Giorno Felice Padre!

My Dad, Luigi, 1945

My Dad passed on about 12 years ago. I miss him every day. Like my Dad, I'm a father and grandfather too. Every year on this day, Father's Day, my thoughts are with him even more so than they regularly are.  And they regularly are with him, at least for a few moments, almost every day.

My Dad was a first-generation Italian-American. Both his parents emigrated to America from Avellino, Italy, around the turn of the century. He was the youngest of my grandparent's 8 children, having one brother and six sisters. They're all gone now except one of his sisters, my Aunt Nanny -- Nanette -- who is in her 90s. Dad's given name was Luigi but everyone called him Lou, Louie, or Big Lou. (His siblings all called him Louie.) He learned to speak Italian before he learned English.

My Dad was fairly old school in his Italian-ness, but not to the degree his parents or a few of his siblings were. He graduated valedictorian of his high school class. He studied Latin in high school and between his Italian, English, and Latin language skills, he probably had a less difficult time learning French and German, which he did during the war. I wouldn't say he was totally fluent in French or German but I heard him speak it, conversationally, a few times and I'd say he was close to being fluent in both those languages.

My Dad enlisted in the Army before he was 18. (He never had a birth certificate so proving he was 18 when he joined must have been a matter of the recruiters taking his word for it, or someone's word.)  He fought in WW2 from D-Day to the occupation of Germany and later, after the war, joined a USMC reserve unit. His unit was activated in 1950 and, as a result, he also fought in the Korean War as a combat Marine.

Big Lou in his late 60s

My Dad never attended college but he certainly could have and probably should have. He was a very intelligent man. Instead, he raised a family, along with my Mom, always working two jobs in order to give us,  that is, my brother, sister, and I, childhoods that weren't wanting for much.

For most of my Dad's working life, he was a salesman in the commercial food industry employed by the Carnation company for many years.  (At first, selling consumer dairy products and then, later, with their institutional foods division, i.e., selling to large chain restaurants, hospitals, schools, hotels. etc.) Later, he worked for Durkee Foods. During his time with both those companies he became a district sales manager. For second jobs, which he worked most of his life even after my brother, sister, and I were grown, he was a bartender.  For anyone reading this who might be, like I am, from Northeastern New Jersey, my Dad worked as a bartender at the Blue Swan Inn, in Rochelle Park, NJ, for a lot of years.)  Dad always dreamed of owning his own restaurant but that never came to pass, although a few times it very nearly did.

In his later years, after he retired, my Dad still worked part-time jobs. (He was always kind of a workaholic.) If my Dad were still alive, he would love the internet!  He bought a computer, an IBM personal desktop computer, before the internet was anything and loved doing all kinds of things with it.

My Dad was a terrific father and, near the end of his life, I made sure I let him know that numerous times. Happy Father's Day Dad! I miss you every day. Thanks for being such a great Dad! I owe you so much.

And to all you Dads out there, and to those Dads who are no longer with us, Giorno Felice Padre! Happy Father's Day!

Bocce!

 Few things say "old goombas" better than Bocce, commonly referred to as Bocce Ball (pronounced botch-ee). That's not to say, of course, that Bocce is a game reserved only for Italian geezers. It's not. But we often perceive it that way, leastwise in America.

Even Popes play Bocce!

If you happen to see some old guys playing Bocce, I doubt you'll see too many of them who aren't Italian. That's because Bocce is a true Italian game. Bocce means "bowl."  Not a bowl like the one you serve your spaghetti-and-meatballs or other tradtional pasta dish in, but bowl as in bowling.

The history of Bocce goes all the way back to the Roman Empire. Some historians say it goes further back than that: to the ancient Greeks, and that it was those Greeks who taught the Romans to play Bocce. That makes perfect sense, of course. Italian culture owes much to the ancient Greeks and Bocce is likely another example of that.

My kind of Bocce players!

In early times, the Romans used coconuts from Africa as their Bocce balls. Later, they made the balls from olive wood. Due to the reach of the Roman Empire, Bocce (or games like it) spread throughout Europe, even as far away as the barbarians of Britain.  Later, after the Roman Empire had gone the way of all empires, Queen Elizabeth 1 and Sir Francis Drake both became avid Bocce fans and players.

(Side Note: Had the Brits also embraced Italian food, eating in England would be far superior. I know about English food because I once lived in the UK for three years. To say that most British food is bland and basically sucks is, I believe, a fairly accurate statement. Leastwise, in my opinion. That opinion is based on first-hand. long-term, eating experiences on that island. But that's another story, not one for this blog, and has nothing to do with Bocce.)

Okay. Here's how Bocce is played... Waitaminute! I don't need to write how Bocce is played. I can simply post a video that explains it. Gotta love the internet! Ciao!

My WASPy Mom

My Mom when she was a teen (in the plaid coat) off to go ice skating with friends

I've always thought of myself as an Italian-American even though, to be honest, I'm only half-Italian. My sister and brother are the same way-- not just in terms of being half-Italian, but also in thinking about themselves as being Italian. My father was full-blooded Italian. My Mom doesn't have a hint of Italian blood running through her veins. Her family is German and English.

I suppose my brother, sister, and I mostly identify with the Italian side of our family because, from a cultural point of view, it would have been impossible to resist: weekly Sunday dinners at my Italian grandparent's house, my Dad's family was larger (my paternal grandparents had 8 children, my maternal grandparents had 3), and they, my Dad's side of the family, all spoke Italian regularly.

I have to hand it to my Mom. When she married my Dad, she was suddenly thrust into (what must have been for her) a rather alien environment and a very different sort of family -- the food, the culture, the language, and more -- yet she managed to navigate those waters quite well.

Most everyone, the adults at least, all spoke Italian at those Sunday dinners at my grandparent's house (and at other events). My Mom wasn't alone in terms of being the only non-Italian at those gatherings. Two of my six aunts married men who weren't Italian. My uncle, my Dad's brother, also married a non-Italian.  My uncle's wife, my Aunt Edna, is a first-generation Polish-American. She speaks English and Polish and, after marrying my Uncle Sandy, she learned to speak Italian as well. Because of that, she seemed to fit in with the Italians much better than my Mom ever did. My Aunt Edna is 96 now and her daughter, my cousin Sandra, is her full-time caretaker.

I can still remember my Mom sitting there at those family gatherings with her expressions and body language plainly indicating she was not often sure what was going on around her or what people were saying. The other women, my grandmother and my aunts, didn't ever invite her to join in on the food preparations. She wasn't Italian after all. She was usually relegated to the clean-up crew. My Mom's name is Aileen. My grandmother, with her thick Italian accent, always called her what sounded like, Aye-lee-na.

As out of place as my Mom often felt -- and I know she often felt that way, like an outsider, because she's told me so -- I never heard her complain about it. She simply went with the flow. Coming from a WASPy background, that couldn't have been too easy for her. Her family was so much less loud. Less animated. Less emotional. Less in-your-face. My Dad's family could be overbearing at times, my Mom's family was not that way at all.  And that might also account for why I barely identify with the WASP side of my family. Sometimes, though, I think it was her family who gave me a better sense of cultural balance. And I appreciate that.

Italian-American Heroes!

My uncle, Santillo, during WW2

During WW2, one-half-million Italian-Americans served in the various branches of the U.S. military.  Some say the number was much higher-- up to 1.5 million. My Dad and my uncle (his brother) were amongst them.  This, in spite of the fact that, along with Germany and Japan, America was at war with Italy.

