We just had this wonderful thread on the Food/Everything else forum named "do you have an Italian grandmother?"

I had started it because I am fascinated by stories of Italians
who emigrated at the beginning of last century.

In particular I have always wanted to know if family life revolved around the kitchen just like here and how people managed to cook Italian being so far away from here and probabaly with limited means.

Many people have contributed great familiy stories, but as the gold star forums have limited access, it has been suggested to relate the subject to travel in Italy and open it up here. Many of you come to Italy to find their roots.

So here is the question for those who have an Italian background or have had frequent experience of Italian home food outside Italy :

How is your experience with Italian food in Italy as compared to your " Italian abroad" home food?

What did you have in Italy that reminded you of your home food and why?

And in the present, do Italian families abroad still cook like in Italy?
Have traditions been kept, adapted?

Thank you for any comment!

I knew an Italian family when I was a kid, but my family was not Italian American. I was still very interested in the food, however, having seen hundreds of tortellini and ravioli on that family's kitchen table on Sunday before lunch.
So my family memory is making ravioli the first time from scratch with my daughter when she was five. I remember every detail and so does she. I don't think it could have been such a lovely thing if it hadn't been challenging and out of the ordinary to us. We made them with a chicken and spinach filling. We ate them with a fresh tomato sauce and torn basil. My husband's friend dropped by and failed to go home to dinner after he saw them. They were gone in fifteen minutes after half a day of work!

I grew up with a grandmother that came from Milano as a young child and a grandfather that came from Palermo. Their families had both moved to Buffalo, New York where they grew up and eventually married.

They have told me over the years that at the time Italians were considered second class citizens, and as such, many families did everything they could to bring their children up as 'Americans'. They were not allowed to speak Italian, and they were strongly encouraged to leave Italian tradition behind in order to best fit in with the society.

That said, I believe they grew up with an Italian-American culture that they didn't even know they had, and from that 'New York Italian Food' was born... A mesh between the real thing and an Americanized version of it.

Later they had moved to Los Angeles, where I grew up, and I was raised thinking that was Italian food. It consisted of glue-like pasta with a very meat heavy red sauce, pizza that was essentially loads of cheese with some pizza under it, etc. I grew up thinking that if the lasagna didn't have ricotta, it wasn't lasagna, etc.

When I was 12, a cousin of mine from Milano moved to the states, and I had *that* version of Italian for the first time, and loved it. Suffice it to say that the second half of my childhood consisted of a tremendous amount of Risotto!

In any case, I ended up marrying a woman from Viterbo, and even still, the food here in the states pales in comparison because the ingredients just are not here.

"...many families did everything they could to bring their children up as Americans. They were not allowed to speak Italian, and they were strongly encouraged to leave Italian tradition behind in order to best fit in with the society....

Michael, so much of what you said is so true with my family as well. My maternal grandmother and grandfather with whom we grew up with and lived with in the Bronx, New York, were from Salerno and Foggia. My paternal grandparents were from Celzi di Forino in Avellino.

In our house, English was the only language spoken because we were Americans. Italian was not encouraged and rarely used. But the Italian traditions were carried on as best they could. My mother recalled that in her childhood, the Epifany was when they celebrated Christmas and presents were given. Our Christmas Eve was, and is, the traditional “seven fishes” dinner…on New Year’s Day, we ate pork, and it was lamb for Easter…with antipasto and pasta first, of course! During the summer, we had family picnics with all the Italian food specialties…and where Napoletan songs were sung in tandem with Puccini…which I fondly remember.

After visiting Italy several times, I have now come to realize that their Italian-American way of life was very similar to the life they had in Italy. My grandfather planted cherry trees, peach trees, grape vines, fig trees…so similar to the gardens we saw in Italy. My grandmother shopped every day for food so it was the freshest, and she made her own pasta. Food, wine and bread were so important. My favorite treat was stale Italian bread, softened with water and sprinkled with oil, vinegar, fresh tomatoes and basil…once peasant food, now known as bruschetta.

The meals we ate with my husband’s family in Caserta were so similar to our meals at home in New York, that I would be hard pressed to point out any distinct differences…down to the bottle of home-made wine on the table.

Of course there are differences. Just as no matter how hard I try, my manicotti will never taste as good as my mother's and grandmother's...and just as the pecorino will never taste the same as when you are having it in Tuscany.

All in all, I believe that they were quite successful in bringing the Italian culture, food, traditions and close family bonds to America.


