The Recipe We Forget
Fév 2026
Have you ever lost yourself within yourself?
What a doozy. Just writing this question gives me a headache. But bear with me.
The best examples that come to mind are from my experiences living abroad. For me, moving to another country means drinking, living, and eating the local culture, immersing myself in it as much as possible, and integrating as best I can.
But then, one day—after I’d been living in Italy for over two years, sharing an apartment with Italians, and spending my days speaking, writing, and studying Italian—I found myself at the market down the street with my roommate, a native of Piedmont. That’s when my mind decided to fail me and forget the words “tortellini” and “broth” in Italian. Wanting to buy tortellini, I found myself struggling to describe to my roommate—in accent-free, nearly perfect Italian, her native language—the kind of small ravioli that are usually eaten in broth, lots of broth. Have you ever argued about Italian cuisine with a local? A little advice: don’t do it. Because, you see, ravioli are NOT eaten in broth in Italy—it’s an affront to their entire culture!
So my flatmate starts getting annoyed, telling me that she would NEVER, ever have made me eat that and that I’m spouting a load of utter rubbish. Except that, you see, I know for a FACT that we’d eaten it the month before, and I’m also perfectly aware that I’ve suddenly lost my words. To top it all off, a little old lady passing by decided to stop and join forces with my flatmate because I must absolutely NEVER attempt such an experiment and cook this blasphemous dish. Except that the crucial piece of information this new interlocutor—or persecutor—had missed was that Italian is my third language. In short, that day, annoyed, exhausted, frustrated, and outnumbered, I gave up any further argument and went home without my Tortellini.
All this to say that I’d settled in so well that I’d made them forget I hadn’t grown up in Italy, wasn’t Italian, didn’t know everything about Italy, and that Italian was far from being my mother tongue – I sometimes struggled to find the right words. Worse than that, I seemed to have forgotten it myself. And it took a public altercation at the market to remind me.
However wonderful living abroad may be, it’s easy to lose sight of who you are once you’ve settled in. This is also true within our teams. It’s a key point to bear in mind. We all have different experiences, different backgrounds, and different life journeys, and therefore just as many different perspectives, ideas and ways of thinking. But that is precisely what makes us strong – the strength of each individual, and the tenfold strength of a team.
So don’t forget who you are, don’t keep quiet, don’t give up, and share your voice, your ideas, your concerns and your convictions. And if you can’t figure out how to, find vivid ways to describe what you mean.
But perhaps you shouldn’t argue about Italian cuisine to Italians. That’s a lesson well learned for me now.
