Lifestyle
Mauro Morandi, Italy’s Robinson Crusoe, Dies at 85
Mauro Morandi, whose 32-year sojourn on an uninhabited Mediterranean island led to his being known as Italy’s Robinson Crusoe, died on Jan. 3 in Modena, Italy. He was 85.
The cause was a brain hemorrhage, said Antonio Rinaldis, who wrote a 2023 book with Mr. Morandi about his life on the island.
Unlike Daniel Defoe’s hero, who was shipwrecked and fervently hoped to be rescued, Mr. Morandi chose his life of solitude.
He said he had fallen in love at first sight with Budelli, a pristine, undeveloped island off the northern tip of Sardinia. He arrived in 1989, somewhat by chance, he said in interviews. He left — against his will — in 2021, writing on social media that he was tired of “fighting against those who want to send me away.”
Mr. Morandi’s singular choice to live in solitude spawned at least two books, at least one song, short documentaries and countless interviews. As the world turned inward during the coronavirus pandemic, reporters sought Mr. Morandi’s insights on isolation.
“I read a lot, and think,” he told CNN in 2020. “I think many people are scared of reading because if they do, they’ll start meditating and thinking about stuff, and that can be dangerous. If you start seeing things under a different light and be critical, you could end up seeing what a miserable life you lead.”
Budelli, one of the main islands that make up the Maddalena Archipelago, is a dab of paradise occupying less than two-thirds of a square mile. It is known for its pink sand beach surrounded by turquoise water. The island has no running water, is not connected to an electrical grid and is accessible only by boat.
Mr. Morandi lived in an abandoned World War II hut, tacking up canvas tarps in an open area in front. He created sculptures from branches, cooked on a propane stove and read voraciously, buying books and supplies on trips to La Maddalena, the largest town on the archipelago. Visitors also brought him food and water. He used car batteries and solar power to charge his cellphone and his tablet.
It was, he said, “a simple life made up of big and small pleasures.”
“The most important thing,” he added, “is that I have a serene relationship with time.”
For years he was the island’s designated guardian, hired by the Swiss-Italian real estate company that owned it.
His main task was to protect the island’s habitat from unruly tourists, who are allowed only on certain paths, part of an effort by Italy’s environment ministry to protect the rare pink sand. He told people about the marvels of the island, and how fragments of coral and shells had turned the sand pink. He picked up trash from the beach, cleared the island’s paths and carried out light maintenance.
Mr. Morandi initially chose to live as a hermit, he said in an interview at Genoa’s maritime museum, but he ultimately welcomed select people as part of his mission to make them “understand why we need to love nature.”
He said he did not miss human contact. “He didn’t like what humanity had become in the 21st century — consumeristic and individualistic — especially with regard to nature,” Mr. Rinaldis said. That was why Mr. Morandi cared about protecting Budelli.
When he finally got an internet connection, he used social media to showcase the island’s untamed beauty.
In 2016, after a protracted legal battle over the island’s ownership, it was turned over to the state and became part of Maddalena Archipelago National Park. Mr. Morandi was asked to leave.
The park’s president, Giuseppe Bonanno, acknowledged Mr. Morandi’s unique position. “Morandi symbolizes a man, enchanted by the elements, who decides to devote his life to contemplation and custody,” he told reporters. But there were other issues, including whether Mr. Morandi would be able to survive a medical emergency alone, not to mention his shack’s failure to meet code.
He fought back. He campaigned against his eviction on social media. He gave interviews to the news media. An online petition drew nearly 75,000 signatures.
“We do not want Mauro to leave the island because we think first of all that if Budelli has remained a wonder of nature it is also thanks to him,” the petition said. “And second, because we are convinced that the park has everything to gain from his presence: Mauro has lived on Budelli for a quarter of a century, he knows every plant and every rock, every tree and every animal species, he recognizes the colors and scents with the changing of the wind and the seasons.”
But after battling the authorities for five years, Mr. Morandi relented. He was 82 and no longer in good health. “Part of his resignation was tied to his fragility,” Mr. Rinaldis said, “but he was also disappointed because he had been forced to leave by the authorities.”