Most concerns regarding the loyalties of Italian-Americans were quickly dispelled by the incredible response from those who volunteered to join and fight. My guess is the vast majority of Italian-Americans who served in WW2 were first-generation Italian-Americans.  As such, many of them might end up fighting relatives.

In spite of this incredible display of loyalty, hundreds of Italian-Americans were viewed as a potential threats and were interned in detention camps. As many as 600,000 others who had not become citizens were required to carry identity cards identifying them as a "resident alien". Thousands more who resided on the West Coast of the US were required to move inland, often losing their homes and businesses in the process. 

My Dad, Luigi, during WW2

My Dad, Luigi, served in the US Army in Europe from D-Day to the occupation of Germany. (He later became a USMC combat veteran of Korea.) His brother, Santillo, also served in the Army, but he fought in North Africa and through the campaigns in Sicily and Italy. Like my father, my uncle was also an infantryman. He was also utilized as an Italian/English interpreter.

Thankfully, neither my father nor my uncle paid the ultimate price while serving, but they were ready and willing to do so just as so many other Italian-Americans were.  

Since WW2 (and including that war) 24 brave Italian-American servicemen have been awarded the Medal of Honor.

On this Memorial Day, we honor all those who sacrificed their lives fighting for this country. I don't know how many Italian-Americans are amongst them, i.e., those who paid the ultimate price, but there's no doubt many of them did.

Beer and Soda for Sunday Dinners

Growing up, most Sundays were spent at my grandparent's house for dinner. If you're Italian, you know what those Sunday dinners were like: big family gatherings with salads, bread, and all that great stuff that came out of the Sunday sauce/gravy pot. I'm talking meatballs, sausages, bracioles, big hunks of pork, all that great stuff was always in the pot. The sauce/gravy was served on pasta, of course. For our family, that pasta was usually spaghetti, rigatoni, shells, or sometimes ziti.

To help wash down the incredible food, there was plenty of beer for the adults and soda for the kids. (We called it "soda," not "pop.")  There was wine too. Home made red wine my grandfather made in his cellar. Wine served in those big one-gallon glass jugs like they put cider in.Oh yeah. There was also soda water, the kind that came in spritzer bottles like the ones the Three Stooges would have soda fights with.

The beer was always Ballantine beer. Ballantine was one of the biggest brewers in the US. They were founded in Newark, NJ, in 1840.  And the soda was always White Rock-- Orange White Rock soda. It was always orange soda and, to this day, whenever I'm eating an Italian Sunday-style dinner, I still want orange soda with it.

I live in California. We don't have White Rock here. Leastwise, not that I know of. If we did, that would be the brand I'd buy to go with those Italian meals when I have them. White Rock, by the way, began in the late 1800s  as a bottler of mineral water from the White Rock natural springs in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Sometime later, they began bottling not just soda water from the spring, but flavored sodas like White Rock orange.

Ballantine beer and White Rock soda came in quart-size glass bottles that were worth a nickel each when they were empty. My cousin and I always grabbed the empties and walked down to my grandmother's nephew's roadside stand -- where he sold and served sandwiches, beer, soda, and more to travelers heading up or coming back from Lake Sebago and other places of interest up Seven Lakes Drive in Rockland County, New York -- and we turned them in for the coinage. Course, we then bought candy with our profits so Bats, my grandmother's nephew, almost immediately got the money back he just gave us. My grandmother made the meatballs for Bats' meatball sandwiches so you know they were good!

Those were the days, my friends.

Here's a pic of what was once Bats' roadside stand. I snapped it when I went back home for a visit last November.  It's now a small restaurant and bar called Sterling Station.

Italy's Golden Apples: Pomodoro!

You say toe-mah-toe, I say toe-may-toe, but Italians say pomodoro!

The pomodoro is such an important part of Italian cuisine, you'd think tomatoes were indigenous to Italy. But they're not. They're not even indigenous to Europe. They're from the Americas and it wasn't until Spanish explorers brought back tomato seeds to Europe, Europeans (much less Italians) didn't have a clue what tomatoes were.

Ancient Aztec Tomato Calender. (J/K)

Next time you sit down for a Sunday sauce meal,  you have Mexicans to thank for the sauce. Make that you have the Aztecs to thank. They were, after all, the first Mexicans and they were the first to cultivate tomatoes, which were indigenous to their part of the world.  You might even have Aztecs to thank for your dessert, depending on what it might be. Those Aztec/Mexicans were also the first to cultivate the coco plant. You know, the plant that gives the world chocolate.

The word, "tomato," is derived from the Aztec word, tomatl, which became the Spanish word, tomate. So, how did tomatoes go from tomatl to tomate to pomodoro? More interestingly, how did Italians settle on pomodoro, which means "golden apple," for the Italian word for the juicy, red, fruit? Well, I'm going to tell you. (But you probably already figured that out.)

One theory is that the Spanish brought back tomatoes as well as tomatillos. Many varieties of tomatillos are yellow, not red. So, the theory states that people thought yellow tomatillos looked like golden apples and the name stuck.

Another theory says that, back in the 16th century, calling something "gold" or "golden" added power and value to it and that apples, golden apples, are associated with certain old myths that would make calling tomatoes, "golden apples," something more important in the world of naming fruits and vegetables.

Rigatoni Pomodoro! Yeah! That's what I'm talking about!

If you think Italians took to tomatoes like ducks to water you'd be wrong. Dead wrong. In fact, many Italians originally believed that eating tomatoes would kill them. That's because tomatoes are part of the nightshade family of poisonous plants. Belladonna, which means beautiful woman in Italian, is a famous poison that is part of the same family of plants tomatoes belong to.

Somewhere along the line, some Italian must have figured out that tomatoes weren't poisonous. Maybe he or she sliced one, drizzled some olive oil on it, sprinkled on a few spices like basil and oregano, and added a slice of mozzarella cheese?  (I only use that example because I eat tomatoes that way quite often.)

Regardless of how it happened, Italians soon embraced the pomodoro in big ways.  It became Italy's national vegetable-like fruit and found it's way into so many of the Italian dishes we all love. You know, like our  Sunday (non-Mexican) sauce or gravy. So next time you're eating some rigatoni or some other pasta with your Sunday-best sauce or gravy on it, you might not only want to say, "grazie,"  you might also want to say, "gracious" to those Spanish-speaking peoples who are responsible for bringing the tomato to our kitchens and tables.

If you'd like to watch Chef Pasquale Sciarappa make'a d'sauce from'a d'scratch, old school style, kick back and enjoy this video.  Chef Pasquale says, "If you wanna make'a d'sauce, you gotta sweat. No sweat, no sauce."

Pane!

Pane Rustico

Only two groups of people make bread worth eating: the French and the Italians. I know that sounds overly opinionated but that's how I am: overly opinionated. I should mention that the word "bread" covers a lot of territory. For instance, bagels are (technically) bread, and bagels are definitely worth eating and they don't need to be made by French or Italian bakers. In fact, they probably shouldn't be made by those bakers. But I'm not writing about every kind of bread. I'm writing about table breads. Sandwich breads. Dipping and mopping up your plates bread.  And for those kinds of breads,  Italian and French breads are supreme.

A Vietnamese street vendor selling French bread baguettes.

It's not often I give a nod of approval to foods of the French variety -- I'll take Italian food over French food  any day -- but with bread, I have to give credit where credit is due. The French, in spite of them eating frogs and snails and dipping their French Fries in mayo, make a damn good loaf of bread.

By the way, want to know where to get some pretty good loaves or baguettes of French bread?  In Vietnamese restaurants, believe it or not.  You see, the French occupied Viet Nam for quite a few years and, while they did, some clever Vietnamese bakers learned the ways of French bread making.  Many Vietnamese immigrated to America after the Viet Nam War and they brought their French bread making skills with them.

