Carolyn Steel and Mona Talbott (left) digging into desert on a fig leaf at the end of the Hungry City: Wild Rome dinner for 120 with oily bread bag menus (center) and garden scavenged table goods

…was the loose title for this evening’s marathon of activities that I organized at the Academy – kicking off with a rousing talk by “Hungry City” author Carolyn Steel (narrowly arriving in time from London) about the relationship between food and cities – specifically Rome (wheat mills floating on the Tiber – license for a stone slab fish counter at the market worth more than a house – fake food fed to not quite distinguished enough feasting dinner guests only there to fill seats – Monte Testaccio mountain of discarded terra cotta amphorae…) taking us all the way up to present day Roman and global food and city circumstances (20% of meals in America are consumed in a car, one billion people are overweight and one billion are malnourished globally…), and happily ending at her vision of the future which she refers to as ‘sitopia‘ – after that it was responses from members of the Academy community including scholar fellow Michael Waters, architect advisor Carlo Vigevano, and RSFP chef Mona Talbott – followed by a casual reception in the vegetable garden under ripe apricot and susine laden trees – and culminating in a feast for 120 in the courtyard on one long L-shaped table under the arcade covered with coffee-dyed cast-off Academy bedsheets cum table-clothes upon which were scrawled handwritten food-related quotes from Roman residents excerpted from the upcoming Roma Mangia Roma book, then generously sprinkled and piled (like a forest floor) with all of the various random garden and kitchen detritus I had been gathering all year (pine cones; bean pods and leaves; fruits and seeds; dried sage, bay and rosemary cuttings; tufa rocks; all of my empty glass jars full of dirt and candles), plus big hunks of Roscioli bread (which looked remarkably like the lightweight tufa rocks – in a good way) and various courses served on fig leaves and grape leaf lined terra cotta roof tiles scavenged from out back – all enjoyed to the amplified sounds coordinated to the courses by Paul Rudy, and the lighting and central hanging plant branch daisy-chain chandelier by Giovanna Latis – under which the kitchen staff piled all of the goods related to the meal including a controversial lambs head which I – though vegan – was ultimately all for, since it showed those meat-eaters where their meat was coming from. (plus super big thanks to Ben Barron, Walker Williams-Smith, Sarah Ripple, and Eleonora Recupero, the classy, eager, and efficient foursome of local youth who assisted)