Although I missed home terribly during the Christmas season, I count myself lucky to have shared Christmas dinner with Materani. Both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day I spent at the homes of friends, and both events afforded a culinary experience not soon forgotten.
I’m not sure what Americans typically eat on Christmas Eve. Since I was very young, my family has always had pizza, either homemade, or as life gets ever more frenetic, pizza ordered from Vocelli’s or Papa John’s. But I’m sure that a very small percentage of Americans this year ate a meal similar to what I had. To start, the hostess offered us appetizers of champagne, pizze rustiche, and pettole. (Pizze rustiche are like inverted pizzas, pettole, as you will recall, are the fried batter balls.) When we sat down to table, we found dishes heaped with cozze, mussels. These are eaten with your hands, and indeed, it is strenous work to snap open the shells, to extract, in the end, only a shred of meat. Soon each plate was stacked with shells.
Then the gamberetti (shrimp and squid) were passed around, with a bit of lemon for flavouring. And then—well, being untutored in the typical American cuisine for Christmas Eve, I didn’t have any expectations, but I wasn’t quite prepared for—oh, octopus salad? Don’t mind if I do.
L’insalata di polpo consisted of violet pieces of octopus tentacles, suckers intact. Determined to try everything, I accepted a small portion, and found, actually, that octopus is only remarkable in that it is chewy. Quite chewy.
We ate regular salad, well-oiled, before embarking on the second course, spaghetti with vongole. Italians have a knack at making a tasty dish with few ingredients—pasta, oil, salt, perhaps some butter, and the principal garnish, be it vongole, as in this case, or flecks of peperone crusco. The third course was served to those who did not complain with enough conviction of a full stomach. Thus, I ate pesce di spada (swordfish), slightly spicy and quite tender. Later, I asked my students if that night’s menu was traditional, and learned that fish is to Materani what pizza is to the Marrelli-Kelley clan on Christmas Eve.
My favorite part of the meal was, perhaps, when the hostess placed baskets of nuts and fruit on the table. My Italian-American mother had often told me of how at Christmas her family ate nuts and fruit. Christmas morning, the children found oranges in their stockings (I never did understand why citrus fruit was considered such a treat in sunny California). We peeled fruit and waged war on the nuts with little attention to where the peels and shells landed. I marveled as my hostess, after watching my pathetic struggles with the schiaccianoci (nutcracker), broke walnuts with her bare hands. After the fruit-and-nut course, the hostess simply gathered up the tablecloth.
I may not be an expert on American culinary habits, but I’m pretty sure that sweets are a-plenty on Christmas Eve. If I had been in America, I would have sampled the full complement of sweets set out by my mother—Christmas cut-outs, pfefferneuse, gingerbread men, chocolate truffles, my mother’s Springerly cookies (a requisite to every Christmas because they are fat-free), Trader Joe’s peppermint sandwich cookies, oatmeal cookies, chocolate chip cookies, candy canes, and to drink, hot chocolate or cider. The sweet finale to that night’s dinner was, in comparison, restrained. As the host passed around goblets of champagne, the hostess cut slices of panettone alla tartuffe, panettone with the soft part marbled with chocolate and the top crust glazed with chocolate.
At the stroke of midnight, the family flocked onto the balcony to greet Christmas Day, waiving sparklers and crying Auguri! We then exchanged auguri, kissing each other on the cheek. It already being Christmas Day, there was no need to wait to open presents: children and adults exchanged gifts. And then, I’m not sure if it was sleepiness, or perhaps it was the thought of another Christmas dinner to be eaten the next day that made us wish each other one more time “Auguri to all, and to all a good night.”
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Christmas in Matera, I: It's beginning to look a lot like... Halloween?
I almost missed Christmas this year. Americans are used to an inundation of Christmas signs—lights, wreaths, fake snow in California and real snow in New York, trees in the windows, Christmas soundtracks in every store—right after Thanksgiving. If it weren’t for the psychedelic lights in the piazza, your uninitiated tourist, visiting Matera between December 1 and January 12, might think that Matera decided to cancel Christmas that year. Slowly, I learned to recognize the signs that Christmas was coming, though for the first two weeks I hummed “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas” with a sense of irony.