Back to pane.

There are numerous kinds of Italian bread or pane. Personally, for me, the more rustic the better. My Uncle Tony used to work for an Italian bakery and grocery store back in the day. He would deliver Italian food stuffs and bread to Italian families.  My grandmother was someone who was on his route. That's how Uncle Tony met my Aunt Rosie. When I was growing up, participating in all those Sunday dinners at my grandparent's house, the bread was always fantastic! And it was always delivered by my Uncle Tony and then kept in my grandmother's washing machine. Hey! Where else would you keep the bread but in a washing machine? With that rubber seal around the lid of the washer, it kept the bread fresh for days.

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Italian breads have many uses: from mopping the sauce off your plate, to making meatball, sausage-and-peppers, cold cuts, and other kinds of delicious sangwiches, to dipping in olive oil and red wine vinegar or scooping out bruschetta from a big bowl, Italian pane is the best!

My cyber goomba back home, Johnny Meatballs -- back home being the great state of New Jersey for me -- is a meatball impresario. He sells his mouth-watering meatballs on a big (and genuine) Italian roll to thousands of lucky Jersey peeps. Yeah. When it comes to meatball sangwiches, size does matter!

Bread making goes way back in Italy. Back as far as the Romans and that's a ways back. Because of that, Italians have had thousands of years to perfect their bread making skills and perfect it they have. Generally, Italian bread is simple as breads go. Certainly the table breads. But don't let that simplicity fool you. It's delicious in the extreme. Besides, anyone can make things complicated. Genius is making them simple. And Italian breads are pure genius in their simplicity.

Can you even imagine sitting down to a Sunday sauce Italian dinner without bread? I can't. Nor would I want to. The bread on the table is the cornerstone of a great Italian meal and should never be absent from those dinners. Capiche?

A Dark Time for Italian-Americans

My Dad, Luigi, WW2, somewhere in Europe

When Mussolini rose to power and Italy became a Fascist nation, it was a dark time for Italian-Americans. Bigotry and prejudice against Italian-Americans quickly increased. After Italy formally allied itself with Nazi Germany and the US officially entered a  war with those countries, the prejudice became worse for a time.

Instead of hiding their heritage -- Italians don't do that, not ever -- many young Italian-Americans enlisted in one of America's armed services. My Dad and his brother both did.  My Dad served in the US Army from D-Day to the Occupation of Germany.  (After WW2 ended, he joined a Marine reserve unit and later became a combat veteran of the Korean War.)

My Uncle Sandy (Santillo), my Dad's brother, served in North Africa during WW2 and later participated in the invasions of Sicily and Italy. Once allied forces landed in Sicily, they made my uncle an interpreter in addition to his duties as an infantryman.

I've heard many jokes in my life about Italians being cowards. They all stem from WW2. You may have heard some of them as well. Here's one: "WW2 Italian Army rifle for sale. Only dropped once."

My Uncle Sandy later in life. What a fashionable dresser!

I have one word for those jokes and the people who enjoy telling them: Bahfongool!   (Pardon my phonetic spelling.) Italians are descended from people, the Romans, who once conquered most of the known Western World. I seriously doubt that could have happened because their armies were comprised of cowards. Cowardice isn't in the Italian gene pool. Never has been and never will be.

There was more than a little concern amongst some Italian-Americans that the US government might round them up and force them into internment camps the way it shamefully did with Japanese-Americans. As Americans, we have much to be proud of. Putting Japanese-Americans in internment camps wasn't one of our prouder moments. Not even close.

Interestingly (but not surprisingly), there was never much concern amongst Americans of German descent that they might end up in internment camps. Historically, Germans represent the single largest group to immigrate to the US.  German-Americans weren't as willing to proudly announce their ancestry during WW2 the way Italians were still willing to do... and for obvious reasons, not the least of which being Germans didn't stand out as such in predominantly white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant America during that time period or at nearly any time before.

Many Italian-American servicemen and women, the vast majority of them, served with honor and distinction during WW2... including those who ended up fighting Italian soldiers!  As far as Italian-Americans were concerned, they were Americans first, foremost, and in nearly every way. Yes, they were also Italians. But their Italian loyalties were focused on Italian culture, family, heritage, and more, and had nothing to do with Italian politics of the time.  If WW2 represented something truly important to them, it was that they were loyal and patriotic Americans in every way, not merely a group of people who survived a dark period where they may have represented, to some other Americans, the enemy.

For that and many more reasons, America should be incredibly grateful that so many Italians decided to immigrate to this country. The Italian-American community has been a a vibrant and incredible asset to this country's importance, its growth, and its prosperity. Italian pride-- Yes!  Italian-American pride-- Even more so!

The Great Italian Exodus

Leaving Italy in the 1890s for a better life.

Ever wonder why so many Italians said, Arrivederci! to their homeland and ventured off to the New World? Was it because many truly believed the streets of America were paved with gold? Please. that would mean Italy was a nation filled with gullible idiots... which it wasn't.

 Italians who left their country did so for a variety of personal reasons -- Okay. Maybe some of them did think the streets were paved with gold in America; every village has its idiot(s) -- with the most common reasons being poverty, disease (a major outbreak of cholera in Naples took place in the 1880s) and unfair land management practices. (Many who left were farmers and because of those practices couldn't earn a decent living off the land.)  If there was a single event, however, which prompted the exodus of so many Italians, it was the unification of Italy in 1861.

Before the unification of Italy, the country that is now Italy was composed of city states and small independent nations. It had been that way since the Middle Ages. Naples, for instance, was a city state, a powerful one, but when the country unified, Naples became just another city amongst many cities in one country.

Kentucky Pizza in Buenos Aires. Wait! What? Kentucky Pizza???

The Italian exodus is referred to as the "Italian Diaspora."  Diaspora comes from a Greek word which means scattering or dispersion. That's what many Italians did from the 1880s through about 1920: They dispersed and scattered.  Many, of course, dispersed to America. But America wasn't the only destination for Italians leaving the boot.

Quite a few Italians scattered to other parts of Europe. Some to North Africa. Still more dispersed to South America -- mostly to Argentina and Uruguay -- which means, I suppose, that you can get a decent pizza in Buenos Aires. The Italian Diaspora to America was, of course, the destination for millions of Italians. It was the #1 destination for those who participated in the great Italian exodus. My grandparents were amongst those who chose America as their destination. It's probably the same for many of you reading this.

The greatest numbers of Italians who left Italy for the New World came from the south of the country, especially from 1880 to 1920.  During that time, more than 9,000,000 Italians -- many, if not most, from places like Naples and the Campania region, Calabria, and Sicily -- headed across the Atlantic to the Americas. That's a lot of Italians!

If you're an Italian-American, you likely owe your status as such, directly or indirectly, to the unification of Italy in 1861. Unification sounds like a good thing, and in some ways, perhaps many ways, it probably was. But not in enough ways to keep millions of Italians from leaving home and dispersing and scattering to other places on the planet where many of them prospered.

Home Decor: Italian-American Style

Not my aunt but you get the idea. As in the photo, my aunt's drapes were also covered with clear vinyl.

If you grew up in an Italian family, you likely had a Mom, Nonna, or aunt who had all their upholstered furniture covered in clear vinyl. For those ladies, it was what the French call, de rigueur. (i.e., necessary if you want to be fashionable, popular, socially acceptable, etc.)

