysseus learned a few things. What do you think you learned on your trip?
LC: Yeah, so Odysseus came back in the end. Spoiler alert, he does make it home.
LA: [laughs]
LC: He does make it home to Penelope, uh, and he has been in Emily Wil- Wilson’s translation, he’s been humbled by these heartbreaking losses. Because of course he comes home and he- all his men have died along the way. So some issues with Odysseus’ leadership style, I think. What I learned really was I guess to sort of let go a little bit and- and sort of being in the moment and having [00:24:00] these, like, conversations with Italian restaurateurs about mushrooms. It’s about hiking up the volcano that’s so beautiful that the next day you want to do it all over again. And I suppose also being a little bit more open to being blown around by the fates and blown around by the winds, so that’s what I learned.