Carol

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Just as no matter how hard I try, my manicotti will never taste as good as my mother's and grandmother's

I think this is true for everybody. I can cook many reasonably good things, but I can just never make as good gnocchi as my mother's, no matter how many times she gives me the recipe!

Someday, I will have to go to the part of Italy thast my grandparents came from (Sicily) and compare the food.
In Rome most of the food was very different from anything that my grandmother prepared. The sausage is nothing like what she prepared.

In the Bay of Naples or in Sicilian bakeries in Rome, I would run across sweets that grandma used to make for us at the holidays. Canoli. This cookie stuffed with candied fruits we had at Christmas. We even used to candy our own watermelon rind for the filling. Sadly none of us make any of this stuff since she died about 10 years ago.

My mother spoke Italian as her first language even though she was born in Detroit. In the little ghetto she lived in, everyone was Italian and the men spoke English to get jobs. She learned English when she was 5 and went to kindergarten. My grandmother never did learn to read English even though she came to America at 14 and she died when she was 91. She had to get a job outside her home for the first time when she was 58 because her husband died and she couldn't collect Social Security as a widow until she was 62.

recently I went to New York. I went to Ellis Island and thought about her especially during the film we saw there. In 1919 she came to America from Trapani though Ellis Island with her grandfather and said goodby to Italy forever.

Although she lived the majority of her life in an ethnically diverse New Jersey town my great aunt Elisabettta (diminuative "Sabett") never spoke two words of English. My mother never spoke Italian but would accompany Sabett to Amichai's small one room grocery store from time to time. Sabett would use gestures, take things off the shelves or point to what she wanted. This worked adequately well and Sabett looked forward to her visits to Amichai's. In the summer months, however, Amichai had to keep items that would spoil in icebox located in the back of the store. One day in August, Sabett wanted some formaggio and, not seeing it on the counter asked Amichai in a more and more animated fashion, "...formaggio....formaggio!...FORMAGGIO!" but poor Amichai did not understand what Sabett was demanding. Finally, Sabett gave up saying, "O Jes" ("Oh Jesus" - my relatives, even the women, had sharp tongues). At this point Amichai turned to my mother and said, "...if she wanted cheese why didn't she just ask me for some?" as he scurried to the back of the store to retrieve the requested formaggio.

I just had a fabulous pranzo at my mother's house and have to say that she is one of the world's best cooks IMHO. She has been in this country since 1949 and her cooking here is very similar to what we have eaten in the Lazio region she is from.She made fettucine all'uova con pancetta, cotoletta di vitello, cicoria, roasted peppers among other things.
Unlike others, we were encouraged to speak Italian even in so far as my parents scrimping to be able to have each of us 5 kids have a tutor for many years so we would learn proper Italian and not my parents dialect which is what we spoke at home.
As a child I would have preferred being out playing but now I am so grateful esp knowing the sacrifices my parents made coming up with the 2 dollars for the lessons.
We have retained many of the Italian traditions and now that my parents are in their 80's we have the opportunity to spend some time in my fathers old family home in Italy every couple of years in the summer. My parents like nothing better than to spend their summers there with assorted kids, inlaws, grandkids and grandkids friends filling their old house.

I will always remember the first time I went to Italy. We were in Sorrento, and I had the feeling that I was at home.
I grew up in South Philadelphia, in an Italian American family, in a very Italian American neighborhood. We weren't just Italian, one was Sicilian, or Abruzzese, or Calabrese,etc.. We spoke English in our home(with alot of Italian slang), but I had many friends who spoke Italian as their first language. My dad was a first generation American. His parents and older siblings spoke Italian, but the youngest of the 15 children needed to mold into the american way. They were to be American, and not subjects to ridicule . My dad even changed his first name from Orazio to Harry. So on the outside we were Americans, but in our home we remained "Italian".
South Philadelphia is composed of row houses, many on very small almost alley sized streets. In the postage sized backyards there were amazing gardens. There were fig trees, grape vines, beautiful trailing roses, tomatoes, peppers, zucchini etc. When I wonder through the cities and villages in Italy I understand how people adapted to the new world. Most people had lived in villages etc, with small houses close to each other.
Meals were always important. We had pasta of some sort at least 4 nights a week. You knew what day it was by the dinner on the table. Polenta was served on a large board on the table, generally with sausage "gravy" poured over it. There was the 'huckster' that came by every morning for my mom to get fresh vegetables for that nights dinner. And, each day my mom went to the grocer, the bakery for bread, and either to the butcher or the fish market(depending on the day of the week). We never ate meat on Fridays. We all went to Catholic elementary schools, and came home for a hot lunch each day. Neighborhoods were determined by the church parish.
Saturday nights were spent at my nonna's along with my dad's 14 other siblings, their spouses, and their children. We played cards, sang along with Mitch Miller, and enjoyed each other and of course ate too much food. ( the men always went into the yard or the basement and played "modie" ( I know I spelled it wrong, but it's a game where you shout out a number and shoot out that number of fingers, I never did learn since it was only the men who played , but I can still hear my dad and uncles shouting seiii...)
Holidays were amazing. the food never stopped. The antipasta, the pasta usually ravioli(homemade of course), meats and all the trimmings, fruit including dried figs, nuts, torrone, and dessert. All enjoyed with someone's homemade wine and homemade cordials. The children got wine mixed with 7up.
I didn't know that everyone didn't eat like this until I was well into high school. I thought everyones name ended in a vowel.
We still try to keep up with most of the traditions . Up until his last christmas eve my dad was playing scopa with all his grand children. A real birthday cake is still Italian Rum. But,unfortunately, we don't get together with family as often as we did.
Some of the neighborhoods in the city have stayed the same, and the Italian market is still there. There are still some of the cheese shops ,butchers, bakeries and fish markets that I grew up with. But, life is just so different.
So that's why when I am in Italy I feel like I've come home.