My Aunt Jean (RIP) was one of the many, dedicated, Italian, clear-vinyl fans common enough amongst Italian-American women. She lived in Hasbrouck Heights, NJ. She was married to my Uncle Carl (also RIP) whom everyone called "Duke" because his last name was La Duca.  My Uncle Carl was from the old country. Naples. He was one of the nicest, most generous and caring men I've ever had the privilege of knowing in my lifetime. Better yet, he was part of our family.

My Aunt Jean's house was a single story home in the Cape Cod style of residential architecture. Her downstairs basement had been remodeled into a big family room with a small bathroom and a large, full kitchen: A much larger kitchen than the kitchen that was upstairs, built when the house was originally constructed. Whenever we went to their home, which was often enough, we never used the front or back doors to enter. We always went in by the side door which was at the bottom of 5 or 6 concrete steps that led down to the basement on the side of their house. My aunt and uncle practically lived in that remodeled basement and many wonderful family gatherings took place there.

Back upstairs...

Fake fruit bowl, Italian style. They look real, no?

Yes, all my aunt's furniture upstairs was covered in clear vinyl. All of it. Everything. Even her living room drapes were covered with clear vinyl. She also had little blown-glass and porcelain nick-knacks everywhere. Most of them imported from Italy. She had bowls and bowls overflowing with fruit. Make that fake fruit. The kind they make out of some sort of hard, wax-like stuff. In one corner, she had her very own shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary. For all I know, it was blessed by the pope. There were also many crosses and pictures of Jesus hanging on the walls. To match her fake fruit bowls, she had strands of electrified decor lights made into the shapes of fruit with fake leaves artfully hung around her kitchen windows.

It was always immaculate upstairs at my Aunt Jean's house. When I say immaculate, I don't simply mean it was clean and cleaned often. It was immaculate! You could safely eat off of any surface in any room upstairs, including the bathroom floor right around the toilet. (Not that you'd want to.) Her upstairs could be used by almost any high-tech computer manufacturing company as their clean room, you know, with technicians wearing all white gowns and head-gear with clear-vinyl face plates so they could see what they were doing. It was that clean. It took clean to new dimensions. It was exponentially clean.

Small table-top Virgin Mary shrine.

As kids, were weren't allowed to go upstairs into my aunt's clean rooms. Leastwise, not unless we were accompanied by an adult... an adult with special clearance issued by my aunt. I'm not sure if my Uncle Carl was even allowed up there on his own. It may be that he had to be escorted upstairs by my aunt.  We'd sneak up there anyway, of course, when no one was looking. I was always captivated by the fake fruit. It looked so real!  I even took a bite once, and then had to hide it at the bottom of the bowl under some of the other "fruit" because my teeth left an impression. My Aunt Jean was not one to mess with. Serious consequences could result. By consequences, I'm talking about physical kinds of consequences. The kind that smarts! The get-yourself-smacked-in-the-head kind. Smacked hard, I might add. I can only imagine the kind of right-hook my aunt probably had.

Why so many Italian women had those clear-vinyl obsessions I will never know, much less understand. It was what it was. I'm guessing many of them, to this day, still keep their furniture under the protective coatings of clear vinyl. Some things don't change. And I, for one, am often glad they don't.

The Hideout

The Sloatsburg hideout as it appears today.

As I've mentioned a bunch of times on this blog, my grandparents lived in Sloatsburg, NY.  Sloatsburg is a small town not far from the Jersey border in Rockland County, NY.

If you know the area and you're coming from New Jersey (like we did almost every Sunday growing up) you drive North on Rt. 17, past the Leaning Tower of Pizza, past the Ford plant in Mahwah, past Suffern, and through beautiful, scenic down-town Sloatsburg.

Course, the Leaning Tower of Pizza is no longer there (leastwise, I don't think it is) and neither is the Ford Plant. Suffern is still there, of course. It's a pretty large town, almost city-like. And so is downtown Sloatsburg, such as it is. The key syllable in Sloatsburg is "burg."  Because that's what it was and still is. A burg. A small burg. A place people mostly go through on their way upstate or when going to the Seven Lakes, Bear Mountain, or other picturesque destinations.  Even if you take the thruway, you're going to go through parts of the burg known as Sloatsburg.

When I was growing up, every so often my grandparents had "guests" or boarders staying at their house. The guests would live in one of the bedrooms upstairs for a time-- sometimes for a few weeks, sometimes longer. The guests were always  Italian guys. Usually Italian guys who either did not know how to speak English or chose not to.

 The guests always took part in the big Sunday meals we enjoyed. They were like part of the family, distant relatives or something like that. In fact, I think the guests were sometimes introduced as distant relatives.  And they were always treated with respect! Lots of respect. An inordinate amount of respect. As kids, we thought the way the guests were treated was a bit strange but we were told to always treat the guests with lots of respect. Yep. Everyone seemed to treat the guests with lots of special respect. Kind of phony respect but respect nonetheless. And in return, the guests were always very nice, respectful, and polite guys to everyone in the family. They seemed like really good guys. You know, really good fellas.

My Dad told me that, when he was a kid, there were periodic guests who used to stay at his parent's home back then too. In fact, his parents sometimes had guests as far back as he can remember. He loved it, he said, whenever a guest was staying. Why? Because whenever a guest stayed, there was always plenty of food. Almost like magic after the guests arrived, cars or small trucks would stop by regularly and deliver meats, fruits and vegetables, breads, and more. They ate like royalty, he said, whenever one of those guests or boarders were staying at the house.

Fictional guys of the sort who sometimes stayed at the hideout.

Sometimes, the guests were sick, at least that's what we were told, and that they were there to recuperate. Recuperate from what? Not exactly sure but one thing we did know, us kids that is, the guests weren't recuperating from illnesses because there were always bandages involved, or slings, or crutches or canes. Not all guests were there recuperating. Some of them were perfectly fine. They were just there. Staying as guests. No explanation was given as to why.

When I got older, I figured out why the guests were there. I asked my Dad a bit later in life and he confirmed my suspicions. The guests were guys who were hiding out at my grandparent's home in that little burg called Sloatsburg.  And when they were recuperating guests, my Dad also confirmed, what they were recuperating from was, for the most part, gunshot wounds.

I'm pretty sure you've already figured out what was going on: The guests were members of certain groups or families out of New York City or Jersey. They were at my grandparent's house because they were hiding out, either from others like themselves or the law. Yep. My grandparent's house was a hideout! At least temporarily and occasionally. My guess is that some money was also dropped off at my grandparent's house, in a addition to the food deliveries, whenever a guest was staying.

The "Yuck!" Side of Italian Food

Sufrite: Looks good but, "Yuck!"

For the most part, Italian food is the most deliciously prepared food on the planet. Nothing else compares, leastwise in my opinion. But there are a few dishes I'll pass on. Actually, there's a few dishes that are decidedly on the "Yuck!" side.

It pains me to write about Italian dishes that are on the "Yuck!" side of Italian food. Worse yet, my beloved grandmother made some of them. She not only made them, she made them rather regularly. So today, I'll write about a few of her "Yuck!" dishes that stand out in my memory.

Sufrite is pronounced "soo-freet."  You kind of roll the "r" when you say it. Sufrite is something my grandmother made often for my Dad and my Dad just loved it. To me, sufrite rates high on the "Yuck!" list. By the way, there's another Italian dish called sofrito and sufrite is not sofrito. I'm not confusing the two if you thought I might be doing that.

Sufrite is made with intestinal organs like an animal's heart and spleen, but the main ingredient was lungs. Lungs! Lungs, by the way, are no longer available for human consumption. The USDA banned them some years ago. (Which is okay by me!)  They banned them because of air pollution. You worry about pollution in the air you breathe? If so, and you should, you probably don't want to eat lungs because they're filled with the crap that's the pollution in air pollution.

