I grew up in a middle-class, Italian Catholic household nestled solidly in the suburbs of Long Island, New York. In addition to an Italian’s flair for the dramatic, they have an incredible love of food. Some would call it an obsession even. Abbondanza is the Italian word for abundance or plenty. In a normal Italian famiglia, there is no such thing as too much food. And when you’re stuffed to the gills & ready to hurl, a little dessert & an espresso with Annisette was just what you needed to ‘settle your stomach’. 2 Alka-Seltzers & 3 Briosci’s later, you were STILL tasting those speecy-spicy-meat-a-balls that lay like a ton of bricks on a tender & bloated gut. Or maybe I should say, like a pair of ceeee-ment shoooz, eh?
Before we get into the storyline here, a lesson in Slang/Soprano Italian may be in order.
Oobatz: Male crazy person. Usage: Ay yi yi, that Little Paulie Junior is oobatz for trying to rob that bank.
Aabatz: Female crazy person: Usage: Ay yi yi, Angelina must be aabatz for hookin up wit dat friggin Little Paulie Junior, eh?
Stunad: Drunk Usage: Yo, Little Paulie Junior musta bin stunad when he tried ta rob dat bank, eh?
Jooch: Big, awkward goon. Usage: Mamma Mia, whatta Jooch Little Paulie Junior is for being stunad enough ta try an rob dat bank, oobatz.
Goumada: Girlfriend, generally to a married man. Usage: Good ting that Goumada Tessie dint know about dat jooch boyfriend of hers Little Paulie Junior bein oobatz enough to try an rob dat bank, eh?
Culo: Butt. Culone: Big Fat Butt. Usage: Mamma Mia, dat Goumada Tessie’s got some culone on her, eh?
Agita: Heartburn. Usage: Madon, dat macaroni sauce Goumada Tessie made gave me sum friggin agita.
Skeeve/Skeevy: Disgusting. Fuhgeddaboutit, I ain’t eatin none a dat sauce Goumada Tessie made, I skeeve it.
Ok, now that we have a basic understanding of Slang Italian 101, we can move onto the story….
Mom was fond of packing me a ‘light’ lunch to bring with me to Catholic elementary school every day. For years I wondered why I was the ONLY kid whose lunch came in a shopping bag. Funny how all the other kids had a PB&J sandwich & an apple while I had a hunk of mozzarella, a chunk of aged Genoa salami, a slice of lasagna (with sausage) in a quart-sized Tupperware container, a tossed salad, 3 figs and 4 Zeppole’s stuffed with cream. How crazy is that? Oobatz …..
I earned the nickname of Il Guatalone………..the fat one. My grandmother, bless her heart, had bestowed that nasty moniker upon me as a young child. At 4’10” tall and weighing in at 88 lbs, she was one of the dozen ‘small Italian women’ I knew of. The rest of them had the same vertical measurements as they did horizontal……64 inches tall & 64 inches wide. And they all wore aprons 24/7….even while they slept. I thought hairnets, rolled nylon stockings & bobby pins stuck into teeny tin buns atop a woman’s head were fashionable. Who knew? Aprons were a necessity of life since the kitchen was the hub of the home & where all the action took place. Never a moment went by when there wasn’t a pot of something simmering on the stove. The kitchen was a flurry of sights, sounds and aromas. Tomatoes, garlic, fish, flour flying everywhere, and deep pots of fragrant oil were the norm in our house. What wasn’t frying was baking, simmering, stewing or marinating. With two Italian women in charge, Ma & Grandma, there was always something to cook, something to peel, or something to chop up to become something else. If grandma put a cake into the oven, she first made the sign of the cross over it, and then instructed everyone to SHHHHHHHHH, and to walk quietly for the next hour so the cake wouldn't 'fall.'
While most children play with Lego’s and Barbie dolls, I played with lumache……snails. Mom & I would walk down to the neighborhood fish monger’s shop on Friday afternoons & look around for ‘interesting’ dinner ideas. The only rule of thumb was that the fish had to be disgusting, slimy, or have tentacles in order to be dinner-worthy. We’d pick up a few pounds of lumache, some calamari (squid), a pound or so of scungili (conch) & every now & then, some polpo (octopus). If the creature had tentacles and suction cups, how cool was that? Ma would get out a big pasta pot & fill it with water, placing the live lumache in there to soak. Up the pot the slimy little buggers would crawl, right up onto my hand, tickling their way up my arm. I thought this was the neatest thing on earth. We bonded, the lumache & I, right up to the time they were thrown into a pan of red-hot olive oil with plenty of garlic & a touch of salt. As much as I enjoyed their company whilst in the soaking pot, I enjoyed them even more in my mouth. YummO.
I have fond memories of visiting the relatives on the north shore of Long Island, about 40 miles away. Uncle-Angelo- God-Rest-His-Soul, would take us to the beach to go clamming & fishing in Eaton’s Neck where Goumada Maria & Goombata Benny lived. While the other kids were building castles in the sand, my cousins & I were turning over rocks on the shoreline to see if we could gather enough mollusks for a decent dinner that night. Uncle-Angelo-God-Rest-His-Soul, would pry the tiny slime-balls off of the rocks we’d found, pop them into his mouth & suck the live fishie right out of the shell & chew em up. How we all didn’t die from salmonella in those days is beyond me.
When Uncle-Angelo-God-Rest-His-Soul caught Porgies (and to this day, I have never again seen or heard of a Porgie….)he’d pluck the eyes out of the head & eat them both in one bite. I think he did that more for shock factor than anything else, but then again, coming from a man who sucks mollusks clean out of their shell, who knows?