Take a look in the Five and Ten, glistening once again, goes the song. Take a look in the tabacchi, and it’s not with candy canes and silver lanes aglow. (Although, one day I was standing in the check-out line at one of the smaller supermarkets when I saw a tub of candy canes. I was so shocked that I started coughing. Upon closer inspection, I found that the tub held candy canes in every flavor except peppermint.) Instead of Rudolph, Santa, and Frosty, there was La Befana, the traditional Christmas dispenser of treats and jollity. Although Italians have adopted the anglophone custom of Santa Claus, I suspect that they are mystified by this big, avuncular, old man. And I am just as mystified by the sight of Christmas trees decked, not with gingerbread men and glass globes, but with witches on broomsticks.
I found two Santa Clauses this Christmas season, both the figures that start singing when you walk by. I grew to be quite fond of the Santa Claus outside Morelli’s Emporium on Via Margherita. I used to take that street just to hear a hearty ho-ho and the first two lines of “Jingle Bells.”
The Materan Christmas song repertoire seems to consist of two tunes, the first verse of “Jingle Bells” and “Tu scendi dalle stelle” (You came down from the stars), a carol traditionally sung by shepherds. In fact, if it had not been for the Santa Claus outside Morrelli’s Emporium, and a rather hardy old shepherd who roamed the streets, wailing on his zampogna (bagpipes), Matera would have been silent during that most sonorous of seasons. I know that while in the U.S. I griped about the Christmas tunes played ad nausea wherever there was a radio, but it was an eerie experience to go Christmas shopping without the accompaniment of “Jingle Bell Rock,” “Let it Snow,” and “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire.” In America, the air thrums with music and good cheer. In Matera, the shop owners have to pay an association (SIAE, Società italiana degli autori ed editori) whenever they play music in their shops, even radio music—a veritable case of the Grinch who stole Christmas.
I tried to compensate for the lack of festive music by sharing Christmas songs with my students. I gave them the texts, with key words missing, and asked them to fill-in the blanks. Such was my determination to spread Christmas cheer that I recklessly played “I’ll be home for Christmas” and “Have yourself a merry little Christmas,” songs that are better not heard 3,000 miles away from home. But if the Materan streets and shops were curiously silent, the students needed little encouragement to start singing. I cannot imagine a class of American high schoolers spontaneously breaking out into song. I will never forget the day that I played Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” for one of my beginning classes. They asked me to play it again so that they could learn the words, whereupon they linked arms and sang, every student. The earnestness with which they braved the sustained note in “may your days be merry and briiiiiiiiiiight,” brought a lump to my throat. I have no doubt that night’s snowfall—a miraculous event in Matera, where, so they tell me, it never snows—was due to the five times that we sang “White Christmas.” I do hope that next Christmas Bing’s song surfaces in the Materan repertoire.
Take a look in the Five and Ten, glistening once again, goes the song. Take a look in the tabacchi, and it’s not with candy canes and silver lanes aglow. (Although, one day I was standing in the check-out line at one of the smaller supermarkets when I saw a tub of candy canes. I was so shocked that I started coughing. Upon closer inspection, I found that the tub held candy canes in every flavor except peppermint.) Instead of Rudolph, Santa, and Frosty, there was La Befana, the traditional Christmas dispenser of treats and jollity. Although Italians have adopted the anglophone custom of Santa Claus, I suspect that they are mystified by this big, avuncular, old man. And I am just as mystified by the sight of Christmas trees decked, not with gingerbread men and glass globes, but with witches on broomsticks.
I found two Santa Clauses this Christmas season, both the figures that start singing when you walk by. I grew to be quite fond of the Santa Claus outside Morelli’s Emporium on Via Margherita. I used to take that street just to hear a hearty ho-ho and the first two lines of “Jingle Bells.”
