ABOUT BUTTERLIES AND GENES

THE BUTTERLIES MONARCHA

It seems that the human beings are still at their debut with communication.

Yes, there are telephone, computers, newspapers, TVs, satellites. All these are “outside”, attachments, systems we control (not always) but they are out of our body. We can send signals able to travel through air waves, or use a pen to write a message.

It seems that we are not able to utilize, for instance, these invisible high-ways without the help of machines.

The only – wonderful – way we have to communicate to each other is the Word, our voice.

It seems, also, that human beings – perhaps because of too much aid from outside attachments? – have lost their innate instinct, the capability of perception, the willing and capacity of listening to their “inside” voice.

Still researchers agree in saying that we are actually using only a small part of our brains and that they don’t know what the rest of it is there for.

The question is: would we be able to communicate through thoughts? Or through something else?

Some animals – perhaps all animals – do.

The Butterflies Monarcha communicate through their genes.

The life of these butterflies is a perpetual migration.

At the beginning of spring, when weather gets too hot in Mexico, they leave to Canada and travel for six months. As they arrive to Canada at the beginning of fall, they start the return to Mexico for another six months. Then the cycle  begins again, endless.

A butterfly does not survive as much as to cover the entire cycle.

During the crossing they deposit their eggs and die. The larvae  transform in worms, then cocoons. As the new butterfly breaks it shell, continues the travel of the mother, which ever is the direction, to the North or to the South. Six generations of butterflies are needed to complete the year cycle.

How do the new born butterflies know which is the direction to take one out of the cocoon? How can they discern if their mother was going to North or to South? Or, instead, if the mother had already got to the end of one way and had to take the way back?

Surely mother and kid do not talk, as, by the time they are born, the mother has already died. How does the information pass from generation to generation?

Researchers found out that the information necessary for their survival is in their genes. The communication happens through genetic means. They talk by genes.

I want to believe that such a cool thing happens also in human beings.

My mother is a “sane carrier” of the genes through which my grandmother transmitted to me this recipe, as my mother has never cooked it. But my granny was able to cook it heavenly once back from her tiny garden behind the rainbow row of houses along the sea harbour, with her bucket  full of the few, but delicious fruits releasing a scented  trail of earth and sun as she walked.

She never explained me doses and procedure: it was just a genetic passage.

 

FARFALLE AI PROFUMI DI PRIMAVERA

BUTTERFLIES WITH SPRING SCENTS

Ingredients for 4:

350 gr ( 12 Oz) Butterflies of Bow tie pasta

500 gr ( 1.1 lb) fresh sweet peas in the pod

500 gr (1.1 lb)  fresh tender fava beans in the pod

2 spring onions

1 small carrot

30 gr ( 2 tbs) extra virgin olive oil

30 gr ( 2 tbs) butter

50 gr ( 1 ½ Oz) fresh Marzolino, sheep milk cheese produced in spring, when the flock graves  the new tender grass and the fresh cheese – aged about 15 days – gets the delicate flavours of the first spring sun

salt and pepper

Shell the peas and the fava beans.

Clean and slice finely the spring onions.

Peel and shred the carrot.

Put in a large skillet the olive oil, half  of the butter, the onion, the carrot, ¼ cup water and a pinch of salt. Put on low heat. as it starts to sizzle, put a lid on and let it cook sweetly until the vegetables are soft and the water evaporated.

Add the peas and fava beans with another ¼ cup of water. Do not cover, so that the light bitterness of fava beans would go away. Stir occasionally and cook until they are tender.

Regulate salt and pepper.

Bring to boil a pot with plenty water.

Meanwhile shred half of the cheese and flake the remaining.

Salt the water as it starts to bubble; cook the pasta and drain it “al dente”, reserving some of the cooking water.

Toss the pasta into the skillet adding the remaining butter, the shredded cheese, a couple spoons of cooking water.

Plate in four individual dishes and sprinkle the flakes cheese on top. It would melt slightly.