Pasta Fagioli for the Italian-American Soul

i-Italy

2008-11-11T21:52:00.000-08:00

When I am looking for current news on social and cultural events involving Italy and Italian-Americans I go to a website called i-Italy. According to their site i-Italy is a group of "journalists, academics and 'public intellectuals'" creating a forum of information focused on Americans of Italian descent, anyone interested in Italy and also Italians living in America. It is a really well designed site with relevant news as well as op-eds, blogs, and some really fantastic multi-media.

I recently visited the site when I heard about Premier Silvio Berlusconi's "tan" comment when referring to our new president elect. A comment he later said was meant as a compliment. I was curious what Italians' responses were. Below is a link to i-Italy and an article regarding the recent gaffe by Berlsconi.

http://www.i-italy.org/166/about-us

Nursery Rhymes

2008-11-11T21:22:00.000-08:00

My sister's baby shower is coming up and I am trying to think of something fun I can do for her in addition to the regular registry gift. I came across this Italian Nursery Rhyme website and it is fantastic for any Italian-American mother or child because it translates all of the lullabys to English. For years I would sing these "rhymes" and never know what the heck I was saying. I have to warn you that like many Italian sayings, when they are translated they make absolutely no sense at all. Below is my favorite lullaby and the link to the site. Have Fun!

http://www.mamalisa.com/?t=es&p=890&c=120

Batta, Batta le Manine

Ora viene papa

Si prendre confitine

(baby's name) si mangera!

Translation

Clap, clap your hands

Daddy's coming home soon.

He's bringing candy

(Baby) is going to eat it!

I'm Not White, I'm Italian

2008-11-11T20:52:00.000-08:00

Honestly, I was wearing a bra before I realized that I was Caucasian. When you are raised first generation Italian-American you are taught that there is a difference between yourself and others. You are Italian and everyone else is not. Every time I sat down to take a standardized test I had to really think about which bubble to fill in on the race section of the scan tron. Ok, I'm not white, I'm not black, I'm not Hispanic...where the hell is the Italian bubble? And I have read and hear that other Italians have had a similar experience. So here is a couple reasons I was so oblivious for so long.

1. Italian kids move out of their house the day after their wedding.

2. Italian kids eat dinner in the afternoon and they talk and eat until late into the night.

3. Italian kids don't hire professionals to do things. They call a dad an uncle or a friend of a dad or an uncle do things.

4. Italian kids do not pack peanut butter and jelly on soggy white bread. Italian kids pack mortadella on crusty Italian bread.

5. Italian kids eat ravioli on Thanksgiving in addition to the pasta, stuffed peppers, fried cutlets, bragoli, rice balls and oh yea, the turkey and stuffing.

You get the point.

Zizi Sara

2008-11-11T20:04:00.001-08:00

I'm going to be an aunt! Zizi Sara! This February my sister will give birth to a baby girl and I can not wait. My aunts have had a great influence on me. My mother is one of eight children, seven of which are women. So, on my mothers side alone I have seven wonderfully ridiculous aunts. "The Aunts" as we call them. I often compare them to Aunt Vuola in the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" throwing down shots and passing around a platter of lamb. They are passionate, loud and extremely outspoken. I am pretty certain that my own volume and self assertiveness can be attributed to The Aunts.

Baby Serafina!

I love children, so on that level I am very excited to have a baby around the house, but on a more personal note I can not wait to be this little girl's wonderfully ridiculous aunt. Some of my earliest memories are of my Zia Marisa and Zizi Antoinette. I can only hope that I will be among my niece's early memories; that I will be a source of security and love as my aunts are to me.

Cover the Figs!