The Materan Christmas song repertoire seems to consist of two tunes, the first verse of “Jingle Bells” and “Tu scendi dalle stelle” (You came down from the stars), a carol traditionally sung by shepherds. In fact, if it had not been for the Santa Claus outside Morrelli’s Emporium, and a rather hardy old shepherd who roamed the streets, wailing on his zampogna (bagpipes), Matera would have been silent during that most sonorous of seasons. I know that while in the U.S. I griped about the Christmas tunes played ad nausea wherever there was a radio, but it was an eerie experience to go Christmas shopping without the accompaniment of “Jingle Bell Rock,” “Let it Snow,” and “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire.” In America, the air thrums with music and good cheer. In Matera, the shop owners have to pay an association (SIAE, Società italiana degli autori ed editori) whenever they play music in their shops, even radio music—a veritable case of the Grinch who stole Christmas.
I tried to compensate for the lack of festive music by sharing Christmas songs with my students. I gave them the texts, with key words missing, and asked them to fill-in the blanks. Such was my determination to spread Christmas cheer that I recklessly played “I’ll be home for Christmas” and “Have yourself a merry little Christmas,” songs that are better not heard 3,000 miles away from home. But if the Materan streets and shops were curiously silent, the students needed little encouragement to start singing. I cannot imagine a class of American high schoolers spontaneously breaking out into song. I will never forget the day that I played Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” for one of my beginning classes. They asked me to play it again so that they could learn the words, whereupon they linked arms and sang, every student. The earnestness with which they braved the sustained note in “may your days be merry and briiiiiiiiiiight,” brought a lump to my throat. I have no doubt that night’s snowfall—a miraculous event in Matera, where, so they tell me, it never snows—was due to the five times that we sang “White Christmas.” I do hope that next Christmas Bing’s song surfaces in the Materan repertoire.
Carnevale in Matera: La Mattinata
Matera, February 18, 2011
I think that most of us are familiar with the romantic serenade: a masked musician stands beneath the balcony of his lady-love, wooing her with songs. But a rowdy group of masked singers, armed with tambourines, maracas, and a cupa-cupa, clamoring for vittles—what do you call that?
A mattinata, as I learned last night.
One of my friends belongs to a cultural association called I chicchi del melograno (The Pomegranate Seeds). The group decided to revive the Materan custom of the mattinata. In the days of peasants and landlords, during Carnevale the peasants would disguise themselves and descend upon the house of the padrone, making as much noise as possible, and clamoring for food and drink. Whatever the padrone had in the house was to be served. In the traditional song, the peasants inform their padrone that they are well aware that a pig has just been killed—so out with the grub, and give us a flask of wine while you’re at it. Just like a serenade (deriving from serata, or evening), the mattinata takes place at night. Why is that, when mattinata means “morning”? I learned why the day after.
We revelers convened at 10:30 p.m. on a hill overlooking central Matera. I was sitting in the car, chatting with my friend and two Melograno members, when I noticed that other cars had gathered around us. Within ten minutes we had a cavalcade of cars, engines running, ready for a signal from the lead car. We arrived at the apartment complex of our first victim around 11. Twenty of us crept through the halls, up the stairs, muffling giggles and instruments. We clustered around the door, someone rang the bell, and once the door opened, a short, seventy-something-year-old man broke into lusty song. The singing did not last very long, as we were missing both guitarists. Singing soon petered into talk and jokes while the victims scrounged their kitchen for something to serve. While Stefania, our conscripted hostess, laid out olives, potato chips, beer, and coca cola, our host prepared spaghetti for a spaghettata. Within minutes Stefania brought a bowl the size of a small kiddy-pool heaped with steaming spaghetti to the table. It was a plain dish, only spaghetti dressed with olive oil and specks of pepperone crusco, a specialty of the area. The pepperone is not spicy at all, but rather bitter.
(Note: The spaghettata is one of my favourite Italian customs. It is not just the making of spaghetti, but the making and sharing of spaghetti with friends late at night. Once my housemates, returning from a concert around 3 o’clock in the morning, held a spaghettata. I, sleeping in the next room, never heard a thing, finding only the pot in the sink the next morning.)