Mr. Morandi left the island for good in March 2021 and moved to a small apartment in La Maddalena. “I’ll leave hoping that in the future, Budelli will be safeguarded, like I’ve been doing it for 32 years,” he said.
Mauro Morandi was born on Feb. 12, 1939, in Modena. His father, Mario Morandi, was a gymnast who won the national championship for artistic gymnastics in 1936 and was later the caretaker of a school. Mauro’s mother, Enia Camellini, worked for a tobacco company.
Mr. Morandi studied to become a physical education teacher and taught at a middle school in Modena through the 1970s, when he was able to retire early. He had three daughters during a marriage that ended in divorce.
They survive him, as do a brother, Renzo, and six grandchildren.
In a 2016 interview with the Turin daily La Stampa, Mr. Morandi said that after reading Richard Bach’s 1970 best seller, “Jonathan Livingston Seagull,” he “took flight,” discovering the sea. In 1989, he said, he decided that he was “tired of society and seeking a different life.” He bought a catamaran with some friends, with the idea of sailing to Polynesia.
To raise money, they scouted locations for charter cruises and came across Budelli. There they met Budelli’s caretaker, who had recently decided to leave. He offered them his job, and Mr. Morandi took it. He was paid at first, but he stayed on even after he was no longer receiving a salary; he then lived off his teacher’s pension. On rare occasions he returned to Modena for short holidays to visit his family.
At one point he read a study by the University of Sassari showing that Budelli’s flora and fauna were similar to those of the Polynesian islands he had once hoped to reach. “It was almost as though Budelli wanted me, made sure I got here, to the only beach in the whole Mediterranean Sea, which is almost similar in composition to the islands where I wanted to go,” he said in a 2016 interview with the photographer Claudio Muzzetto.
After Mr. Morandi’s death, Margherita Guerra, one of his many thousands of followers on social media, wrote: “Safe travels. Finally no one will ever be able to send you away from your beloved island.”
If you’re struggling to use up leftovers like a half-eaten rotisserie chicken, turn the assignment into a creative exercise, says chef Margaret Li. It’ll make the cooking process more fun and less guilt-driven.
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On a recent weeknight, I opened up my fridge and found an assortment of half-eaten or ignored food.
That included takeout that I didn’t find appetizing enough to eat for lunch. A rotisserie chicken with most of the meat picked off. A couple of raw vegetables from the farmers market that were starting to wilt.
“There’s nothing to eat,” I told myself. Yet even I knew that was ridiculous. There was plenty of food in my fridge. I just didn’t feel inspired to cook with it.
So I asked some chefs for guidance. How could I more consistently use leftovers and the other ingredients I tend to overlook?
Start with a mindset shift, says Margaret Li, chef and co-author of the cookbook Perfectly Good Food: A Totally Achievable Zero Waste Approach to Home Cooking. Think about cooking with leftovers as a creative, experimental exercise, not a guilt-driven one.
“It ends up being this fun game where you are creating something from what seems like nothing and solving this puzzle, and then you get to eat it,” she says.
There are other good reasons to use up your food scraps. Nationally, about a quarter of food products go to waste, according to the nonprofit ReFED. In my own household, where we spend about $200 a week on groceries, that means I might be throwing out the equivalent of $50 of food — an unnecessary burden on my wallet, not to mention the environment.
The chefs I spoke to had some practical tips about using up more of the food we buy. Here are a few that I put to the test.
Find your “hero recipes”
Build up an arsenal of go-to recipes that are flexible enough to use up just about any ingredient. Li calls them “hero recipes.”
I tried one of these from her cookbook, called “Make-It-Your-Own Stir-Fry.” (Scroll down for the recipe.) It includes loose ingredients like “1 pound crisp-crunchy vegetables” or “4 cups leafy greens.”
In the spirit of the recipe, I pulled vegetables out of my fridge at random and did not measure them out. The sauce was a simple mixture of soy sauce, vinegar, sugar and water. By the time I topped my bowl with chopped scallions, the dish looked like a gourmet meal, not an afterthought.