The way sufrite is made is fairly simple: You sauté the lungs and other internal organs with garlic and peppers, add Italian spices and some tomato sauce, simmer for a while, quite a while, and serve.

Yuck!

My Dad gobbled it down like there was no tomorrow. He loved it! I'd watch him eat sufrite and feel nauseous. Sufrite might look good and, who knows, it might even taste okay (I wouldn't know, I never had the stones to try it) but if you know what it's made from, you might also have it on your personal "Yuck!" list like I always have. Sufrite probably belongs on that TV show -- I forget what it's called -- with the cook who goes around the world and eats disgusting stuff like bugs and worse.

The other "Yuck!" food I'll mention today is goat brains or sheep brains. Nuh uh! Not for me! No thank you. I'll pass. You start eating a goat's brains and the next thing you know, you have an urge to start running at and butting things with your head.

When I was a kid, I used to stay at my grandparent's home for a few weeks or so each summer. My grandmother would prepare goat or sheep brains for my grandfather's breakfast. Breakfast! She scrambled eggs in with the goat or sheep brains and then, when it was all cooked up in the pan, she'd put it back in a goat's or sheep's half-skull. That's right, scrambled eggs and goat brains on the half-skull!  First thing in the morning! Again, it might taste okay, I have no clue, but I seriously felt sick while watching my grandfather fork it out of the skull and wolf it down with his morning coffee.

In the awesome Viet Nam War movie, "Apocalypse Now!" directed by the awesome Italian-American film-maker, Francis Ford Copolla, Robert Duvall's character, Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore, said he loved the smell of napalm in the morning, but I can't say the same for the smell goat brains and eggs in the morning.

Yuck!

Mamalukes

Everyone knows a mamaluke. Mamalukes are everywhere. They're not overly common but they're not particularly scarce either. What? You don't know what a mamaluke is? Serious? Well, in case some of you don't know, I guess I should tell you.

A mamaluke is an Italian word, actually an Italian slang word, for someone who does something dumb, stupid, silly or foolish. (Or is dumb, stupid, silly, or foolish.) Also, it can describe someone who doesn't fit in for reasons I'll get into in a minute.

Let's say you're a cool Italian dude and you hang out with a bunch of other cool Italian dudes -- which most Italian dudes are, cool that is -- you may or may not let someone who is a mamaluke hang out with you and your friends. If you do -- because you have heart or something -- you and your friends will still often let that person know they're a mamaluke and let them know often, in spite of everyone having a heart.

Mamaluke is a word that's almost always aimed at guys, that is, males of the Italian-American persuasion.  It's not a particularly hostile or mean-spirited word. It is an insult, but not a huge insult. Calling someone a mamaluke is often said with a smile, but with a slightly disgusted shake of the head. (Not real disgust,  more like feigned or pretend disgust) You don't usually call a stranger a mamaluke unless you know something about them which means they're not a total stranger. Not really. They're at least known to you, even if what you know is only that they're a mamaluke.  Generally, you have to know someone to know if they're a mamaluke or not, which excludes most total strangers, but not always. That's because a total stranger could be walking down the street and they just look like a mamaluke. If someone looks like a mamaluke, stranger or not, odds are they probably are a mamaluke. Just saying.

Mamaluke is a word -- a label, name, or insult -- mostly reserved for friends or family. It's also a teasing kind of word. You can tease someone by calling them a mamaluke even if they're not a mamaluke. Calling someone a mamaluke is not usually said as part of some fighting words. There are words that are fighting words amongst Italians but mamaluke isn't usually one of them.

Don Corleone chastising Johnny Fontaine for unmanly behavior

Mamaluke can also be used to insult a guy's masculinity. Let's say one of your friends is totally ruled by their mother, sister, girlfriend, or wife. If so, there's a good chance they are a mamaluke and a better chance, leastwise amongst my friends and I, that we'll let a mamluke know they're a mamaluke, and we'll let them know often and plenty.

Remember the scene from The Godfather when Don Corleone slapped Johnny Fontaine for not being a man? The Don was disgusted to the point where simply calling Johnny Fontaine a mamaluke wasn't going to cut it. Johnny went way beyond the mamaluke stage when he cried in front of the Don.  He deserved to get smacked-- not whacked, but smacked.

I had a cousin. His name was Sonny. (RIP Sonny.) That's what everyone called him. But Sonny wasn't his real name. His real given name was Santillo.   Sonny was older than me. He was almost the same age as my Dad, maybe two or three years younger than him. I loved Sonny. We got along great. Sonny lived with his mother from the day he was born till the day he died. He was probably in his mid-sixties when he died from the cancer. (His Mom, my Aunt Mary, was my Dad's oldest sister and, sadly, she survived her son, Sonny.)  But, as much as I loved Sonny, he was still a mamaluke. I wouldn't call Sonny a mamaluke to his face because I loved and respected him. I didn't refrain from calling Sonny a mamaluke because of what he might do. I simply didn't want to hurt his feelings.  But Sonny was a mamaluke nonetheless, and I wasn't the only person in the family who considered him to be a mamaluke or called him a mamaluke behind his back. By the way, you wouldn't call Sonny a mamaluke to his mother either because that would get you in big trouble. Not only with the rest of the family, but you might risk getting smacked in the head with a cast iron frying pan or something.

Arab mercenary: A Mameluke

People who study where words come from think the Italian word, "mamaluke," comes from an Arabic word, "Mameluke" or "Mamluke."

The Mamelukes/Mamlukes were Arab soldiers, mercenaries who sold their services to Napoleon. The uniforms the Mamlukes wore were either white turbans or some silly hats, vests, bright red pantaloons and boots. Many Italians from those days thought the Mamelukes looked foolish or silly. Especially, for being warriors. They thought they looked anything but manly. So, the label "mamaluke" was likely born to describe a guy who is foolish, silly, or unmanly, i.e., not a real man; leastwise, the Italian version of what a real man is supposed to be... which is anything but a mamaluke!

A Brief History of Pasta

Rigatoni! Your humble blogger's favorite pasta.

Who doesn't like pasta? No one, that's who. Pasta may be the world's most popular food. When most people think of pasta, they think of Italian food. That's because Italians made it famous. Other ethnic and regional people's have pasta-like food they love. The Germans and Hungarians, for instance, have their spaetzle. But spaetzle ain't pasta. Not even close.  By the way, have you ever heard someone speaking in Hungarian? I have.  A bunch of times. It sounds a little bit like Italian, but not as pretty.

Marco Polo: Famous Italian Traveler

There are many theories about the origins of pasta. Some say Marco Polo brought it back from China. But Marco Polo, in his writings, never said anything about pasta, macaroni, or noodles even though, I'm pretty sure, he sucked a noodle or two down when he visited China in the 13th century.

More than a thousand years before Marco Polo went to China and brought some things back -- even if it wasn't pasta but might have been a popular water-sport game that's still played in millions of swimming pools each summer -- the 1rst century B.C. Roman, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, called Horace in the English speaking world, wrote about a dish called lagana which, no doubt, eventually became lasagna. Horace's references described a food that was very pasta-like, but in a lasagna-like sort of way.

There are also historical references to pasta-ish food being prepared by the Greeks in the 2nd century A.D. and the Arabs in the 4th and 5th centuries, A.D.  But I guess their pasta-like dishes weren't all that popular and didn't have much staying power amongst those people or elsewhere. I mean, who thinks of Greek food or Arab food when they're thinking of pasta? Again, no one. That's who.