We ate, talked, went through several rounds of brindisi. By then it was 12 o’clock, officially the next day. Mattinata accomplished, right?
Four months in Matera, and I still have rather rigid American notions about time. We had only begun. At house number two we were joined by guitarist number two, guitarist number one being our previous victim. Thanks to the guitarists, we sang steadily for an hour. I did not know a single word to any of the songs, but I was not alone. The Materan dialect is so different from standard Italian that some members brought bi-lingual copies of the songs. While I was reading the lyrics, a Melograno member asked me, Lo capisci?
Per niente, I said, pointing to the Materan lyrics. “This might as well be Arabic.” Then, pointing to the Italian lyrics, I added, “This at least is Greek.”
But if I could just vocalize the songs, I could at least dance. Linking arms with Lucrezia, I began to dance to the song in ¾ time. Sway, two-step, clap at the second step, loud clap and twirl at the end of the phrase. Stefania ran to join us, and we had a troupe. We danced to every song after that, choreographing a different sequence for each dance. Stefania tried to teach me the pizzica, but I would not advise undertaking the leaps of the pizzica at one in the morning.
After another round of brindisi, we flocked to the cars for house three, on Via Santo Biagio, in the outskirts of the Sassi. We wound our way through cobblestone streets, passing under arches hanging with ivy and other plants that I don’t know. All of the Melograno members are open-minded, mellow people, rather like San Franciscans. The home of victim number three reminded me of my relatives’ home in San Francisco: the kitchen jostled the sitting room, wooden stairs led to intriguing lofts, and books bristled in every corner. As there were more bookshelves than furniture, we settled ourselves on the hearth, on stools, on the stairs. I did not manage to secure a seat, so I swayed my way through the evening, sometimes, I’ll admit, disguising my sleepy swaying as the movements of a dance. (N.B. The Italian verb for unsteady moving, traballare, can be roughly translated as “dancing across,” or perhaps as “exaggerated dancing.” So this was really a case of traballare.)
Eventually, my sleepiness obliged me to traballare my way home. I do hear tell that the mattinata went on into the wee hours of the morning—otherwise it wouldn’t be official, right?
The astonishing thing is that the next morning, as I wended my way to school, I met some Melograni in the piazza, looking far more awake than they had a right to be. What is it? The siesta? The caffè? The spaghetti? Or perhaps the notion that morning doesn’t begin until one o’clock?
I think that most of us are familiar with the romantic serenade: a masked musician stands beneath the balcony of his lady-love, wooing her with songs. But a rowdy group of masked singers, armed with tambourines, maracas, and a cupa-cupa, clamoring for vittles—what do you call that?
A mattinata, as I learned last night.
One of my friends belongs to a cultural association called I chicchi del melograno (The Pomegranate Seeds). The group decided to revive the Materan custom of the mattinata. In the days of peasants and landlords, during Carnevale the peasants would disguise themselves and descend upon the house of the padrone, making as much noise as possible, and clamoring for food and drink. Whatever the padrone had in the house was to be served. In the traditional song, the peasants inform their padrone that they are well aware that a pig has just been killed—so out with the grub, and give us a flask of wine while you’re at it. Just like a serenade (deriving from serata, or evening), the mattinata takes place at night. Why is that, when mattinata means “morning”? I learned why the day after.
We revelers convened at 10:30 p.m. on a hill overlooking central Matera. I was sitting in the car, chatting with my friend and two Melograno members, when I noticed that other cars had gathered around us. Within ten minutes we had a cavalcade of cars, engines running, ready for a signal from the lead car. We arrived at the apartment complex of our first victim around 11. Twenty of us crept through the halls, up the stairs, muffling giggles and instruments. We clustered around the door, someone rang the bell, and once the door opened, a short, seventy-something-year-old man broke into lusty song. The singing did not last very long, as we were missing both guitarists. Singing soon petered into talk and jokes while the victims scrounged their kitchen for something to serve. While Stefania, our conscripted hostess, laid out olives, potato chips, beer, and coca cola, our host prepared spaghetti for a spaghettata. Within minutes Stefania brought a bowl the size of a small kiddy-pool heaped with steaming spaghetti to the table. It was a plain dish, only spaghetti dressed with olive oil and specks of pepperone crusco, a specialty of the area. The pepperone is not spicy at all, but rather bitter.