Other ideas: “You could put anything in a frittata, and it’ll be great,” says Tamar Adler, chef and author of The Everlasting Meal Cookbook: Leftovers A-Z.
Or, if you have day-old rice on hand, cook it alongside other ingredients to make fried rice. “Saute some aromatics — ginger, garlic, onion — in oil,” Adler says. Then add your rice and whatever leftover bits you have, like the rotisserie chicken and older produce I had in my fridge.
“Just take the approach of making it more flavorful and crispy and then spicy, and then usually adding a squeeze of lemon,” Adler says.
Label your leftovers
Keep a permanent marker and painter’s tape in your kitchen to label and date your leftovers, Li says. “That is a classic chef’s method for knowing what something is and when it was made. That saves you the guessing game.”
Adler takes the concept a step further and labels her leftovers with their intended use. Leftover blueberries are labeled “muffins-to-be on Tuesday,” she says. “I really like doing that — assigning the destiny of the food.”
So after a night of Ethiopian takeout, when we ended up with an entire container of leftover injera, I followed Adler’s advice and thought about what it might become in the future.
I imagined scrambling the spongy, tangy bread with eggs, akin to scrambling matzo into matzo brei. “Injera for eggs,” I wrote on the container. Sure enough, their destiny was fulfilled the following morning.
Li keeps a dedicated bag in her freezer just for scraps from which to make chicken or vegetable stock. That bag houses carrot peels, the ends of onions, extra garlic cloves and chicken bones.
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Don’t forget your odds and ends
Adler encouraged me to never, ever throw away the stems of herbs. Stems don’t get as much glory as tender, pretty leaves, but they still have the same herby taste.
“I’m going to chop these herbs up or stick them in a blender with a clove of garlic,” she says. Then add olive oil. “And then it’s just gonna be my base sauce for everything.”
So I foraged a few varieties of half-cut herbs from my refrigerator drawers, most of them sad looking and unidentifiable.
I threw out the stems that had turned brown and gooey and put the rest in a blender. I added garlic on Adler’s instructions, nuts and kale for bulk, and plenty of olive oil and salt. Then, on a whim, I added a splash of olive juice for brightness.
The result was somewhere between a pesto and a chimichurri, and it elevated that night’s otherwise routine dinner. And Adler was right: Once the stems were blended, it tasted exactly the same as the leaves. (The same idea applies for broccoli stems in a cheesy broccoli soup, Li says.)
Li likes to keep her odds and ends organized with an “Eat Me First” box in her fridge. That’s where she keeps half-used lemons, leftover coconut milk or produce that’s starting to get wrinkly. “You kind of have an idea for, OK, here’s where you look first,” she says.
Don’t strive for perfection
Cooking these meals did feel like a game, as Li had suggested. It brought me unexpected joy to use up as many existing ingredients as possible — to the point where I often spent much longer in the kitchen because I kept thinking of new ideas: If I turn these wrinkly sweet potatoes into a soup, then I can caramelize this half-cut onion for a topping, and then I can use the leftover soup as a sauce tomorrow …
Did I cook more often, though? Probably not. My cooking energy burned brighter but fizzled out after a few nights, at which point I ordered takeout.
So I was glad to hear Li’s take: If you’re too hard on yourself, you’re not going to enjoy it at all. “ I try not to be too obsessive about eating absolutely everything,” she says. If my takeout was truly terrible, I’m allowed to toss it or, better yet, compost it.
If you really want to use up everything, you can always chuck ingredients into the freezer. Li has dedicated freezer bags for different dishes, like vegetable scraps for soups or fruit discards for smoothies. (She labels them, of course.)
And how does that smoothie taste? It’s “delicious,” she says, “even if it’s made up of all the things that have been rejected in the past,” she says.
