Italian style food. Sunday dinner!
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There is some sort of religious statue in the hallway, living room, bedroom, front porch and backyard & even the garage & laundry room.
The living room is filled with old wedding favors with poofy net bows and stale almonds (they are too pretty to open).
A portrait of the Pope and Frank Sinatra in the dining room & the entire Godfather cast in the living room.
God forbid if anyone EVER attempted to eat Chef Boy-are-dee, Franco American, Ragu, Prego or anything else in a jar or can (tomato paste is the exception).
Meatballs are made with Pork, Veal and Beef.? We are Italians, we don't care about cholesterol.
Turkey is served on Thanksgiving, AFTER the manicotti, gnocchi, lasagna and soup.
If anyone EVER says ES-CAROLE, slap 'em in the face -- it's SHCAROLE.
Italian Wedding Soup
If they ever say ITALIAN WEDDING SOUP, let the idiot know that there is no wedding, nor is there an Italian in the soup.? Also, the tiny meatballs must be made by hand.Italian Sauce and bread
No matter how hard you know you were going to get smacked, you still came home from church after communion, you stuck half a loaf of bread in the sauce pot, snuck out a fried meatball and chowed down you'll make up for it next week at confession.Italian Dinner Rules
Sunday dinner was at 1:00. The meal went like this...Table is set with everyday dishes...doesn't matter if they don't match...they're clean, What more do you want?
All the utensils go on the right side of the plate and the napkin goes on the left. Put a clean kitchen towel at Nonno &Papa's plate because they won't use napkins.
Homemade wine and bottles of 7up are on the table.
First course, Antipasto...change plates.
Next, Macaroni (Nona called all spaghetti Macaroni)...change plates.
After that, Roasted Meats, Roasted Potatoes, Over-cooked Vegetables...change plates.
THEN and only then (NEVER AT THE BEGINNING OF THE MEAL) would you eat the salad (HOMEMADE OLIVE OIL &VINEGAR DRESSING ONLY)...change plates.
Next, Fruit &Nuts - in the shell (on paper plates because you ran out of the other ones) & let's not forget the burning of the orange & lemon peels & eating chestnuts.
Coffee with Anisette (Espresso for Nonno, "Merican" coffee for the rest or as some of our parents called it "pisciattzza") with hard Cookies to dip in the coffee.
Italian Style Food after dinner
The kids go play...the men go to lay down. They slept so soundly you could perform brain surgery on them without anesthesia..the women clean the kitchen.Getting screamed at by Mom or Nona - half the sentence was English, the other half Italian.
Italian mothers never threw a baseball in their life, but can nail you in the head with a shoe thrown from the kitchen while you're in the living room or with the "schullaPasta (colander for the non-Italians)
Prom Dress that Zia Ceserina made you...$20.00 for material. Prom hair-do from Cousin Angela...$Free. Turning around at prom to see your entire family (including Godparents) standing in the back of the gym eating eggplant sandwiches dripping with oil...PRICELESS!!!!!!
The true Italians will love this, those of you who are married to Italians will understand this, and those of you who are friends with Italians will remember and will forward it to their Italian friends.
Non-Italians
Many non-Italians identify Italian cooking with a few of its most popular dishes, like Pizza and spaghetti. People often express the opinion that Italian cooking is all pretty much alike. However, those who travel through Italy notice differences in eating habits between cities, even those only a few miles apart. Not only does each region have its own style, but each community and each valley has a different way of cooking as well.Italian Sausage
Every town has a distinctive way of making sausage, special kinds of cheese and wine, and a local type of bread. If you ask people, even in the same area, how to make Pasta sauce, they will all have different answers. Variations in the omnipresent Pasta are another example of the multiplicity of Italian recipes: soft egg noodles in the north, hard-boiled spaghetti in the south, with every conceivable variation in size and shape. Perhaps no other country in the world has a cooking style so finely fragmented into different divisions. So why is Risotto typical of Milan, why did Tortellini originate in Bologna, and why is Pizza so popular in Naples?Italian Style Food Variety
This is so for the same reason that Italy has only one unifying Italian language, yet hundreds of different spoken dialects. Italy is a country of great variety, and cooking is just another aspect of the diversity of Italian culture.This diversity stems largely from peasant heritage and geographical differences. Italy is a peninsula separated from the rest of the continent by the highest chain of mountains in Europe. In addition, a long spine of mountains runs north to south down through this narrow country. These geographic features create a myriad of environments with noticeable variations: fertile valleys, mountains covered with forests, cool foothills, naked rocks, Mediterranean coastlines, and arid plains. A great variety of different climates have also created innumerable unique geographical and historical areas.
But geographical fragmentation alone will not explain how the same country produced all of these: the rich, fat, baroque food of Bologna, based on butter, parmigiano, and meat; the light, tasty, spicy cooking of Naples, mainly based on olive oil, mozzarella, and seafood; the cuisine of Rome, rich in produce from the surrounding countryside; and the food of Sicily, full of North African influences.
Italian Style Food History
The explanation is hidden in the past; the multitudes of food styles of Italy mainly result from its history. Divided for a long time into many duchies, princedoms, kingdoms, and states-often hostile to one another-political unification in Italy did not occur until 1861. Many populations in the past three thousand years have occupied Italian territory, and most of them contributed their own traditions. And the original people, the Etruscans and Greeks, left influences still felt today.Local traditions result from long complex historical developments and strongly influence local habits. Distinctive cultural and social differences remain present throughout Italy, although today mass marketing tends to cause a leveling of long-established values. In a country so diverse, it is impossible to define an "Italian" cooking style, but traditional food still is at the core of the cultural identity of each region, and Italians react with attachment to their own identity when they are confronted with the tendency toward flattening their culture.
