Five Things That Tick Me Off

I love that everyone loves Italian food, by all means embrace the delicious form of tomatoes we like to call sauce, engorge on my Nonni’s lemon cookies, and mom’s chicken parm all you want. Eat as much of it as you can when you’re out to dinner or come to my house. However, there are a few things people need to hear if they are going to consider themselves an Italian food connoisseur. 

1. Ragu

Please, I’m begging you not to fall victim to this red paste some people have the audacity to throw on pasta. 

Ragu is a sorry excuse for a sauce and if you’re asking me, it shouldn’t be in the same category as the delicious red stuff that comes off my Nonni’s stove. If you’e going to make Italian food do it right, you don’t see me using SPAM to make corn beef and hash.

2. Pronounce gnocchi correctly

For the love of god people it’s not pronounced ga-na-ch-ee. 

The ‘g’ is silent. Nothing makes me cringe more than when I’m out to dinner and I hear someone ask the waiter for an order of the ga-na-ch-ee’s. It takes everything in me not to give them a lesson on the Italian language.

By the way it’s pronounced knee-own-key.

3. Panetone Bread

If I have to demo this at work one more time and listen to people call it pan-a-tone bread I think my brain is going to implode. 

P-on-e-tone. It’s probably the easiest Italian food to pronounce and people still mess it up. I mean do you go to a Mexican restaurant and say “That tack-o was so good?”

4. Olive Garden Is Not Real Italian

Anyone who watches that commercial and actually thinks they’re getting a “tour of Italy” needs to revaluate their life. It’s literally frozen food they warm up and take out of bag. The only good thing going for them is the bread sticks, and those aren’t even made from scratch. 

You want real Italian, go to Grandpa Sam’s, Pasta Villa, Pane Vino, but please spare me with the whole Olive Garden has great Italian food thing because I may slap you. 

5. Espresso…

Last, but certainly the thing that pisses me off the most.

Can someone explain to me when the letter ’s’ took on the sound of an ‘x’ because I would really like to know. Apparently ex-presso is the new form of Italian coffee and every Italian on earth missed the memo. 

Read the freaking word people: ESPRESSO. There’s no ‘x’ in there.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is by far my favorite holiday. Don't get me wrong I love Christmas too, but there’s something about Thanksgiving that makes it slightly better than Christmas. 

The food is probably at the top of that list. Nothing compares to the smell of Thanksgiving dinner cooking when I walk into my aunts house. Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes, stuffing, pumpkin soup, and squash ravioli; nothing, absolutely nothing can beat that. I wake up, have a small break fast, and literally starve myself for the rest of the day that way I don’t feel guilty for eating as much as a 300 pound man. 

Not to mention the dessert. I don’t want to toot my own horn, but I make some damn good pumpkin cookies. And then there’s grape pie, apple pie, pumpkin pie, pumpkin cheese cake, and Nonni’s chocolate chip cookies, the list goes on and on. You stand there debating what dessert to take and you finally give into trying a little of everything because, eh it’s a holiday.

And then there’s the company. What’s better than eating your life away with the people you love? Oh yeah there isn’t anything better. I love giving and receiving gifts at Christmas, but Thanksgiving is just about being together. There’s no pressure about buying a great gift or pretending to like something so you don’t hurt anyones feelings. It’s just about having a good time with the people you are most thankful for. Then you get to go back for leftovers, eat thanksgiving dinner for a second time, and see your family again.

P.S. Not to mention the mannequin challenge we completed and Nonni completely crushed it. 

The Best Memories Are Created Around The Table

Family.

Family, all the descendants of a common ancestor.

Family, a group of people who share the same blood line.

Family, the people in your life that you’re related to.

Family, the people who come to your birthday parties.

Family, a group of people that celebrate holiday’s together.

Family, the people you see every weekend.

Family, the people who make you laugh until you can’t breathe.

Family, the people who make you smile when all you want to do is cry.

Family, the safe haven you will forever have.

Family, the people you want standing with you during the most crucial moments in your life.

Family is the feeling I had when I watched my cousins win the state championship today. 

Family is the feeling of accomplishment and pride I felt when I watched them fight until the final second.

Family is more than the blood that connects you.

Family is the closeness and love you allow into your heart so you can share some of the greatest moments with the people you love. 

What Is Really Behind A Bowl Of Pasta

I was once asked if all my family does at gatherings is talk over each other and eat? And as I sat there trying to put into words what my family actually does at gatherings, I realized what we do is in fact talk over each other and eat. I’m not sure whether it irritated me more that I couldn’t come up with a better answer, or that as an Italian family we conform to what society has painted Italians to look like. 

Yes, we are loud, we talk with our hands, we swear a little too much, and like to eat until it’s painful to breathe, but all of that has a much deeper meaning than people realize. Behind all of the food, all of the obnoxious voices, lies something much more valuable. 

When I was younger I used to wonder why it was that we always ate pasta on Sundays.

My parents would tell me “We’re Italian, on Sunday’s we go to Nonni’s and eat lunch,” and I would shrug it off because they’re my parents, so I had to do as told. 

I would sit at my unofficial assigned seat at Nonni’s table, eat my pasta, and be a part of the tradition I didn’t quiet get. The next day I would come home from school and ask what was for dinner. The answer? You get one guess…

Pasta. 

Pasta mom made, pasta dad made, left over pasta from Nonni’s the night before. The pasta was never ending, it was sitting in the fridge to be eaten every single day. It’s pasta and sauce, it just some eggs and flour thrown into a bowl and rolled into whatever shape you want them and topped off with some tomatoes, and I didn’t get it.

It’s just pasta, what’s so significant about pasta? Little did I know it wasn’t the pasta itself that was significant, it was everything the pasta represented. 

One Nonni, three children, three in-laws, and ten grandchildren were together every Sunday because of something as simple as pasta. It wasn’t until I started to get a little older that I realized it wasn’t because we were sticklers for tradition and needed pasta every Sunday, it was because every Sunday the tradition of eating pasta gave us an excuse to all be together. 

No matter what was going on we always found time for Sunday lunch. It was the unwritten rule, the one sure thing, the thing that made your week go by faster than you can blink because you knew on Sunday you would get to see your cousins. 

Pasta is just something that creates a way for a family to bond. I have had some of the best moments with my family over delicious meals filled with gnocchi and Nonni’s sauce, and I for one wouldn’t change a thing about it. 

As for the obnoxious hand gestures and deafening voices, well what can I say? With a family like mine you have to yell every time you talk if you ever want to be heard.