quote:

Originally posted by deb t:
... ( the men always went into the yard or the basement and played "modie" ( I know I spelled it wrong, but it's a game where you shout out a number and shoot out that number of fingers, I never did learn since it was only the men who played , but I can still hear my dad and uncles shouting seiii...)...

I've always called this game, morte or "death". The goal is to shout a number from 0-10 while the two participants put out 0 to 5 fingers from one hand. If the total number of digits shown equals what one of the participants shouted, he wins! I think this was a drinking game!
Instead of shouting "zero", the shout was Morte, morte, morte.

quote:

We have retained many of the Italian traditions and now that my parents are in their 80's we have the opportunity to spend some time in my fathers old family home in Italy every couple of years in the summer. My parents like nothing better than to spend their summers there with assorted kids, inlaws, grandkids and grandkids friends filling their old house.

You children and are your parents are very lucky people.

My Sicilian grnadmother only lived about a mile from our house and my mother was her best friend, so we spent a lot of time with her when I was a child. Not only that, she lived to be 91 and didn't die until I was 44. I have felt that she really affected my life in many positive ways. Even though the food in the parts of Italy that I have been to is not like hers, the smell of the food in the streets in the restaurants, takes me back to her kitchen.

My own children have been grandparentless since they were 8 and 12.

quote:

Originally posted by Madonna del Piatto:

I had started it because I am fascinated by stories of Italians
who emigrated at the beginning of last century.

So here is the question for those who have an Italian background or have had frequent experience of Italian home food outside Italy :

How is your experience with Italian food in Italy as compared to your " Italian abroad" home food?

What did you have in Italy that reminded you of your home food and why?

And in the present, do Italian families abroad still cook like in Italy?
Have traditions been kept, adapted?

Thank you for any comment!

Not that far back. Most of my family left Italy early 1950s to mid 1960s.

1) No real difference. To the point that almost any brand in an Italian supermarket is available in Toronto. Some differences in meat and fish choices but nothing serious.

2) Everything. Same basic receipes. Cooking methods etc

3) I'd say more of a time capsule really. A modern Italian family has the same time problems everybody else has. So I'd say modern Italian cooking has moved a bit more to quick and convient.

quote:

Not that far back. Most of my family left Italy early 1950s to mid 1960s.

Indeed I realized that. And of course modern Italian cooking is very different from even what my grandmas cooked until 30 years ago.

On the other hand, different are the stories of last century when people made a trip that was forever. So many of them never came back.

The brother and sisters of my Sicilian grandmother went to Ellis Island around the 1920s. My grandmother married when she was 14 years old so she did not have to leave their little village above in the hills near Messina and of course her sweetheart.

For almost 60 years they wrote to each other, exchanged pictures and gifts by mail but they never met again. I just never found a complete explanation on how this was possible but I have always tried to picture their lives.

My father’s parents came to the U. S. early in the century, around 1905, and they never returned to Italy.

At that time, they were so poor that they had to leave Italy because there was no work there, and they came here looking for a better life. But they were poor here in New York as well. Their stories of living through the Great Depression were heartbreaking. And after a brief respite, World War II happened.

We have letters that my grandfather exchanged with his brother and sister in Avellino. Those letters led us to their small town of Celzi di Forino a few years ago...a wonderful experience.