So, let's just say that, for all intents and purposes, Italians invented pasta... leastwise, what most of the world thinks of as pasta. I mean, who thinks of Italian food when they're thinking of pasta? Everyone. That's who.

Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci

By the way, pasta-making machines were invented in Italy a very long time ago, in Renaissance times. (The Renaissance was another great Italian invention because that's where it started, in Italy.) Dried pasta, which they made with those machines, has a long shelf-life and was often taken aboard ships for long ocean voyages. Both Christopher Columbus (an Italian who is generally credited with discovering America, at least by and for the Western World) and Amerigo Vespucci (another Italian explorer, one who America is named after) no doubt had plenty of pasta on board their sailing vessels. That's so cool! Not only is pasta one of the most delicious foods on the planet, one that can be prepared in so many awesome ways with so many sauces and more, it's also one of the most practical foods ever invented! That's due to its ability to be stored for long periods. Just cook it with water! What's simpler than that? Nothing. That's what.

A wise man once said that anything can be made complex or complicated, but it takes pure genius to make things simple. Are all Italians geniuses? Probably not. If you knew my cousin Salvatore, called "Sonny" by all, you'd know that's not so. But pasta is definitely a genius-inspired food! So, what does that tell you about Italians? Plenty. That's what.

Ernie Was Right!

Ernest Borgnine in a scene from "Marty."  What a good-a boy! Won and Oscar for it too!

Years ago, I was earnestly pursuing a career as a Hollywood writer which, I hoped, would lead to directing.  I had a few successes, but not enough to keep me going in the long run... especially after having a child, and later another, which meant I had more people to worry about, to be responsible for, to provide for than myself. So, I scrapped my Hollywood ambitions and got a normal job. I became a working-class hero. Leastwise, a working-class something. I'm not bitter. I don't blame that decision on anyone. That's life. La vita. Sometimes, it doesn't go as planned.

We sold a few scripts, that is my writing partner and I, which were either film screenplays or ideas for TV shows, but only one of them was produced.  My writing partner, who I met at film school and who is still one of my dearest friends (he eventually put a law degree to work and became an attorney) and I sold  a TV sit-com idea that was produced by NBC. Unfortunately, it never went to series and only made it as far as an aired pilot. It was called "Whacked Out." It starred Dana Carvey (before anyone knew who he was), Desi Arnaz Jr., and some other funny and talented actors.

The coolest thing (besides "Whacked Out" being produced by a major network) was when they taped the pilot in front of a live audience. Lucille Ball was there to support her son and my friend and writing partner and I were seated, by the producers, next to Lucy for the taping. That was so friggin' cool! Lucille Ball of I Love Lucy fame!  I was like a stuttering fan-boy.

Almost immediately, Lucy acted like she knew us from way back and when she was officially introduced to the audience -- not that she needed an introduction -- she made my partner and I stand up with her while she extolled the virtues of writers and how none of what people see on TV or at the movie theaters would be possible without the imagination, creativity, and hard work of writers; people who most audiences never get to see or meet. A truly a class act Lucille Ball was.

A typical old school Italian barber shop. (Just kidding.)

Not long after, one of our other sit-com ideas was optioned by another production company.  "Optioned" means a producer or a production company pays the writers to secure the exclusive rights to a script or a story idea for a specified period of time while they pursue making a deal with a network or a studio to produce it.

This newly optioned project was called, "A Little Off the Top." The "situation" in this situation comedy revolved around an Italian-American family whose patriarch owned and operated an old school Italian barber shop in an unnamed city and what takes place when the man's son returns home after graduating from hair styling school to join his Dad in the barber business.

The family patriarch -- a 1rst generation Italian-American who comes from a long line of proud Italian barbers -- is thrilled to have his son join him in the business. The comedic conflict begins almost immediately when the son shares his new ideas for the future of the barber shop: Ideas and plans that aren't in line with what his father wants for his son or the barber shop.

The son wants to turn the barber shop into a trendy hair styling salon. The father wants to keep it the way it has been. In order to maintain peace and stability in the family, the two decide -- with Solomon-like wisdom -- to split the barber shop in half with one-half remaining an old school Italian barber shop and the other half becoming a trendy hair styling salon. (With no walls separating the two enterprises.) The comedy is driven by the family dynamics of new generation versus old -- old school versus new school -- and, of course, the daily interactions of all the old timers who have frequented the barber shop for years and how they comically collide with the new generation of trendy hipsters who are the new customers of the "salon."

Borgnine having a non-Italian dinner with a friend.

The production company that optioned the show made a deal with Ernest Borgnine to play the lead. He would play the patriarch of the family, the old school Italian-American barber. Ernest Borgnine was himself a 1rst generation Italian-American. His real name was Ermes Effron Borgnino. He was born in Connecticut to parents who were both Italian immigrants..

We had a number of writer's meetings. One of the things Borgnine was insistent on was that the show begin each week during a traditional, Italian-American, Sunday family dinner with all the family characters in attendance. Dinner always had to feature spaghetti and meatballs served up with all the other traditional Sunday sauce/gravy dinner fare. Ernie was a man who loved his Italian food.

I can't adequately express how thrilled I was to be creatively involved with an actor of Borgnine's caliber.  But on the issue of starting the show each week during an Italian-American Sunday dinner, the sort of dinner both Mr.  Borgnine and myself had participated in many times during our lives, we disagreed. It wasn't a negative sort of disagreement but a creative disagreement. Hey! What can I say? I was young. I was stupid. I had new and different ideas. Better ideas, or so I thought. Our creative disagreement became almost like Mr. Borgnine and myself were playing the two main characters in the show-- the old Italian head of the family and the young upstart son with the new ideas.

Writers can be adamant about "the sanctity" of their work, which we often love and treat almost like spoiled  children.  Actors can be the same way about the characters they intend to create and play. In the end, the show didn't happen. It was never produced. Not because of creative differences but because it didn't. Getting anything produced in Hollywood has long odds. Always has, always will. And "A Little Off the Top" wasn't able to beat those odds. But that's another story.

Now that I'm older, a lot older, and hopefully wiser, I realize Ernie was right. He was 100% correct. The show should have begun each episode the way he envisioned it, taking place at the table during traditional Italian-American Sunday dinners. Famiglia: That's what the show was about at it's core, not barber shops or trendy hair salons or even Italian families for that matter. Ernie was right. It would have been a great way to serve up the show to audiences... if the the show had ever been produced. 

Rest in Peace, Ernest Borgnine. You were a true movie star, a great man, and an Italian-American artist of distinction!

A Slice of Pizza History

As all Italian-Americans know -- and will tell you given the slightest opportunity -- Italians are a very proud people. Why? Obviously, because we have so much to be proud of.  When God handed out things to be proud of, Italians must have been his favorites.  Why else would  God put the Vatican in Rome? He sure as hell didn't put it in Paris or Dublin or Krakow.

Italian food, of course, is a source of incredible pride amongst Italians. And it ain't false pride!  There's a reason Italians are so proud of our food: It's the best food on the planet!

One of the Italian food groups Italians are exceptionally proud of -- well, besides pasta, our  Sunday Sauces/Gravies, meaballs, braciole, sawseege, our specialty cold cuts like salami, capocolla, proscuitto,  sub/hoagie/hero/grinder sangwiches, all the parms (eggplant, chicken, veal), all the fish served on Christmas Eves and more -- is pizza. Pizza rates right up there at or near the top of the long list of foods Italians are especially proud of. And yes, pizza is a food group all on it's own.