2008-11-09T22:38:00.000-08:00

So it has started to get cold here in Pittsburgh. There are two big things my father worries about in life. One is the health of his family and the other is frost. Italian's are great gardeners. We grow tomatoes, celery, cucumbers, basil and every kind of pepper under the sun. There are very few things my father won't try to grow in our yard, not excluding of course, a fig tree. This tree is not small and the little fruit is extremely fickle. They require a lot of nurturing and my father is more than willing to give full attention to their care. So every winter, in order to keep the tree from dying, you have to cover the entire thing in plastic. Forget how it looks in our yard, he could care less. I think my neighbors know by now not to question what happens in our yard. So wrapping a tree in plastic is not an easy task. My uncle, his son, my two brothers and my dad spent the entire morning cocooning the fig tree. Honestly? Cocooning a tree! The worst part is that this tree is right beside my bedroom window. So if its windy or raining, which is like everyday in Pittsburgh, it sounds like I am on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic. I told this to my dad tonight after he inspected his beloved plant. His response, "Tough, I'll buy you earplugs."

My Siblings

2008-11-09T22:03:00.000-08:00

I know I mentioned before that I am one of four siblings and I can't begin to explain the bond I have with each one of them. It constantly surprises me when my friends first meet my family and they almost always find it weird when they see how close we all are. I think this idea of being kind of weird and different is what makes us so close in the first place. Growing up in an Italian-American house is a lot different then growing up in some of the homes my friends were raised in. I remember being in middle school and my best friend telling me she got grounded for failing her math test. Grounded? What is that?We didn't get grounded in my house. If we failed a math test my mother chased us around the house with her wooden spoon and threatened us with the "When your father gets home-a hes a-gonna kill you." There was also the time I was in high school and I invited some friends over my house for New Years Eve. Every year my parents throw a huge party on New Years Eve with all of our family and friends. At least 100 people packed into our basement and garage. As the ball dropped everyone stood cramped around our television set counting down...3,2,1, Happy New Year! And then suddenly with out any notice or hesitation, everyone started kissing everyone. No ones cheeks can go unkissed...including my unsuspecting friends. I can still remember the look of bewilderment and terror on their faces! So this is part of the reason my brothers and sister and I are so very close. These moments, these stories, they are things only we could possibly find normalcy in. It's almost like our entire life is a big inside joke that we get to share with each other forever.

Everybody Wants To Be Italian

2008-11-09T21:01:00.000-08:00

It may be true. I was recently on vacation in Florida with my mother and aunts and about midway through the week a friend of my aunts who was nearby decided to spend the entire day with my crazy family. At the end of the night as we convinced her that she couldn't drive home after that last glass of wine, she happily said that if she were reincarnated she hoped to come back Italian. When I came home and I was retelling the story of this woman's adventure to my Irish-German boyfriend, he suggested we start charging people to hang out with my family. It may be narcissistic, but I was so excited when I saw that a movie exploring this very theme opened in select theatres on September 5.

With culture rich Boston as a the setting, "Everybody Wants To Be Italian" follows the romantic life of Jake Bianski, the young owner of a fish market and his co-workers/relationship advisers. We quickly find out that Jake has a problem. He is desperately in love with his high school sweetheart that is now married with children. Determined to get his mind off of his ex his buddies set him up with a gorgeous Italian woman. Since Jake is not Italian, they have him pretend he is, so that he can win her affections. And the romantic comedy unfolds.

I should say that this summary is what I can gather from overviews of the film and from viewing the trailer. Unfortunately the movie has not opened in my town so I will have to wait to give you my personal review. If you have seen the movie please let me know how it is! I posted the trailer below.

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809718167/trailer

My Country

2008-11-09T18:55:00.000-08:00

I am a very proud Italian. I am also a very proud American. I felt so proud of my country watching Barack Obama win the election on November 4. I have always thought that because of our great diversity, the task to lead this country is a great challenge. We are a country of many cultures, and of many faiths. We are a country of diverse race and ethnicity. We are a country of immigrants. My father was 17 years old when he came to the United States with his family. They came here because it was here that anything was possible. And it really was. This country has been extrodinary to my family. My father went to work doing anything he could. He bought a home here. He, at 28, opened his own business here. He got married here and raised his four children here. Nothing came easy but everything was possible with hard work. And on Tuesday while I sat on the couch with my dad and watched the votes pour in, that feeling that anything is possible in America flooded my living room. I was drowning in simultaneous feelings of both hope and pride. We are hardly a perfect union, but we are and always have been a union striving toward a better future. November 4, 2008 was better. Tuesday night, as thousands of beautiful and very different faces stood together in Chicago, I looked around and saw my country. A country I thought we had lost. We showed the world why my father calls America his home. Because his father belived and he believes and I believe that, in this country, everything is possible.