Recipe: Make-It-Your-Own Stir-Fry
Excerpted from Perfectly Good Food: A Totally Achievable Zero Waste Approach to Home Cooking. Copyright ©2023 by Irene Li and Margaret Li. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
Sauce
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon water
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1 teaspoon black vinegar, rice vinegar, lime juice, or other acid
- 1 tablespoon neutral oil, or enough to lightly coat the bottom of your wok or skillet
- 1 garlic clove, thinly sliced or minced, or more as desired
- ½-inch piece fresh ginger, minced or grated (optional)
- Pinch chili flakes or 1 small chile pepper, diced (optional)
- 4 cups leafy greens, torn into bite-size pieces, or 1 pound crisp-crunchy vegetables, cut into chunks
- Kosher salt
Stir the sauce ingredients together in a small bowl and set by the stove.
Heat a wok or large skillet over high heat until just smoking, then add the neutral oil and tilt to coat the bottom of the pan.
Add the garlic, ginger (if using), and chili flakes (if using) and stir-fry for 10 seconds. Add the greens and/or vegetables, in stages as necessary, and toss in the garlicky oil, then add the sauce and cook to your liking, stirring frequently.
Vegetable chunks may need 4 to 7 minutes — if you want to speed up the process, cover the pot so the vegetables steam for a minute or two, then uncover and toss again. Sturdy greens may need 3 to 5 minutes to get tender (we like to let them sit for a bit and char for extra texture).
Lighter leaves will need less than a minute to wilt down. Stir in a spoonful of any additional sauce you like, season with salt to taste, then sprinkle with your favorite garnishes and a generous drizzle of sesame oil.
A sprinkle of crunch is a great way to finish a stir-fry. Our favorites include crushed cashews or peanuts, toasted sesame seeds, thinly sliced scallions, and fried onions or shallots.
Your turn: What are your favorite go-to leftover recipes?
We’d love to hear from you! Share your recipe with us at lifekit@npr.org with your full name. We may publish it on NPR.org.
The story was edited by Malaka Gharib. The visual editor is CJ Riculan. We’d love to hear from you. Leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823, or email us at LifeKit@npr.org.
Listen to Life Kit on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and sign up for our newsletter. Follow us on Instagram: @nprlifekit.
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This week’s show was recorded in Chicago with host Peter Sagal, judge and scorekeeper Alzo Slade, Not My Job guest Stephen Malkmus and panelists Emmy Blotnick, Joyelle Nicole Johnson, and Gianmarco Soresi. Click the audio link above to hear the whole show.
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Indie rock legend and founder of Pavement, Stephen Malkmus, joins us to play a game called, “Pavement repairs are underway!” Three questions about road construction.
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When Julio Miranda-Martin began his apartment search, he had one nonnegotiable: He wanted a dedicated dining room to entertain his friends. He was scouring Zillow in 2025 when a listing for a railroad-style, one-bedroom on the edge of West Hollywood came up that included the requisite dining room. It was also walking distance to his part-time job as a marketing coordinator at furniture store Lawson-Fenning. More importantly, at $2,500 a month it was within his budget.
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Miranda-Martin met with his landlord the same day he found the listing, who told him he looks like his son. Feeling like finding this 950-square-foot apartment was kismet, Miranda-Martin signed the lease and set about creating a sophisticated and color-saturated sanctuary. Miranda-Martin decided he needed to make two major investments before moving in: painting the walls and changing the lighting. “I was finally able to move into a place that I actually like, not just out of necessity. I was like, let’s make it feel like my own,” says Miranda-Martin, who refers to the space as his “living canvas.”
In this series, we spotlight L.A. rentals with style. From perfect gallery walls to temporary decor hacks, these renters get creative, even in small spaces. And Angelenos need the inspiration: Most are renters.
The apartment is on the second floor of a fourplex, up a windowless staircase. Miranda-Martin embraced the lack of light and painted it a high-gloss crimson. Without natural light, he hard-wired sconces found on Facebook Marketplace that recall ornamental 18th century candlesticks. They cast a dim but moody light throughout the staircase, ending with an ornate mirror at the top. The mirror shows a glimpse of the apartment’s interior in its reflection when Miranda-Martin opens the door. “Every time people walk in, especially at night, it’s such a dramatic entry,” he explains. “It’s very cinematic,” agrees friend and co-worker Kristin Reeder, who is often a guest at his soirees, “like something from ‘Eyes Wide Shut.’ ”
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1. Julio Miranda-Martin’s apartment decor starts in the bold staircase that leads to his door. 2. A mirror at the top of the staircase offers extra depth. 3. Julio Miranda-Martin fills the bookshelf in his dining room with books and treasures.
