I’m a city boy. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, sheltered from certain realities of life. So when I ate that bacon, I never really considered that a pig grew up, got slaughtered, was cut up and shipped to my local supermarket. To me, the bacon was just bacon. It comes from the supermarket, wrapped in plastic. Of course I knew the process, but I never really had to think of it.
In 1984 I visited Soriano and met Paola. Her parents were ‘play farmers’, meaning they lived in town, dad had a normal job, but since they had this old family farm, they would go down in the afternoon and take care of the garden.
One day I visited the ‘old family farm’. It consisted of a bunch of land, an 18th century farmhouse that was in practical ruin (now our restored villa), a garden, a fenced off area with chickens running around, and a pig-pen with one very big pig named “Giorgina”.
I honestly think that may have been the first time I had seen a pig in real life. She was both cute and disgusting. I stayed for a bit to take it all in, then left. That was that.
Fast forward a year later. I had gone back to the states and had returned to Soriano. Paola and I were now engaged to be married. I was at the house one night for dinner, and Paola’s mom had cut some prosciutto. It was unusually good. I mean it, it was truly amazing. I ate it and asked for more, then more again. I raved about how good it was. Then someone told me I was eating Giorgina.
At first I just stopped eating. I had trouble processing it. Yeah, Prosciutto is pig… I know. But how do I eat a pig that I had been introduced to? I mean really! She had a name! This was a first for me. It was a defining moment in my life… One that lasted about 30 seconds before I decided that she just tasted too good for me to care.
From that day forward, no other prosciutto ever tasted quite as good as Giorgina. Her memory is honored.
We never named a pig again. It was really all left to that until last year. Paola’s parents had both passed away, we restored the villa, and we don’t keep any animals there. But there is a family of farmers across from our house, and they do.
One day a guest of ours and I were walking around and spotted their pig. He jokingly decided to call the pig ‘Ramon Jamon’, and I got the naming on video.
From that day forward, the name stuck, and with each group of guests we would take that walk, and they would invariably meet Ramon. He became a star of sorts. Everyone knew that he was sitting there on death row, so they would visit him, feed him, etc. I got quite a bit of that on camera.
As I write this, our 2009 season is just starting up. We will have many guests back at the villa for the cooking classes, and they will all find a prosciutto on the counter... They will find Ramon in the form of his destiny.
So in Ramon’s honor, I decided put together a tribute to him. A video about the life of a pig we called Ramon.
Italian Culture 
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