Destination: Italy

2008-10-22T19:01:00.000-07:00

Tropea, Calabria, Italy
Every month I receive an e-newsletter from the National Italian American Foundation. Usually I just skim over and this one caught my attention so I thought I would pass on the info. NIAF has stared an Italian Heritage Travel Program and its first destination is my mothers hometown, Calabria. The trip is nine days and seven nights and leaves from NYC. According to NIAF there are several departure dates between September 2008 and June 2009. It looks like a great deal!

NIAF WEBSITE

Just for Laughs

2008-10-22T17:59:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago my brother brought home a CD of the Canadian-Italian comedian Pascuale Parmiggiano and by the time we got to the second track I was about to pee my pants. Listening to him talk about his family was like reading my own personal diary. Pasquale and Rosina Parmiggiano might as well be my own mom and dad.

The video below is one of the skits turned into a cartoon and it's hilarious. The video is also mostly in Italian so if you don't understand Italian, sorry, this won't be very funny. Also, another disclaimer, the video contains some bad words (Italian and English) so please do not press play if you would be offended. I hope you like it!

Assimilation

2008-10-22T07:11:00.000-07:00

In my last post I wrote that my earliest memories as a young girl are often memories of food eating, or food making, or food related events. I forgot to mention that in some of those dear memories the food was still alive.

As a third grader every afternoon was the same routine. I would run off of the school bus, sprint down the front yard toward my driveway, open the garage and then the door to the house which leads into (what else) the kitchen. Except once a year, a week before Easter, this routine was interrupted. I would run off of the bus, sprint down the front yard, and there, grazing in my driveway were three of the cutest, sweetest, little baby lamb. My brother and I would feed them and play with them all afternoon. We would name them, pet them, give them our love.

The next day, excited about my pet lamb, I would run off the bus, sprint down the front yard, open the garage door...and there, to my horrified surprise, were three fur-less, little lamb hanging upside down in the garage. It was traumatic! And all the while my dad with his apron on, standing by my side with a proud of the days work look on his face.

I apologize if you are a vegetarian and this behavior is not at all humorous but looking back at this time I have to laugh. The funniest thing about it is that we do not live on a farm or a secluded acre of land. We live in the suburbs about 20 minutes north of the city of Pittsburgh. And any one of our good American neighbors who buy their Easter dinner at Giant Eagle could look out their window and see three baby lamb grazing next to our Ford Taurus and our basketball hoop.

In this very moment I learned two things about my family.

1) We are different and 2) We don't care.

As hard as my parents try to assimilate, blending in will always come second to culture and tradition.

Sunday Dinners

2008-10-20T07:06:00.000-07:00

Pasta e Fagioli literally means pasta and beans. It is a carb filled soup with the smells and tastes of my Italian-American upbringing. As the daughter of two Italian born immigrants, my dearest memories are often surrounded by delicious food. Me and my three siblings grew up in a small home but like most Italians we have two kitchens (one in the basement).

Sunday Dinners at my mothers home are mandatory unless you want to be shunned or relentlessly talked about. The dinners are not for the health conscious: a pasta; either penne or spaghetti with homemade sauce, a meat; chicken or veal scaloppine, stuffed peppers, fried bragoli, fried cutlets, salad, and a loaf of Breadworks Italian bread. My father is at the head of the table, than there is my mother, my sister and her husband, my brother and his fiance, my younger brother, myself and my boyfriend, with the occasional aunt, uncle and grandparent in the mix. All 10 of us crowded around a table for 6 and I wouldn't have it any other way. Every week it's the same, and every week we look forward to the sounds and smells of my mothers kitchen.

A close childhood friend once told me that when we were young each of our girlfriends had a specific smell; Lindsay smelled like fresh laundry, Carrie smelled like too much perfume and me... I smelled like pasta and meatballs. I really love that!