(Note: The spaghettata is one of my favourite Italian customs. It is not just the making of spaghetti, but the making and sharing of spaghetti with friends late at night. Once my housemates, returning from a concert around 3 o’clock in the morning, held a spaghettata. I, sleeping in the next room, never heard a thing, finding only the pot in the sink the next morning.)
We ate, talked, went through several rounds of brindisi. By then it was 12 o’clock, officially the next day. Mattinata accomplished, right?
Four months in Matera, and I still have rather rigid American notions about time. We had only begun. At house number two we were joined by guitarist number two, guitarist number one being our previous victim. Thanks to the guitarists, we sang steadily for an hour. I did not know a single word to any of the songs, but I was not alone. The Materan dialect is so different from standard Italian that some members brought bi-lingual copies of the songs. While I was reading the lyrics, a Melograno member asked me, Lo capisci?
Per niente, I said, pointing to the Materan lyrics. “This might as well be Arabic.” Then, pointing to the Italian lyrics, I added, “This at least is Greek.”
But if I could just vocalize the songs, I could at least dance. Linking arms with Lucrezia, I began to dance to the song in ¾ time. Sway, two-step, clap at the second step, loud clap and twirl at the end of the phrase. Stefania ran to join us, and we had a troupe. We danced to every song after that, choreographing a different sequence for each dance. Stefania tried to teach me the pizzica, but I would not advise undertaking the leaps of the pizzica at one in the morning.
After another round of brindisi, we flocked to the cars for house three, on Via Santo Biagio, in the outskirts of the Sassi. We wound our way through cobblestone streets, passing under arches hanging with ivy and other plants that I don’t know. All of the Melograno members are open-minded, mellow people, rather like San Franciscans. The home of victim number three reminded me of my relatives’ home in San Francisco: the kitchen jostled the sitting room, wooden stairs led to intriguing lofts, and books bristled in every corner. As there were more bookshelves than furniture, we settled ourselves on the hearth, on stools, on the stairs. I did not manage to secure a seat, so I swayed my way through the evening, sometimes, I’ll admit, disguising my sleepy swaying as the movements of a dance. (N.B. The Italian verb for unsteady moving, traballare, can be roughly translated as “dancing across,” or perhaps as “exaggerated dancing.” So this was really a case of traballare.)
Eventually, my sleepiness obliged me to traballare my way home. I do hear tell that the mattinata went on into the wee hours of the morning—otherwise it wouldn’t be official, right?
The astonishing thing is that the next morning, as I wended my way to school, I met some Melograni in the piazza, looking far more awake than they had a right to be. What is it? The siesta? The caffè? The spaghetti? Or perhaps the notion that morning doesn’t begin until one o’clock?
Thanksgiving in Matera, 2010
One of the questions that Materans are bound to ask, on first meeting me, is da quanto tempo stai in Italia (How long have you been here)? You would think that after four months I would be accustomed to this question, but no. Every time I have to count the months. Have I really been in Matera for four months? October, November, December, January, and half of February.
At this juncture my conscience emits a discreet cough. And have you really let four months go by without updating your blog?
I left you all in the suspense of not knowing if I would succeed in procuring a turkey for Thanksgiving Dinner. Doubtless you have since moved on to other things, and ceased to wonder if I celebrated Turkey Day with a whole turkey or only slices, but humor me as I recommence from that point.