In contrast, the living room offers a calmer palette of sky blues and earthy browns. Miranda-Martin tends to choose paint colors based on the light. The living room, with abundant west-facing windows brings in soft, bright light. Miranda-Martin painted it with Benjamin Moore’s Navajo, a flat white, as a backdrop to the softer hues of the furniture he designed at his furniture and lighting company, Studio MM. “It adds a stillness,” he says.
The room is anchored by a large velvet couch in a rich brown. The modular couch is anchored on each side with Art-Deco influenced side tables, lamps and light blue slipper chairs he designed, setting up a cozy tableau for hosting his friends. Pale pink cushioned ottomans provide additional seating that can easily be moved around the room to accommodate additional guests.
A velvet couch acts as a statement piece in the apartment living room.
(Etienne Laurent/For the Times)
French doors separate the living room from the dining room. The chartreuse-infused dining room returns to a more dramatic colorway. With less natural light, Miranda-Martin wanted to play up the idea of dining-room-as-treehouse, reflecting the second-floor foliage visible from the small windows. Rather than trying to brighten the room, he leaned into the moodiness by buying inexpensive, USB battery-powered spotlights that are mounted on the ceiling with magnets. Taking an alcohol marker, he tinted the lights a soft amber, allowing him to highlight the art in the room without adding harsh overhead lighting.
The dining room is meant to reflect the foliage just outside the window.
(Etienne Laurent/For the Times)
A shell-adorned mirror anchors the wall facing the windows and built-in shelving, making the room feel larger. Miranda-Martin sourced two shell-shaped sconces that flank the mirror at an estate sale in San Francisco. Most of the art and home decor comes from Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist, or is thrifted from local stores. Estate sales are also a source, though Miranda-Martin feels the rising popularity of these sales in Los Angeles has led to an increase in pricing. “They’ve gotten so over the top now in L.A. [They’re] super expensive. You’re not really gonna find a deal,” he laments, citing the armed security checking bags recently at some of the hottest estate sales.
In addition to changing the lighting and painting the walls, Miranda-Martin prioritized the window treatments, with pinch pleat curtains from Ikea. “Drapery can just make a space feel super elevated,” he advises. He prefers a mix of new and vintage decor, balancing both for an eclectic but deeply personal look to his home. He tries not to overthink his aesthetic choices. “I think it’s very instinctual. I’m not really thinking, ‘Is this in good taste or is this going to be weird?,’ ” he says.
Down the hall, the bedroom’s mostly white design theme returns to a more serene composition, providing a quiet sanctuary. Miranda-Martin removed the headboard from his bed, making it seem like it’s floating between the night tables he designed. “Everything feels sort of streamlined and smooth,” says Miranda-Martin. Like the living room, the bedroom is painted the same flat white but the quality of the eastern light filtering into the bedroom casts a buttery glow.
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1. Ceramics fill inset shelves in the kitchen. 2. A glass case in the apartment corridor between the dining room and the bedroom. 3. With its lighter decor, the bedroom was meant to be a sanctuary.
The small kitchen retains its midcentury charm, but open shelving above the counter provides an airier, more contemporary cupboard to show off Miranda-Martin’s dish and glassware collection. The easier access comes in handy when he’s entertaining. His apartment is the perfect pre-game space for him and his friends before a night on the town. He tries to make sure he pre-batches cocktails before his guests arrive.
He also likes to host more elaborate dinner parties and game nights. He attributes his love of entertaining to his upbringing as an only child in Downey. “I like hosting because I enjoy being around more people than when I was growing up,” explains Miranda-Martin. His goal, ultimately, is to bring together disparate groups of people from different spheres in a space everyone will feel comfortable in. Dinner parties at Miranda-Martin’s “feel like an event,” says Reeder. “It’s something you’re excited for and you want to get dressed up for.”
“I’m kind of going through a phase right now where I need to be around people,” admits Miranda-Martin. “I think I just hate being alone.”
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