Home grown tomatoes
Someone today reminded me about Italians and their love affair with food! It’s almost a given for most Italian families. I’ve heard of a few who didn’t have that growing up and I always felt sorry for them. For me, that was the best part of growing up in an Italian family. It’s hard to describe growing up in an Italian family to those not reared by Italians: The flying arms, the loud voices, the cries of Mangia, Mangia!
The grandparents lived with us. They were part of the family and the shouts and cooking. We did have milk deliveries but we had Italian stores, like DeVitis and Sons, to buy our olive oils, vinegar, tomato paste, salamis, pepperoni, cheeses. The smells in those stores cannot be described. Walking through those doors, the smells made you take a big deep, deep breath, put a smile on your face and a song in your heart because you knew you were going to get some amazing things to take home and cook except for the pickles in the big barrel. You could pick out a pickle and eat it right there!
The Italian bakeries, like Ninni’s (my favorite), had the most amazing breads warm from the oven. Sometimes we couldn’t wait to get home and we’d tear off chunks of the warm crusty Italian twist bread to eat on the way home. Then no one wanted that craggy looking end when we got home and sliced the bread. Dinner with warm Italian bread sliced and covered with fresh ricotta cheese was dinner now and then. I remember the kids in school thinking how sad we just had bread and cheese for dinner. I remember knowing they had no idea how good it was and I felt sorry for them!
Tomato sauces were made from scratch. The smell of sauce cooking on the stove, stealing a piece of bread, covering it with sauce and eating it is a wonderful memory. Oh my, that tasted so good. My sister and I once did that so much one day, that we accidentally ate most of the sauce that was for dinner. Mom wasn’t too happy! We had wonderful soups and made pizzelles for Italian holidays. Sometimes we made bread too. Bread was for dunking in the salad dressing as we ate our salads. And we had a garden. When the garden was no more, we still grew Italian parsley because you could never get that in the stores.
So many more memories of being Italian and our love for food. I’ll save some for another time.
What are some of your favorite childhood memories related to food? Were any of your traditions from outside the US?
Love this, Julieanne! My parents moved to CA when I was little, so the food always connected us with the Italian relatives in NY. When we went back to NY, usually more than once a year, we would go from house to house, served all the different family specialties. From Aunt Antoinette’s perfect eggplant parm to my grandmother’s meatballs (no measuring – she’d line up the ingredients on the edge of a platter) to the amazing pastries from the Italian pastry store, each one brings back vivid memories of the people, the places and the time.
Yes, the Italian food back East was something. Whenever my husband and I went back to Philadelphia or to my relatives, we hit all the things we loved. I’d come home with a suitcase of Italian bread. We’d freeze it and put it in our suitcase frozen, get it home and in the freezer again! Thanks for commenting, Gloria
Your post made me think of my grandfather’s store, which was a one-room grocery store with everything from meat to–pickles! It also had a penny candy counter and ice cream in a deep freezer. Food was more conflicted in my home, so I don’t have the same kinds of memories you do, but I enjoyed the vividness you brought to your memories. Sadly, I cannot eat tomatoes or bread, so I cannot directly experience some of the wonders you describe. But vicarious works, too!
You handle your eating restrictions very admirably. I’m not sure I would be so good at that! And guess what, you didn’t end up in spam! I’ll do my best for you vicariously. Can you eat any gluten free breads or all breads out?
I spent many years in resistance and trying to sneak things past (past whom I don’t know, since I was the problem!!) Now I know the peace of letting go. I don’t eat flour products of any type, as I just cannot handle them. Gluten’s the worst, but I don’t mess with bread. To be honest, some days I find the absence of tomatoes the hardest–tomato-based soups and sauces are so wonderful, to say nothing of fresh tomatoes.
Lately, I find that wine is causing me some problems. It’s the acid. So I’m cutting back. Interesting for me because I love having wine with dinner. But I’m okay with it. When something makes you not feel good, you change. If the wine is older, I can handle it better. It is what it is. You go with the flow. And what you resist, persists. Not being able to eat tomatoes is a big challenge. Still and eat, you handle it all with grace.
I love Italian food. Now that I am gluten free, it will be more of a challenge. I’ve made my own bolognese sauce for years. I’d love to try some of the Italian food in New York.
You can do wonders with piling up cold cuts, cheeses, roasted bell peppers or eating eggplant parmigiana made with no breading! And quinoa pasta tastes very good and for me to say that is an utter miracle. I’ve tried it and it tasted like good pasta. Food was always important. I was cooking our dinners by 12. And I still make some great crusty fried potatoes cooked in olive oil!
Thanks, Julieanne. Oh, I enjoyed savoring everything you described! I don’t recall any distinct food memories from my childhood, but your wonderful description of walking into that grocery store reminded me of every time I visited the Central Grocery, in New Orleans’ French Quarter. What unbelievable muffaleta sandwiches — with salamis, olive salad, and all the rest. I’d enjoy one for lunch and taste it for the entire day!
I’ll bet you did, Robbie! My heavens, my husband would love mufflaleta sandwiches. He was raised in Baton Rouge. But then again, he used to hang out in the swamps and catch cat fish and cook it over an open fire or small birds he cover in mud and cook over the fires like Yipipy taught him. He loves crawdads, too!
Wow, Juleanne, your post brought back a lot of memories. DInners of Just marina sauce and bread, bread used to mop up Eerything on the plate, the delis in Little Italy and the Festival of San Genaro. I could almost smell sauce bubbling on the stove as I drift back to these times.Are you southern Italian or northern? I have yet to find a great red sauce (outside of my own kitchen) in California…
I guess we were more southern. My grandparents were from Abruzzi just outside Rome in the mountains. I have had some really good sauces in some restaurants but they were upscale types. I take that back. There was a little family owned restaurant here and it was very friendly and homey. Very limited menu with certain dishes done on certain days. Good sauces however and they made a great carbonara. Unless the owner chef was in a bad mood! Then you might get some scrambled eggs! We all felt like family and many of us ate their enough that we would talk across the tables, joke. It was a lot like extended families. We still miss it.
We had one family meat sauce that was very rich in that it combined two types of meat: pork and beef. And our meatballs were done with beef, veal and pork always and broken up bread, never crumbs. One of my favorite soups was Italian Wedding Soup.