My little ltaly

Road trips are a very common thing in my family. We drive everywhere! Every vacation our family went on, we drove. Every relative we visited, we drove. Every time someone died, married, or became ill, we drove. I assume that when I was young I thoroughly enjoyed getting out of the house and going on these arduous road trips, but in all of the time I can recall they always seemed like a chore.

The night before we would depart on our adventures my dad would always say the same thing, "Line up all of your luggage by the door and make sure you are ready to go A.I.S at 7 am."
It wasn’t until I was older that I learned what A.I.S meant, ass- in-seat. My father still uses this unique term to this very day.

There was one road trip however that I looked forward to all year. That was when our family went to visit my grandparents in New York. I remember these trips were so amazing, so spectacular, that I would actually lose sleep in great anticipation. But it was not the trip itself that I found so amazing; it was what was waiting for us at our destination.

My grandparents lived in what, on the outside looked like a small cookie cutter house, but on the inside it was bigger then you could have ever imagined. In the instant that you stepped through the old creaky glass door you could feel a warm welcoming sense permeating from every element in the house, including the 1970’s furniture. This sense of comfort only lasted for a minute because by then your nose had detected something wonderful, the smell of food!

As I sauntered through the living room with the antique furniture and majestic bits and pieces from around the world the only thing that stimulated my senses was what was cooking in the kitchen. Vibrant images of red tomato sauce and off white spaghetti danced in my head and teased my tongue. If I could have ran to the kitchen I would have, but there was a massive table that slowed me down because it required me to move the chairs to get past. When I finally arrived in the kitchen I saw my grandma, a short well-aged Italian woman, stirring a pot over a dull lime green stove.

Sensing my presence my grandmother put the ladle down, turned, and opened her arms to greet me. As I took the wonderful aroma in, we hugged and kissed each other on the cheek in traditional Italian style. Soon after we exchanged greeting my grandpa walked in.

My grandpa inquired with a thick Italian accent, "Whatsa matter for you? Did you forget the luggage in the car? Come on, go help ya fatha."

No matter what the occasion was for our visit, we always had a grand dinner. Preparation for this grand feast was very tiresome, and usually took days to prepare. Usually the men and kids, including me, would go out for the entire day buying all the items required. Back at the home the women would prepare the kitchen and all of the utensils needed to craft our masterpiece.

At the butcher shop my father greeted the butcher by name. The butcher had known my father since he was a young child. The two conversed and caught up on past times. While they blabbered on I became mesmerized at how many different types of meat they had, and how fresh they looked. To this day I have never seen a butcher with so many different meats then that one. My grandpa points out all the differences between them and what they are used for. After many jokes were exchanged between the butcher and my father we ordered the meat we wanted and left with smiles on our face. My dad probably smiled because he was happy to see an old friend, but I was smiling because I knew we were on the way to the pastry shop.

New York pastries are like nothing else in this world. Nothing can ever come close to the real thing. It is like going to see a cover band sing your favorite song, it is never as good as the original, no matter how many explosions or flashing lights they have. My favorite pastries are pinoles cookies and chocolate Italian ices. Together they are the perfect ying and yang of the pastry world. The cookie has a semi hard exterior with a hint of lemon taste surrounded by a barrier of pinole seeds. When toped with the chocolate ices it is perfecto! You don’t even have to chew it if you didn’t want to, because it would melt right in your mouth with some assistance from the tongue.

At the pastries shop my grandpa ordered five pounds of cookies and four quarts of Italian ices. The chef put the cookies in a box and scooped the ices into a plastic container and we headed back home.


When we arrived back home my mom and grandma were already making the shells for the manicotti. Each shell is made separately in a very small pan, and if you don’t cook it just the right amount of time you have to throw it away. The night before my mom had made the fillings for the manicotti out of ricotta cheese, garlic, parsley, egg and milk.


My brother and I prepared the oversized table while my mother and grandmother finished putting the final touches on the food. Everything has to be in the right place. Spoons went on the right and forks on the left, if you got it wrong it could have been an offence punishable by a week of dishwashing. The napkins had to be folded in a certain way and the food had to be placed in strategic locations so that everyone could reach it. Most of the times we would have to pull out tray tables because there was no room left on the table to put everything.


When all of the food was placed on the table and everyone had sat down it was truly an impressive sight. There were mountains of bowls and plates filled to the brim with delectable food. There was salad covered with everything you could possibly buy in the produce section of the grocery store, manicotti covered with rich red colored sauce, olives as big as your thumb, ribs so tender the meat fell off the bone, spaghetti so slippery it was hard to scoop, sausage so perfectly grilled that Emeril Lagasse would be jealous, and peppers that could have easily been a centerfold in a cookbook. All of these bowls were accented by the wine glasses filled tall with the best red wines from the finest vineyards of Spain.




But the best part was not the food, it was not the fine wines, it was not the perfectly positioned silverware put out by my brother and me, no, it was the company of one another. When a family puts as much effort into a meal like mine it truly brings out the love and that love is painted with the reds of sauces from tomatoes, the purples from fine wines, the browns from seeds of pinole cookies, and the greens of the lettuce shreds.





ANiceCupofTea. photographer. Italian pistachio and pinole (pine nuts) cookies.2007. From Flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/anicecupoftea/131774359/(accessed September 1, 2009)