But in those letters, the family in Italy was pleading for my grandfather to send them money because all they could buy was one loaf of bread. And with the money, they needed a needle so that they could sew their clothes. But, unfortunately, times here were hard during the war...there was never enough money to go around.

So they had no money to return to Italy...and with Avellino being devastated during the war, they had little reason to go home.

My paternal Italian family is a bit different from many of the others here - all my relatives who came to the U.S. came from Lonate Pozzolo in Lombardia (just southwest of Malpensa Airport). I still have relatives in Lonate Pozzolo and I visit them every time I am in Italy. So, my family's Italian traditions and food are Northern Italian (i.e., rice - not pasta).

My great-grandfather came over first in 1904 (when my grandmother was less than a year old), and my great-grandmother and grandmother came later, in 1905. My grandfather came over in 1921, after fighting for the Italian Army in WWI. My dad grew up speaking the Lonatese dialetto and he didn't really speak English until around age 5 when he started school.

My great-grandfather built one of the first houses in El Cerrito, just north of Berkeley in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was actually a small farm for many years. They raised chickens, rabbits and squab (pigeons), had a huge vegetable garden and small orchard. Nearly everyone on their street was from the same area of Lombardia. Unfortunately, the house was sold after my great-grandmother died and it was later torn down to accomodate the El Cerrito BART station.

My great-grandmother (Nonni-ma) died when I was almost 5, but I still have vivid memories of standing on a chair watching her rolling out the dough to make ravioli. I actually inherited her ravioli rolling pin, LOL. I also have vivid sensory memories of the smells from her kitchen when she was cooking. There have been times and places in Italy where I have encountered those same cooking smells that bring right back to Nonni-ma's kitchen...

We hardly ate pasta at all when I was growing up, except for ravioli. The biggest traditional food in my Italian family was "risott", which is basically Risotto Milanese (made with saffron). Every holiday my great-grandmother or grandmother would make a huge platter of it. My sister, brother and I loved risott so much that it is a big part of our childhood holiday memories. My great-grandmother actually had someone bring her crocus bulbs to grow in her garden in El Cerrito, so she could have her own supply of saffron to make risott. My grandmother taught me how to make risott when I was going off to college. Eventually I taught my husband how to make it (since he's the cook in our family) and it's one of my sons' and grandson's favorite dishes. We don't save it just for holidays now though

The first time I went to Italy was in 1976 when I was a student at UC Berkeley, majoring in Italian. I spent over 2 weeks with my cousins in Lonate Pozzolo. They also made risott just like Nonni-ma used to make, but once awhile they'd add in porcini mushrooms. That was really delicious!

I also have really vivid memories of my great-uncles handing me a glass of some kind alcohol to taste at family gatherings. I remembered it was really strong, burned on the way down, and made me shudder, and they all thought that was funny ! Later as an adult someone asked me if I would like to try some grappa. As soon as the glass neared my nose and I got a whiff of it, those old memories came flooding back - it was grappa that they had made me taste! And it burned like hell on the way down, just like I remembered it from my childhood...

My great-grandparents were pretty traditional and never really learned to speak much English because they always intended to return to Italy when my great-grandfather retired. But, unfortunately, he died here before they were able to return. My great-grandmother remained here for the rest of her life. She finally become an American citizen around 1950, after my great-grandfather had passed away.

Tery

quote:

My great-grandparents were pretty traditional and never really learned to speak much English because they always intended to return to Italy when my great-grandfather retired.

I have wondered if this happened a lot. My own great-grandparents were in America for 28 year before they became naturalized citizens during WWII. I have wondered if they thought moving to America was a temporary thing?

quote:

.... Finally, Sabett gave up saying, "O Jes" ("Oh Jesus" - my relatives, even the women, had sharp tongues). At this point Amichai turned to my mother and said, "...if she wanted cheese why didn't she just ask me for some?" as he scurried to the back of the store to retrieve the requested formaggio.

Love the story Stefanaccio. It would be worthy of posting in the 100th, 500th etc forum.

I don't have an Italian family background, but I have a wonderful book to recommend on this topic: The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken: A Search for Food and Family. From the review:

quote:

In this marvelous family memoir, which considers the immigrant experience from the vantage of food, Schenone, longing for an inner life where advertising cannot reach, sets off on an idealistic quest to reclaim the ravioli recipe that her Genovese great-grandmother brought with her at the turn of the last century to New Jersey, where the dish abruptly changed, breaking with tradition.

