Further Musings on Things Mediterranean

Frances Mayes, one of my favorite authors (Under the Tuscan Sun), has a new book  -- Every Day in Tuscany, Seasons of an Italian Life.  It is 20 years since she bought and restored her villa in Tuscany.  This new book has a sadness and a bittersweet reality about it.   Placi, her next door neighbor, is seriously injured.  Primo Bianchi, who was the capable restorer of her Bramasole, has died.  There is a terrorism scare, when a grenade (which turned out to be harmless) is found on her property.   And she is older now.   A grandmother who is enjoying it and thinking about passing on a legacy in words, buildings and experiences to her grandson.
I love her writing.  She has a way of putting words together that moves me, sometimes almost to tears.    Her descriptions of all things Italian and her love affair with the country and its people evoke such strong feelings because they build on and draw out insights from my own life and family.  More than that, I admire someone with the courage to so consciously create a life; and to live life.  
One of my most favorite sections of her new book involves a description of how Italians eat and drink and how it differs from Americans.  She writes, "There's no dreary talk at all about glutens, portion control, fat content or calories.  Eating in Italy made me aware of how tortured the relationship to food is in my country."
She also writes about the modest consumption of wine, and the practice of pouring water into wine, something I remember my uncle doing when I visited him.  Being drunk was an embarassment, and drining too much was simply not done.  I remember my dad telling me more than once that he was never drunk in his life.  It wasn't about drinking; it was about integrating wine into the meal, not overpowering it and not making it an end in itself. 
Her descriptions about hours spent at dinner tables reminds me of memories my dad would relate, with great fondness, of how he would do so too.  And to talk, and to eat, and to talk, and to eat.  Not overeating, not worrying about how much you were eating, just eating to live, as part of being alive. 
I would be a lot better off if I could emulate my dad's approach to food.  He would do things like scrape the icing from the top of a birthday cake.  This struck me as strange; my taste is that the icing is the best part.  And, in the summer, he would eat fruit, lots of it.  He loved figs because I think it reminded him of his youth, growing up in the Abruzzo.  He ate little meat.   He seemed to have an inherent wisdom about eating and food choices that I did not inherit.
I am tired ot thinking about counting carbs and ascribing moral qualities to food choices.  Is there a way to uncorrupt decades of screwed up eating and find a more rational voice within?