{"id":1483,"date":"2013-09-03T17:08:05","date_gmt":"2013-09-03T17:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hypno-erotica.com\/stories\/?p=1483"},"modified":"2013-09-03T17:09:15","modified_gmt":"2013-09-03T17:09:15","slug":"italian-style-yummy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hypno-erotica.com\/stories\/italian-style-yummy\/","title":{"rendered":"Italian Style- Yummy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posted by Goddess Marquesa<\/a> July 31, 2012<\/span> <\/strong><\/p>\n

NOTE-\u00a0 This article is being passed around over the internet lately.\u00a0 I have no idea who wrote it.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
\"Jullie<\/a>Many of us Inraptured folks may be too young to remember the kinds of “good old days” described in the following article.
\nBut I am a child of the 60’s and much of what’s written below rings true for My upbringing.\u00a0 What I don’t remember My parents and grandparents lovingly told Me all about it.Would you share with Me your roots and what childhood traditions you hold dear.
\nIf they’re coupled with food and fun events shared with family…all the better!\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42<\/div>\n

I feel your sentimental and candid replies will certainly stimulate My curious mind and open heart.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
Growing Up Italian Style……<\/strong><\/em>
\n(Whether you’re Siciliano, Calabrese, Napolitano or Toscano)<\/div>\n

I am sure for most second generation Italian American children who grew up
\nin the 30s, 40’s, 50’s & 60’s there was a definite distinction between us and them.<\/p>\n

We were Italians, everybody else, the Irish, the Germans, the Polish, etc., they
\nwere Americans.<\/div>\n

I was well into adulthood before I realized I was an American. I had been
\nborn American and lived here all my life, but Americans were people who
\nate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on mushy white bread.
\nI had no animosity towards them, it’s just I thought ours was the better
\nway with our bread man, egg man, vegetable man, the chicken man, to name a
\nfew of the peddlers who came to our neighborhoods.
\nWe knew them, they knew us.<\/p>\n

Americans went to the A&P market.
\nIt amazed me that some friends and classmates on Thanksgiving and
\nChristmas ate only turkey with stuffing, potatoes, and\u00a0 cranberry sauce.
\nWe had turkey, but only after antipasto, soup, lasagna, pasta, meatballs,
\nsausage, pork, caponata and salad!In case someone came in who didn’t like turkey, we also had a roast of
\nbeef.
\nSoon after we were eating fruits, nuts, pastries and homemade cookies
\nsprinkled with little colored things.
\nThis is where you learned to eat a seven course meal between noon and four
\nPM, how to handle hot chest nuts and put peaches in wine.
\nItalians live a romance with food.
\nSundays we would wake up to the smell of garlic and onions frying in olive
\noil.
\nWe always had macaroni and sauce.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Sunday would not be Sunday without going to mass. Of course you couldn’t
\neat before mass because you had to fast before receiving communion. We
\nknew when we got home we’d find meatballs frying, and nothing tasted
\nbetter than newly cooked meatballs with crisp bread dipped into a pot of
\nhot gravy (not sauce).<\/div>\n

Another difference between them and us was we\u00a0 had gardens.<\/p>\n

Not just with flowers, but tomatoes, peppers, basil, lettuce and
\n‘cucuzza’.
\nEverybody had a grapevine and fig tree.
\nIn the fall we drank homemade wine arguing over who made the best.
\nThose gardens thrived because we had something our American friends didn’t
\nseem to have.
\nWe had Grandparents.
\nIt’s not that they didn’t have grandparents. It’s just they didn’t live in
\nthe same house or street.
\nWe ate with our grandparents, and God forbid we didn’t visit them every
\nweek.
\nI can still remember my grandfather telling us how he came to America when
\nhe was young, on the ‘boat.’<\/div>\n

I’ll never forget the holidays when the relatives would gather at my<\/p>\n

grandparents’ house, the women in the kitchen, the men in the living room,<\/p>\n

the kids everywhere. I must have fifty cousins. My grandfather sat in the<\/p>\n

middle of it all drinking his wine he was so proud of his family and how
\nwell they had done.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
When my grandparents died, things began to\u00a0 change.
\nFamily gatherings were fewer and something seemed to be missing.
\nAlthough we did get together usually at my mother’s house, I always had
\nthe feeling grandma and grandpa were there.
\nIts understandable things change.
\nWe all have families of our own and some of us have grandchildren of our
\nown.
\nToday we visit once in a while or meet at wakes or weddings.
\nOther things have also changed.
\nThe old house my grandparents bought is now covered with aluminum or vinyl
\nsiding.
\nA green lawn covers the soil that grew the tomatoes.
\nThere was no one to cover the fig tree, so it died.
\nThe holidays have changed. We still make family ’rounds’ but somehow
\nthings have become more formal.
\nThe great quantities of food we consumed, without any ill effects, are not
\ngood for us anymore.
\nToo much starch, too much cholesterol, too many calories in the pastries.
\nThe difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’ isn’t so easily defined anymore,
\nand I guess that’s good.My grandparents were\u00a0 Italian-Italians; my parents were Italian-Americans.
\nI’m an American and proud of it, just as my grandparents would want me to
\nbe.
\nWe are all Americans now… the Irish, Germans, Polish, all U.S. citizens.<\/div>\n

But somehow I still feel a little bit Italian.<\/p>\n

Call it culture… call it roots…. I’m not sure what it is.
\nAll I do know is that so many children these days seem to
\nhave been cheated out of a wonderful piece of our heritage.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Posted by Goddess Marquesa July 31, 2012 NOTE-\u00a0 This article is being passed around over the internet lately.\u00a0 I have no idea who wrote it. Many of us Inraptured folks may be too young to remember the kinds of “good old days” described in the following article. But I am a child of the 60’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[45,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diary","category-goddess-marquesa"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2FCuA-nV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hypno-erotica.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hypno-erotica.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hypno-erotica.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hypno-erotica.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hypno-erotica.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1483"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hypno-erotica.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1487,"href":"https:\/\/hypno-erotica.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1483\/revisions\/1487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hypno-erotica.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hypno-erotica.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hypno-erotica.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}