Everything Is Better With Cheese

I love food.  Love to eat it, read about it, study it, etc.   I recently was watching a documentary about the famous Italian chef Massimo Bottura.   (He currently has the 3^rd highest rated restaurant in the world).  That’s where I heard for the first time the story of how he saved his community with a recipe using cheese.

Evidently in 2012 his small city of Modena, Italy was hit by an earthquake.  Huge storage buildings used to house parmesan  were collapsed and the cheese wheels were broken.  Worried no one would buy the broken pieces of cheese, local jobs and the town’s economy was at risk.   Massimo came up with the idea of promoting a recipe that called for the small pieces of Modena parmesan cheese.  The recipe (Risotto Cacio e Pepe) was promoted all over the world and the parmesan cheese sold so quickly that the town was able to sell their cheese, maintaining jobs and preserving their beautiful craft of parmesan cheese making.

What does parmesan have to do with positive living besides the fact that everything is better with cheese?  Because while Massimo might be a positive thinker, when disaster stuck he didn't just say “let’s think positive”.  He used positive thinking to lead to problem solving.   Not only problem solving, but problem solving using his own personal strengths and resources he already had available to him.

How many times do we think about our problems and think “if only______”.  If only I had more money, then I could solve this.  If only I had a supportive spouse, then I could overcome this.  If only I could go back in time or forward in time, then everything would be OK.  Instead, if we shift to:  What skills do I have to solve this?  What resources are available to me today?  What can I do that’s within my own power to make things better?   When we shift to thinking in the present based on what we have, we feel more empowered and in control.  Massimo didn’t think about earthquake engineering or economic planning, he thought about his own skill set (cooking) and how he could use his skills to help.

I don’t know about you, but I think I’ll think differently every time I reach for the parmesan cheese now.  Now instead of just a delicious topping for spaghetti, it will be a reminder to tap into my own strength and resources to problem solve.  Arrivederci!  

(Picture below of 2012 earthquake damage to cheese wheels).