The other odd thing Uncle-Angelo-God-Rest-His-Soul would do was drink red wine from a gallon jug that sat next to his plastic covered chair at the head of the dining room table. He’d mix that cheap red wine with Coke, of all things, and he’d drink glass after glass after glass of that foul concoction. Yet, never once did I see him stunad. He’d laugh heartily while eating his catch, and I’d see his gold teeth glinting in the light of the Italianate chandelier dangling from the ceiling.
Christmas was another excuse for a food orgy unlike any other. Christmas was special. Christmas celebrated the birth of the baby Jesus & that meant dozens of once-a-year foods that held some sort of significance for Italians everywhere. My Aunt-Concetta-May-Her-Soul-Rest-In-Peace would spend weeks slaving over the old stove in her kitchen in Brooklyn. She’d wheel her little push-cart down to the specialty markets all over the neighborhood to pick up all sorts of different foods for the feast. Uncle Johnny-Boy would arrange a monstrosity of an Antipasto platter to start off the lavish meal. Dad would help him because they were partners in an Italian Deli together which made them experts in the field of vegetables soaked in oil & pickling spices, and all varieties of processed salami’s, cheeses, and lunch meats of all kinds. The antipasto platter was so enormous, it took both men to carry it to the table. And that was just the start of The Meal.
Then came the lasagna, manicotti, the Pizze Rustica, the Pizze Ran, (both made with pure lard) the braggiole stuffed with hard boiled eggs, and the escarole with l’aglio, the sautéed broccoli-rabe, the string beans with red sauce, the string beans with white sauce, and the finocchio, which is fennel. After the second course plates were removed, next came the third course fare: rare roast beef, oven roasted potatoes, baked macaroni with 4 cheeses, dinner rolls, a variety of salads & even more vegetables.
After everyone had unzipped their pants, yanked off their girdles,taken their shoes off and swallowed a few glasses of Brioschi for all the agita, it was time for Dessert. After letting loose with a few humongous burps thanks to the Brioschi, we managed to find a bit more room in our bulging stomachs. If you didn’t join in on the eating orgy, you were a guastafesta or a gavone: a party-pooper or an embarrassment to the famigilia.
Dessert began & ended with espresso, of course. Ma’s offering was a Casada: a cake that weighs at least 10 lbs & is made in a spring-form pan lined with Lady-Fingers. Then the cream filling is added. This filling contains full-fat ricotta cheese, sugar, pistachio nuts, chocolate chips, liquoer, and heavy cream. A 1 ounce sliver of Ma’s casada was about all a person could tolerate, even though she’d cut you a 6” slice which would have been plenty to feed the entire table. Then there were the stroffoli…..fried dough balls rolled in honey & covered with sprinkles & candy coated almonds. Not to forget the Bow-Ties, Zeppoles, cream puffs, assorted Italian cookies, spumoni and tortoni ice-creams. Every place setting had a small box of Torrone as well…..an Italian almond nougat candy that was specially wrapped & placed into a little box. I absolutely loved those little boxes of Torrone and one day 40-some years later, I found a box at a garage sale! And, not giving a flying fig how ancient it was, I bought it for old times’ sake.
Growing up Italian means a lot of things, but most of all, it means You Will Get Fat. If 4 people sit down at the table to share 2 lbs of pasta, 24 meatballs, 16 sausages, 2 loaves of garlic bread & a side of Manicotti with extra ricotta, guess what?
You guessed it. They get the nickname il guatalone.
Pure starch stuffed with pure fat & swimming in a sea of red sauce, Alfredo sauce, or sometimes, clam sauce, all made with some more, pure fat olive oil and butter, or sometimes lard, and topped off with a lot more pure fat parmesan cheese. One does not need to be a mathematician to figure out the calorie content of these meals was astronomical.
Sigh.
When I was 12 years old, I was introduced to Weight Watchers meetings for the very first time. Not the LAST time, certainly, but at 12 I was inducted into the ranks of being Fat & Needing a Diet…..This was 1969, remember, and so, the tree huggers & bleeding heart liberals hadn’t yet evolved from the Hippies, Beatniks & Flower children that walked the earth in Peace & Love Man. So the cruel & inhuman leaders of the Weight Watchers meetings were allowed to make us wear pig masks if we’d happen to gain weight during the week.
Tsk-tsk Miss Piggy, YOU ate TOO MUCH and GAINED 4 OUNCES this week. Shame-shame-on-you, now put ON that PIG MASK & FEEL the agony of defeat you so DESERVE. Yep, me & a bunch of fat, irritable & middle-aged housewives sitting around a room learning how to weigh & measure food correctly.
What?
So Minestrone soup wasn’t served in individual tureens? Bread actually came in slices versus loaves? Come on, give me a break already. Fuhgeddabouit, diets were obviously meant to be broken, especially on holidays, birthdays, christenings, weddings, anniversaries, Holy Days (all 249 of them), during sleep-overs, family vacations, visiting the relatives, and certainly while taking long trips to Brooklyn in the car. Oh, and on Sundays, which were macaroni days in my house hold.
Over the course of the next 40 years, I learned all I ever needed to know about cottage cheese, celery stalks, low-fat yoghurt, canned tuna in water, turkey-burgers with no buns, lettuce, diet soda & Special K with 2% milk.
But, no matter how much good-for-you-food knowledge I may have acquired over the years, nothing beats the comfort & pleasure of a big bowl of Ma’s homemade lasagna or better yet, her famous eggplant parmesan. Quite often, I find myself yearning for the good old days when scales were only meant to weigh salami, cappicola & provolone instead of BMI’s, and fat-to-muscle ratios. The old days when the best medicine on earth for what ailed me was unwrapped slowly & lovingly from a special little box of Italian nougat candy called Torrone.