- Roz

Letizia, my four grandparents came from two different hills about 40 minutes from each other in Emilia Romagna -- one set came from Bardi, and the other came from Berceto.

My maternal grandmother was actually born in America, only to be brought back to Italy as a baby. This gave her the American Citizenship. In those days, circa 1924, you did not automatically bestow that right onto your spouse, however, and when she married and they decided to go to America, my grandmother, very pregnant, went by herself in steerage from the Port of Genoa and my grandfather boarded a freighter for Louisiana illegally as a stowaway. My grandmother arrived in Philadelphia and went to Long Island where she gave birth to my aunt and lived with her cousins. My grandfather made it as an illegal up to Canada where he got the Landed Immigrant status and then entered the United States to join my grandmother. My aunt was a year old by the time my grandfather saw her for the first time.

My other grandparents left Bardi in 1917 after being married, also through the Port of Genoa, and landed in New York.My grandfather's brother left Italy at the same time, for Wales. There is a large contingent of Emilianese in Wales.

All four landed in the Northern Italian ghetto in Manhattan, which was, of course, north of Little Italy - between 49th Street and 61st Street, between York and Third Avenues. This is where people from Emilia Romagna, Lombardia and Piemonte settled. The northern Italian immigrants comprised only 5 per cent of the total Italian immigrant population and considered themselves superior to the rest of the immigrant population in what I can only term as "bringing the old stupid fights across the pond to the New Land".

Two parishes dominated the ghetto -- St. John the Evangelist and Our Lady of Perpetual Help. My father was in one parish, my mother in the other. They met at a dance hall, a little further north, in the German ghetto of Yorktown, on 86th Street. (Between the Italians and the Germans were the Poles and the Russians -- you can still see a bit of evidence of this on the Upper East side, where there are still a couple of Russian and German restaurants which serve dumplings and borscht).

In any event, the girl from one hill in Italy met the boy from a few miles away on another hill in Italy in a dance hall in Manhattan.

They married, and we did, in fact, as so many others have reiterated, eat like queens. On 60th and 1st Avenue was a deli called Mario's which carried all of the products from Parma which we needed -- salami cotto, prosciutto, coppa, Reggiano, and torrone in little boxes with what was something like a Communion wafer on the surface. We did not shop there every day, but for Christmas and Easter we did.

Christmas Dinner was normally:

Salami, coppa with Italian bread served with cocktails

Mellon and prosciutto

Ravioli made from spinach, roasted veal, onions and white wine served with tomato sauce

Prime Rib or some other superior cut (for which they saved all year) with buttered string beans and roast potatoes

Fruit, cheese (fontina) and torrone

Zabaglione

Lots of Bolla Valpolicella wine.

That was my mother's family's food. My grandfather was a chef at the Essex House Hotel in New York and food was his life as well as my grandmothers. They loved to cook together.

They eventually moved out of the ghetto to Greenwich, CT, the land of the White Anglo Saxon Protestant. The neighbors would complain that the smells coming from my grandparent's kitchen had been driving them nuts for two days before any major family function. It was all about the aroma of garlic and onions sauteing in olive oil and white wine. So simple, but so foreign for so many Americans.

On my father's side -- well, my parental grandfather came to work in a French Restaurant as soon as they got to America. In those days, French was the big thing and Italian food was nothing... so the Italians all worked in French restaurants. My memories from my father's side of the family were things like polenta loaded up with gorgonzola and fried in olive oil, different torte, filled with rice/zucchini, or potato/leeks or savoy cabbage/reggiano/olive oil. There was always homemade mayonaisse to dress everything and the foods were richer in my father's family's home.

We ate like kings, and were used to everything tasting good. That was always the point. Even if it was meat loaf, it had to taste good and the house needed to smell good while it was cooking. My entire life was influenced by the cooking of my family and being here makes me appreciate how hard they had to work -- first of all to earn the money to put things like REGGIANO!! on the table -- can you imagine? It's so Italian to clean other people's houses so that your family can have the BEST-- only the BEST -- on the table at Christmas or Easter.

My generation (the young people HAHAHA) -- all my girl cousins, and my sister, and my niece, we all make the same basic tomato sauce. Mine does not taste like my mother's and she swears that hers is not as good as her mother's.

Sometimes I cook for my neighbors here and they love the "Emilianese/New Yorkese" chicken cacciatore and osso bucco -- those dishes are prepared differently here in Piemonte.

