The Great Italian-American Sunday Sauce/Gravy Dinner

A typical plate full of Sunday Sauce/Gravy Goodness

When I was growing up, we spent many (if not most) Sundays at my grandparent's home. They lived in a small town called Sloatsburg, NY. It was the house my father, his brother, and all six of his sisters were born and raised in.

Sloatsburg wasn't much of a town. It was and still is a small community nestled in the Ramapo Mountains of lower New York state, about 25 or 30 miles North of New York City.  If you're familiar with the area, Rt. 17 goes through Sloatsburg's business district, which isn't much of a business district. After passing through Sloatsburg's business district, assuming you're heading North, there's a right turn you make off Rt. 17 which takes you up Seven Lakes Drive.

The house my grandparents lived in as it is today.

Making that right turn takes you across two bridges over a small tributary of the Ramapo River to a fork in the road. Go to the right and you're heading up towards the Seven Lakes and Harriman and Bear Mountain State Parks. Go to the left and you're headed to my grandparent's house, which is only a few blocks away.  In the middle of the fork is a small restaurant and bar. I don't know what it's now called but, back in the day, it was owned and operated by my grandmother's nephew, a guy named Bats Miele.

The Miele family, my grandmother's family, is fairly well known in and around Sloatsburg, Suffern, and a few other parts of Rockland County.  When I was a kid, Bats' place wasn't much more than a roadside stand. They sold cold beer, soda, and sandwiches. A lot of it to travelers heading up Seven Lakes Drive for a day of hiking, swimming, and more. Bats' roadside stand was well known for the meatball sandwiches it served.  That's because my grandmother made the meatballs for Bats. He paid her in bottles of beer and soda to take back home with her which was a source, amongst some in my family, of ill-feelings towards Bats because, without my grandmother's meatballs, Bats was probably out of business. They believed Bats should have compensated my grandmother better for her hard work making those incredible meatballs. But that's old school Italian family feuding stuff and I won't dwell on it even though Bats was obviously a cheap prick for not paying my grandmother in cash, not that I hold any old school Italian grudges about that.

Bats' roadside stand in Sloatsburg as it is today.

Back to Sunday's at my grandparents' house.

Like many other Italian-American families, Sunday family dinners were always a big deal. A weekly event. A mouth-watering feast! My dad's family was a large family. There would be at least thirty or more people there each Sunday for dinner. Mostly Italian was spoken in that house. To my life-long disappointment, neither I nor any of my many cousins were ever taught to speak Italian, but we understood enough of it so that if we were told to get something or do something (or stop doing something) we knew what was being said and could respond quickly, which helped avoid getting smacked upside the head.

During warm weather, we all ate under the grape arbor out back where there were big wooden picnic tables sitting on gravel which was spread out. It was a fairly large area, as was the grape arbor over it. Next to the grape arbor was a wood shed which housed many cords of wood, a cast iron wood-burning cooking stove, and hundreds of red peppers hanging from the rafters to dry. There was also a good-sized vegetable garden beyond the grape arbor. It was probably about a half acre. My grandfather grew tomatoes, peppers, string beans and a variety of other vegetables. Plus, up the hill behind the house and beyond the vegetable garden was a chicken coop, an old outhouse, rabbit hutches, and a pig stye all inhabited by the appropriate animals penned inside... except the outhouse, of course.

A Sunday-style dinner with a fictional Italian family.

I have, or at least had, plenty of aunts, uncles, cousins and second cousins. There were also a few aunts and uncles who weren't really (blood-related) aunts and uncles but we called them aunt or uncle as well. They weren't simply friends of the family, they were family and they'd be there most Sundays as well. We also did Christmas Eves and Easter Sundays at my grandparents' home in Sloatsburg and, as far as family feasts go, those were even bigger deals than Sunday dinners.

Italian's often talk about their Sunday Sauces or Sunday Gravies and what they're talking about is that big pot of tomato sauce.  Non-Italians often call it "spaghetti sauce." Puh-leeze. That doesn't do it justice. First off, it's not always served on spaghetti. Other types of pasta like rigatoni, shells, or ziti were often served instead of spaghetti at my grandparents' house on Sundays. Personally, I liked rigatoni best, still do. Ziti is my second favorite.  Shells are good too and... oh hell! I love it all!

The macaroni topped with sauce/gravy is only part of the feast. It's the meats in the Sunday sauce that truly steal the show: meatballs, sausages, braciole, big chunks of pork, sometimes even chicken (but not often) were in that Sunday sauce pot and all of it had simmered in the pot for hours, making it not only delicious, but practically melt-in-your-mouth awesome. The macaroni, sauce, and meats were served along with loaves of Italian bread, salads, sliced cold cuts (salami, mortadella, prosciutto, capicola), plus sliced and grated cheeses, marinated peppers, and more.

Sometimes, my grandmother and aunts would also make mulinyan (eggplant parm), veal parm, peppered chicken wings that were fried in olive oil, along with all the Sunday sauce pot stuff and everything else I mentioned.  All the cooking, by the way, was done on a big, old, cast iron stove that was half-wood-burning and half-gas-burning. Oh my God! What I wouldn't give to sit down for one more of those Sunday dinners at my grandparents' house surrounded by all my family who were around back then.  Cherished memories for sure.

If you're not of Italian descent but you've been invited to and participated in a traditional, Italian-American, Sunday Sauce/Gravy dinner, consider yourself fortunate. It's a feast for all your senses and it means you're not just friends of the family who invited you, you are like family to them.

The small tributary of the Ramapo River from one of the bridges before the fork in the road. I snapped this while on a trip back home last year. It was Fall and the trees were in their colorful autumn splendor.