“A Year in the Village of Eternity,” by Tracy Lawson

FOOD

A YEAR IN THE VILLAGE OF ETERNITY

(Bloomsbury USA) - ‘A Year in the Village of Eternity: The Lifestyle of Longevity in Campodimele, Italy’ by Tracey Lawson

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The Lifestyle of Longevity in Campodimele, Italy

By Tracey Lawson

Bloomsbury. 374 pp. $30

The denizens of Campodimele, in central Italy, live a long time — 95 years on average. Veteran journalist Tracey Lawson spent three years in Campodimele and observed the local’s dietary habits, which are key to their longevity. One thing is clear in her magnificent new book, “A Year in the Village of Eternity”: No one in Campodimele cuts corners, something Americans, sold on quick and easy meals, could learn from. Residents still use wood-burning stoves, fueled by logs taken down from nearby hills on horseback. They make their own olive oil and pasta and harvest their own grain. Meals can take hours to prepare. Their gustatorial philosophy is simple: “as much as you put in, you will get out.” If you love food, it will love you back, probably more passionately, its gifts greater than you could ever return.

Passion for food oozes through Lawson’s book. Her fresh, luscious prose stirs the senses. Most of all, the book makes you want to cook, and she has provided dozens of recipes to satiate that impulse.

The residents’ patience with food seems to shape the immediate world around them. “There’s a sort of stillness,” Lawson writes, “which slows the heartbeat, soothes the soul so much that just here, just now, under this endless sky, you feel you really could live forever.”

Timothy R. Smith