Everything about almost every elderly woman I see reminds my of my grandmothers, which is why being in Italy is so comforting for an Italian American like me.

quote:

I have wondered if this happened a lot. My own great-grandparents were in America for 28 year before they became naturalized citizens during WWII. I have wondered if they thought moving to America was a temporary thing?

Yes, Pat, I think it did. There were other relatives in both sides of my father's family who did go back to Italy after being in the U.S. for a number of years. And there were others who waited many, many years before becoming American citizens.

And my great-grandparents kind of ended up paying a price for not becoming American citizens sooner (or at all, in my great-grandfather's case). For those of you who may have had Italian resident-alien relatives in California during the initial years of World War II, you may know about or have heard of "la storia segreta" - the "secret history." Soon after Pearl Harbor, all resident alien Italian citizens, primarily in the San Francisco and Monterey Bay areas, were first forced to register as "enemy aliens" and any radios and flashlights were taken away. When I went to Ellis Island in 2002, I found the manifest from the ship that my great-grandfather had immigrated over on. Next to his handwritten name was a latter handwritten addition - a number and the date 1/30/42. That number was his enemy alien registration number.

My great-grandparents were forced to move from their home a few months later, as were many other Italians in Northern California. They were not put in internment camps, but they had to go live somewhere away from "prohibited zone" along the California coast. The fear was that they could be Axis spies who would collaborate with the Japanese to attack California. My great-grandparents were in their 60's at the time and had to go to live with my grandmother and her second husband up in St. Helena, in the Napa Valley.

Finally after a number of months, the US Government rescinded the relocation order and the Italian "enemy aliens" were allowed to return home - but they were told that they should never discuss this "event" with any one else. So none of these Italian people really talked about it afterwards. It was mentioned from time to time in my family, but always with a kind of shame and embarrasment.

In fact, until about 1994, when I saw a news article on some people who had started a traveling museum exhibit about this episode in American history, I never even knew that the forced relocation had happened to anyone other than my Italian great-grandparents.

If you are interested in more information about this chapter of Italian American history that most people have never heard of, here is a link to a website on "Una Storia Segreta": Una Storia Segreta

Tery

I cannot even start to say how all this is wonderful, thank you so much!

I have just spent a whole afternoon with my mother, a rare moment of peace that only happens once every few years. So I have interviewd her about the old times, i.e. when she was a kid in the 40-50s.

Diana, my mum today told me a story somewhat similar to yours. My grandmother Rosaria was a young widow with 6 children at that time. They were not really poor but it was not easy either. In fact the "American" relatives help them a lot during the war with shipments of food, clothes and money.

My mum and her sisters made blouses with parachute fabric that was in the packages sometime. However, even through the hardship, she remembers they always ate like kings. Everyday something different.

Anchovy was the cheapest fish and often fried or used to make a pasta sauce. If there was any little extra money the kids would get a piece of provolone as a treat. If there was not enough, grandma would open a large trunk of dried fruit.
She prepared that in the summer when from Messina they spent their "holidays" in the countryside near Patti where she had some land.

When in the country they would go to the shepherd to buy fresh ricotta and they would eat it for dinner with bread. What was left was dried in the sun and grated on pasta, no Parmesan was available then. They would also eat no steaks, only meatballs or other cheaper cuts that could be breaded and fried or used for sauce.

Before returning to the city, she would bake 10 or 12 large loaves of bread, plus cookies and friselle. Each of the six kids had to carry a large basket of goodies to bring on the bus back to Messina.

So, like others mentioned in this thread, also my grandmother worked constantly to feed such a large family and to feed them well. In addition she was as a single mother and she did all this alone as her extended family lived in the countryside.

We, her grandchildren, all have a sort of legendary image of her, a legend of good food and love.

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Yes, Pat, I think it did. There were other relatives in both sides of my father's family who did go back to Italy after being in the U.S. for a number of years.

It must have been really sad because most of them didn't get to go back. My grandmother wanted to go back and just visit once before she died, but there was no money to do so.

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I have a wonderful book

Thank you Roz, this will make a great read for this winter.

Last year I read Vita by G. Mazzucco. Very moving, even though not a gentle book, nor very much about food either.

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In fact the "American" relatives help them a lot during the war with shipment of food, clothes and money.

My mother-in-law always sent packages to the family in Caserta, especially after the war. In fact, the cousin who was the recipient of the clothes, still fondly remembers those packages. She said she was able to dress for interviews for jobs...if it weren't for those clothes, she would have had nothing proper to wear! And she still cries telling us these stories.

Isn't it amazing how similar so many of these stories are?

Carol