Readers, I was obliged to eat sliced turkey on Thanksgiving Day—and not for any fault of the local butcher. So convinced was I that whole turkeys were not to be had before Christmas that I waited until two days before Thanksgiving to order sliced turkey. (Just to show you how entrenched the notion is that whole turkeys are eaten only at Christmas: yesterday I went to a cinema club showing of Uomini contro femmine—Guys Against Girls—an Italian comedy. In one of the film’s many couples, the man is exasperated because his wife’s family celebrations always coincide with soccer championships. After a day at work, he comes home to find his wife making dinner for yet another gathering. She asks him if he bought the turkey, and he snaps, Ma che, è Natale (with a sarcastic overtone that ma che gives sentences: is it Christmas)?) I then discovered that an Italian family, also celebrating Thanksgiving but with American friends, had ordered an entire turkey two weeks in advance. Oh, well. I duly ordered twelve fette di tacchino, to be collected Thursday afternoon.
That same day I had scoured the largest supermarket in town, l’Ipercoop for the requisites of Thanksgiving Dinner. Maple Syrup, not to be had. Cranberries, otherwise known as “red blueberries,” nowhere in sight. Pecans for a pecan pie, no. Gravy, niente. And perhaps most devastating of all, in my opinion, no pumpkin purée with which to make pumpkin pie. Sure, you can have pumpkin pie if you are willing to buy an entire pumpkin and pulverize its insides, but with eleven people to feed during my first time ever cooking Thanksgiving Dinner, I was not about to try. In the end, I resolved on the following menu: candied almonds, turkey, mashed potatoes, cornbread, green beans, and stuffing.
Thanksgiving Day I came home from school around two o’clock and ate a feverish lunch while my housemates ate their usual three-course meal, unaware that 3,000 miles away millions of Americans were starving themselves in anticipation of the gourmandizing to come. What with the three courses and then washing-up I was not able to claim the kitchen until after four o’clock. And I did not stop cooking until nine o’clock. My housemates chipped in, chopping onions, mashing the potatoes, and dicing the celery. Their help was not the only Italian influence on the meal: For the stuffing I used Materan bread, the pride of the city. To roast the turkey and simmer the ingredients for stuffing I used olive oil. Later that evening, we would drink prosecco and eat a cake brought by one of my guests.
Halfway through the preparations, my family called, and we skyped for an hour, as all the while I crumbled the bread for the stuffing. My dad tormented me with descriptions of the chocolate walnut pie that my sister had made. And if I remember correctly, there was also the traditional pumpkin cheesecake in the offing. Readers, you don’t know what I suffer at the thought of that pumpkin cheesecake.
By 9:30 all of the my guests had arrived. Eleven girls crammed around a table meant for seven. Because our plates were so small, I had to make another concession to Italian culture by serving Thanksgiving Dinner in courses, rather than serving each guest a plate loaded with turkey, stuffing, the works. Course one was turkey and stuffing. Course two was cornbread, mashed potatoes, and green beans. Afterwards we poured the bubbly, accompanied by the brindisi. At Italian celebrations, it is customary to deliver a toast of a rhyming couplet. As hostess, it was my lot the brindisi, though I gave it in English, the better to find rhyming words. I made the brindisi twice, once at the beginning of the meal, with the prosecco, and once with the spumante. I only remember the second toast: “Lauren-Claire does declare, this Thanksgiving was good to share.” Insomma.
We ate and chatted until after one o’clock. I don’t remember what happened to the dishes. (You all know how that most pressing question of the day, that political tension that begins to surface as the last piece of pumpkin pie is cut, the last napkin crumpled by the plate: who will do the washing up?) Perhaps my housemates and I washed the dishes the next afternoon, as the next morning I was due to teach la prima ora (at 8:15). At last, to a chorus of Auguri! Buon Ringraziamento! Buona notte! I accompanied my guests to the door, and I was left with the thought that Turkey Day was over and Turkey Week was not to follow. No Thanksgiving Dinner, round two. No turkey sandwiches. No turkey soup. Oh, well. Maybe Christmas would yield the entire turkey.
At this juncture my conscience emits a discreet cough. And have you really let four months go by without updating your blog?
I left you all in the suspense of not knowing if I would succeed in procuring a turkey for Thanksgiving Dinner. Doubtless you have since moved on to other things, and ceased to wonder if I celebrated Turkey Day with a whole turkey or only slices, but humor me as I recommence from that point.