So, today I'm going to give you the Reader's Digest condensed version of those wonderful-yet-simple Italian flat-bread delights we all know by one word: pizza.

Since way back when, the city of Naples was a thriving, bustling, seaside town. It was jam-packed with Napoletans. (nah-buh-le-dons) A lot of those Napoletans lived and worked on or near the waterfront. The closer you got to the water, the more crowded and bustling Naples was.  I'm not talking about the rich or the aristocracy of Naples. I'm talking about the working classes.  Any time you've got lots of working-class people living and doing their things in a small area, someone's gonna step-up to feed them some cheap but delicious food. I'm not talking about restaurants, cafes, and other sit-down joints to eat, although I'm sure there were plenty of those as well.  I'm talking about street vendors. And that's just what happened in Naples.

Naples waterfront, 16th century, birthplace of pizza. That's not the world's biggest pizza oven in the background. It's Mt. Vesuvius, on the other side of the Bay of Naples, belching up some hot stuff.

If you're a street vendor, you probably want to be selling food that's fast and easy to make and can be eaten by hand by your customers.  Back then, there weren't a whole lot of prepared foods that fit that bill. But pizza certainly did! That's right, pizza was probably the world's first "fast food." And it was invented, like so many other fantastic things, by Italians.

During that time, most of the rich people were eating fancy French food because they thought that was more cultured. (Rich people, please.) They considered food like pizza to be beneath their dignity and station to eat. You know what? Vaffanculo to them. They had no idea what they were missing.  But then, one day in the late 19th century after Italy had unified,  the King and Queen of Italy came to Naples and the Queen, Queen Margherita, wanted to try some pizza. I guess she heard it was good or maybe she wasn't a snob like many rich people are, especially royalty. So, she ordered a few of her minions to go out on the streets of Naples and get her a variety of pizza from the local vendors. 

Queen Margherita with her name-sake pie.

When the minions brought back the pizza for Queen Margherita, she tried them all and decided the one she liked best was a thin-crust, flat-bread pizza topped with mozzarella cheese, red tomatoes, and basil leaves on top. (White, red, and green-- the colors of the Italian flag that pizza just happened to be.) To this day, a cheese and tomato pizza with basil leaves is still called a Margherita Pizza. 

Not long after, a whole lot of Italians immigrated to America and lots of them came from Naples and the areas surrounding Naples. Both my grandparents did. And guess what they brought with them? Yep. Pizza!  Since many Italian immigrants settled in the Northeast, especially in New York City and the surrounding areas, pizza vendors began springing up all over the place. Soon, Italians began spreading across America bringing pizza with them. It didn't take long for non-Italians to discover pizza and they, of course, fell in love with it. That's why pizza is one of the most popular foods in America. And we made it!

By the way, if you come from where I come from, North Jersey -- where the best pizza in the world is made -- we don't say, "I want a slice of pizza," or  "I'm going after a pizza pie," or simply the word pizza, by itself, without the pie added.  We just say we want "a slice."  Or, we say we're going to get "a pie."  If we want some other kind of pie, like an apple or a cherry pie, then we say we want a slice of apple pie or a cherry pie. When we want pizza, we just call it a "pie" or a "slice." You've been schooled. Well, some of you have. Some already knew that.

Next update: "Ernie Was Right!"  (The Ernie is Ermes Effron Borgnino, aka Ernest Borgnine.)

We Made That!

The contributions to humanity by Italians and, later, Italian-Americans is enormous. "We made that," is a term that gained some popularity in recent years. For the most part, the term has been ascribed to things of questionable origins. (The people claiming they made it didn't. Leastwise, not on their own.) But not so for many contributions made by Italians and Italian-Americans.

I could go on and on about people like DaVinci, Marconi, Meucci (the true inventor of the telephone), and many more, but today I'm going to write about Conti, Dominic Conti, the Italian immigrant who invented one of the truly great and much-loved contributions to Italian-American cuisine: the Sub Sandwich.

Dominic Conti hailed from Montello, Italy. Like so many others of his nationality, he came to America in the very early 1900s. Also like many other Italian immigrants, Dominic settled in the great state of New Jersey, where I just happened to have been born and raised. He opened an Italian grocery store in Paterson, NJ, where he sold, amongst other Italian foods and fare, traditional Italian sandwiches.  Dominic's sandwiches consisted of a long, crusty, Italian bread roll filled with cold cuts and topped with lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, onions, oil, vinegar, Italian herbs and spices, salt, and pepper. The sandwich started with a layer of cheese and ended with a layer of cheese so the bread wouldn't get soggy. (Good thinking, Dominic!)

The sub that inspired *the sub*

One day, Dominic visited a local museum and saw a recovered-and-restored, turn-of-the-century Naval submarine on display. The rest was history. Dominic was so inspired by the sub, he named his Italian sandwiches "submarine sandwiches" and the sub sandwich entered the American lexicon.

Sub sandwiches are known by different names depending on where you're from. Even though there are regional names that differ from "submarine sandwich," and variations on how they're made, they all owe their pedigrees to Dominic Conti. A few of the other popular names for Dominic's sub sandwiches are hero, hoagie, and grinder.

Subs can also be hot sandwiches, the most popular being the meatball sub. My friend, Johnny Meatballs, who (like Conti was) is another Italian-American entrepreneur living and plying his trade in the great state of New Jersey, owes much to the spirit of Dominic Conti. Much like Conti did, Johnny also uses an Italian roll but his sandwiches are filled with his signature meatballs along with cheese and his authentic Italian Sunday Sauce/Gravy.  Johnny has another sandwich, one he and his food-vending paisan, Frankie Antipasto, recently unveiled to the world. It includes meatball, sausage, braciole, soppressata (an Italian salami), sauce and cheese. Mama mia! Now that's a sandwich! It's the Holy Trinity of hot Italian subs!

There are other popular hot Italian sub sandwiches beyond meatballs: Italian sausage (made either with red tomato sauce and cheese or without the sauce with grilled peppers-and-onions instead-- my personal preference), plus there's the mouth-watering alternatives: eggplant parm, chicken parm, and veal parm sandwiches. And last but not least, there's the ever-popular steak-and-peppers sub sandwich. All are delicioso!

By the way, some of you may have heard the word, "sandwich," pronounced "sang-wich."  That's because many old school Italians from back East pronounce it that way. My Aunt Mary (RIP), my Dad's oldest sister who lived much of her life on the West Coast in Azusa, CA, worked part-time in an Italian Deli out here making "sangwiches." This particular deli was quite the popular place amongst the local lunch crowd. I used to sometimes stop by when I was out that way and I thoroughly enjoyed the quizzical looks on many Californian's faces when she asked them what kind of "sang-wich" they wanted. My Aunt Mary was not a patient person. If you didn't answer quickly, she scowled, shook her head, and was on to the next person waiting to order. (Which, to me, was even funnier than her saying, "sangwich.")

So, next time you enjoy a sub, hero, hoagie, grinder, or whatever they call it in your neck of the woods, you owe some thanks to Dominic Conti, the Italian-American inventor of one of the greatest sandwiches of all time: the submarine sang-wich.

Pasta Fazool

A soupy bowl of Pasta e Fagiole.

A well-known Italian peasant dish which has been served in many Italian-American households ever since boatloads of Italian peasants/immigrants came to this country is  called pasta e fagiole, which means pasta and beans.

My grandmother made pasta e fagiole once a week.  I always looked forward to being at her house or she being at our house when she made it. Even if you've never tried it -- and if you haven't tried it you're definitely missing out on something delicioso -- you've probably heard of it. But what you heard may have sounded more like pasta fazool.