Readers, I was obliged to eat sliced turkey on Thanksgiving Day—and not for any fault of the local butcher. So convinced was I that whole turkeys were not to be had before Christmas that I waited until two days before Thanksgiving to order sliced turkey. (Just to show you how entrenched the notion is that whole turkeys are eaten only at Christmas: yesterday I went to a cinema club showing of Uomini contro femmine—Guys Against Girls—an Italian comedy. In one of the film’s many couples, the man is exasperated because his wife’s family celebrations always coincide with soccer championships. After a day at work, he comes home to find his wife making dinner for yet another gathering. She asks him if he bought the turkey, and he snaps, Ma che, è Natale (with a sarcastic overtone that ma che gives sentences: is it Christmas)?) I then discovered that an Italian family, also celebrating Thanksgiving but with American friends, had ordered an entire turkey two weeks in advance. Oh, well. I duly ordered twelve fette di tacchino, to be collected Thursday afternoon.
That same day I had scoured the largest supermarket in town, l’Ipercoop for the requisites of Thanksgiving Dinner. Maple Syrup, not to be had. Cranberries, otherwise known as “red blueberries,” nowhere in sight. Pecans for a pecan pie, no. Gravy, niente. And perhaps most devastating of all, in my opinion, no pumpkin purée with which to make pumpkin pie. Sure, you can have pumpkin pie if you are willing to buy an entire pumpkin and pulverize its insides, but with eleven people to feed during my first time ever cooking Thanksgiving Dinner, I was not about to try. In the end, I resolved on the following menu: candied almonds, turkey, mashed potatoes, cornbread, green beans, and stuffing.
Thanksgiving Day I came home from school around two o’clock and ate a feverish lunch while my housemates ate their usual three-course meal, unaware that 3,000 miles away millions of Americans were starving themselves in anticipation of the gourmandizing to come. What with the three courses and then washing-up I was not able to claim the kitchen until after four o’clock. And I did not stop cooking until nine o’clock. My housemates chipped in, chopping onions, mashing the potatoes, and dicing the celery. Their help was not the only Italian influence on the meal: For the stuffing I used Materan bread, the pride of the city. To roast the turkey and simmer the ingredients for stuffing I used olive oil. Later that evening, we would drink prosecco and eat a cake brought by one of my guests.
Halfway through the preparations, my family called, and we skyped for an hour, as all the while I crumbled the bread for the stuffing. My dad tormented me with descriptions of the chocolate walnut pie that my sister had made. And if I remember correctly, there was also the traditional pumpkin cheesecake in the offing. Readers, you don’t know what I suffer at the thought of that pumpkin cheesecake.
By 9:30 all of the my guests had arrived. Eleven girls crammed around a table meant for seven. Because our plates were so small, I had to make another concession to Italian culture by serving Thanksgiving Dinner in courses, rather than serving each guest a plate loaded with turkey, stuffing, the works. Course one was turkey and stuffing. Course two was cornbread, mashed potatoes, and green beans. Afterwards we poured the bubbly, accompanied by the brindisi. At Italian celebrations, it is customary to deliver a toast of a rhyming couplet. As hostess, it was my lot the brindisi, though I gave it in English, the better to find rhyming words. I made the brindisi twice, once at the beginning of the meal, with the prosecco, and once with the spumante. I only remember the second toast: “Lauren-Claire does declare, this Thanksgiving was good to share.” Insomma.
We ate and chatted until after one o’clock. I don’t remember what happened to the dishes. (You all know how that most pressing question of the day, that political tension that begins to surface as the last piece of pumpkin pie is cut, the last napkin crumpled by the plate: who will do the washing up?) Perhaps my housemates and I washed the dishes the next afternoon, as the next morning I was due to teach la prima ora (at 8:15). At last, to a chorus of Auguri! Buon Ringraziamento! Buona notte! I accompanied my guests to the door, and I was left with the thought that Turkey Day was over and Turkey Week was not to follow. No Thanksgiving Dinner, round two. No turkey sandwiches. No turkey soup. Oh, well. Maybe Christmas would yield the entire turkey.
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