The proper Italian word for beans, fagiole, is pronounced fazool in the Neapolitan dialect. That's right. All Italians don't speak the world's most beautiful language exactly the same way. They speak it in regional dialects. But all Italians can still understand each other regardless of their dialects. We're clever that way. (And in a whole lot more ways!)

Although my grandparents came from Avellino, which isn't too far from Naples, it's not Naples. But they still spoke Italian in the Neapolitan dialect. In case you need a quick geography lesson, both Naples and Avellino are in the state, district, or region of Campania. (Whatever they call those various areas over there.) All 8 of their children spoke Italian the same way, with the Neapolitan accent. Two of my aunts married guys from the old country -- my Uncle Ralph (Rafaello) and my Uncle Carl (Carlo) -- but both of them were from Naples so they fit right in, dialect wise.

If my father had taught my brother, sister, and I to speak Italian -- which I always wished he had -- I'd be speaking it in the Neapolitan dialect. But I don't. That's because he never taught us to speak it. Period. In any dialect.

Many children of Italian immigrants, those millions of first generation Italian-Americans like my Dad, failed to teach their kids to speak the mother tongue.  Sure, many of us next-generation Italian-Americans know quite a few words in Italian. Certainly the swear words. (I do.)  And if Italian was spoken, say, at your grandparent's home like it was in my family, there's a good chance you understood many things in Italian that were said to you. Otherwise, you sometimes might have gotten a smack on the back of the head. I always thought that was entirely unfair. I mean, you don't teach me to speak Italian but when you tell me to do something, and you tell it to me in Italian, you get impatient with me for not immediately understanding what you said? In a language you didn't teach me to speak? Where's the logic in that?

There are, of course, some reasons why so many first-gen Italian-Americans (who did speak Italian) passed over teaching their 2nd-gen children to speak it. I'm pretty sure I understand some of those reasons even if I don't agree with them.  But that's the stuff of another blog update.

Back to Pasta e fagiole, which is what this update is supposed to be about.

Pasta fazool is easy to make. It's easier to make than a Sunday sauce or braciole or many other Italian dishes.  And for you cheapskates, it's not only easy to make but it's cheap to make. That's how peasant food mostly is: cheap to make, even if you're feeding a small army of peasants with it.

There are many recipes you can find on the web for making pasta e fagiole. If you want to make it authentico, which you should, go with the simplest recipes because the true beauty (and deliciousness) of pasta e fagiole lies in it's simplicity.  Just remember two things: I don't care what the recipe says, to make proper pasta fagiole use cannellini beans, i.e., white kidney beans (either canned or the old school way with dry beans), and ditalini for the pasta. No exceptions! You want to make it right. Right? Then make it right with the right ingredients! Capice?

My grandmother usually made pasta e fagiole with dry cannellini beans. That's because she was very old school about cooking and, well,  just about everything else in her life.  It takes longer to make it that way, with dry beans, but it tastes better too. You can make pasta e fagiole red or white, depending on whether you make it with tomatoes or chicken broth as the base. You can also make it like soup or less soupy. My grandmother made it both ways, red and white, depending on what she had available for the ingredients. Her pasta fazool was less a soup than some pasta fazool I've had. You can make it any of those ways depending on the recipe you go with. They're all really good, sono buoni, and delicioso!

By the way, a lot of Italian restaurants have pasta e fagiole on their menus so maybe that would be a good way for you to get introduced to it if you've never experienced the pleasures of a bowl of pasta fazool.   I used to sometimes eat lunch at an Italian deli near to where I worked and they made pasta e fagiole every Wednesday.  Come to think of it, I think Wednesday was the day of the week my grandmother made pasta e fagiole as well. The deli made their pasta fazool the old school way, the deli's owner, Giuseppe, being from the old country and all.

Dean Martin famously crooned a love song called That's Amore. I know you've heard it. Everyone has heard it. It's the song that talks about how, when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie... One of the other verses goes like this: "When the stars make you drool just-a like pasta fazool that's amore."   

Pasta e fagiole was Dino's favorite dish and now I'm droolin' for some because, just like Dino, amo pasta fazool. That means, "I love pasta fazool," you know, in Italian. Try it if you haven't. You probably will too.

My Grandmother's Maytag Bread Box

Looks just like my grandmother's laundry equipment.

I have very early memories of my grandmother, Maria Miele Giordano, hand-washing clothes. She performed this labor-intensive chore just outside the porch door on the side of the house where my grandfather had, at some point, dug a leeching pit covered with flat stones. The wash water would get tossed on the stones where it drained into the pit and leeched into the ground. No danger of throwing a baby out with the wash water with those flat stones in place. It was totally old school and I'm guessing my grandfather dug the pit in the very early 1900s.

I also have not-so-early memories of my grandmother still hand-washing clothes on the side of the house. That's because, even after she was given an indoor electric washing machine, she stubbornly insisted on hand-washing clothes, outdoors, next to the porch door, with a big bucket of hot, sudsy water and a wash board.

I'm pretty sure she learned how to hand-wash clothes when she was a young girl back in the old country before she came to America. She came from peasant stock at a time and place when/where children had to hold their own contributing to the needs of their families.

My grandmother wasn't much for change. She did just about everything the old country/old school way: from cooking and cleaning, to canning fruits and tomato sauce, to feeding the chickens, gathering their eggs, and later slaughtering them for dinner, and so much more. That was done while raising 8 kids, all of them born at home, with no one else to help her until a few of her daughters were old enough to pitch in and help. Different times, for sure.

Back to hand-washing clothes.

A bread box similar to my grandmother's bread box.

At some point, I believe in the early-to-mid 1950s, a few of her children, including my Dad, decided to pool some money and buy her an electric washing machine. They were tired of seeing their Mom outside, hunched over that big aluminum bucket, scrubbing clothes the old fashioned way. The washer looked very much like the one pictured on the right.  They decided to put it in the indoor porch at the side of the house between the side door to the outside and the kitchen. There was a big sink in that room with counter tops on either side of it. It was mostly used for food preparation and little else. It never became a laundry room.

Why? Because my grandmother had another idea for using that washing machine and her idea had nothing to do with washing clothes. Nope. While even her young grandkids, like myself, understood that the machine was meant for laundry, my grandmother saw it as a top-of-the-line bread box.

That's right, she never once used it to wash clothes. Instead, she stored loaves of bread in it. And to be honest, it was a terrific bread box. It kept the bread fresh for days longer. That's because the lid on the washing machine was an air-tight/water-tight lid and what better place to store bread than in a clean, porcelain-lined tub with an air-tight/water-tight lid?

My Aunt Rosie's and Uncle Tony's children in 1947

One of my uncles, Tony Germano, was married to my Dad's sister, Rosie. They had 5 children and all of them lived in Poughkeepsie, NY, which was about an hour's drive North of my grandparent's house in Sloatsburg, NY.

Uncle Tony drove a delivery truck for his father who owned an Italian grocery store and bakery in Poughkeepsie. That's how he met my Aunt Rosie: delivering groceries and bread to my grandparents' home.

After I was born, my uncle still delivered bread to my grandmother and he did so through most of my my younger years. I think he showed up with his deliveries about once a week.  He would drop off a whole bunch of loaves of really awesome Italian bread. Rather than having a dozen or so loaves of bread with no good place to store them, my grandmother solved the problem by using her new washing machine as a bread box.  I always got a chuckle when she or one my aunts told me to go out to the washing machine and get some bread.  Where else would you expect to go to retrieve some bread than a washing machine, right?