Italian people love the kitchen. It’s a past time engrained in our blood. It’s my personal (biased) opinion that our food is the best tasting out there. I mean let’s look at the facts: pasta, pizza, and cannolis. I don’t really think anything else needs to be said. Those are easily the Top 3* greatest foods in the history of world (*Not factually based in the slightest). However, the kitchen is more than a place to mix up any ingredients you have lying around. What I have observed in my years of spending time in Italian-American kitchens, is that the kitchen is everything to us.
Growing up, my family would take a trip every summer to visit my mother’s family in Glen Cove, New York. It’s a small town on Long Island that is very strong in Italian heritage. I have many fond memories of those trips most of which have the common thread of everyone packing in to my Great-Aunt Pauline’s kitchen. We would gather around the old parquet table that somehow used to fit 15 to 20 people in the most uncomfortable-comfortable way’s one only feels when they’re with their families. Jokes and laughs would fly about the room landing only when our mouths weren’t stuffed with the most incredible food my Uncle Joe or Aunt Concetta had whipped up that day.
Sure, my Great-Aunt and Uncle had plenty of other rooms to sit in. Rooms that were more spacious and cooler (once the oven got going the place would heat up like a cast-iron toilet in the middle of the Sahara Desert) but the kitchen was our place. We’d be up every morning by 8:30 or 9 am for breakfast and there would always be a few people shooting ideas and old memories around while somebody else was whipping together whatever leftover we had from the night before up into a stromboli or soup of some kind. Even when we would go out, our social engagement’s would revolve around all of us working in a make shift kitchen.
The St. Rocco’s Feast was the one time of summer I looked forward to every year. Hallowed as “The Best Feast in the East,” the festival was held every summer in the parking lot of the Catholic Church that my mother’s family went to. My Great-Uncle Angelo’s father was one of the men that help construct the cathedral in the 1934 and the Capobianco family remained a staple of in the church’s congregation for decade’s following the church’s inception. Anyways, the biggest food stand at the Feast was the sausage, peppers, and onions (SPO) sandwich booth. During the time we visited, my Uncle Joe ran the SPO stand and he made sure the whole family was involved even the young kids like my cousins, my sister, and me. The stand was always a huge success and it was just like sitting around the table back at the house which was only a short walk away.
Back at home, my house was set up so that the dining room and kitchen were combined. In some ways, it reminded me a lot of the kitchen in Glen Cove only with less people and a bit smaller. I can’t even begin to tell you all the thoughts and lessons that were passed along to me in that 25 by 8 foot room. We kept all the band-aids and medicines in a cabinet next to the fridge. Anytime we got hurt playing outside (which was at least 2 or 3 times a weekend) Gracie and I would find ourselves sitting up on the counter getting bandaged up and told about what we should to avoid getting in that situation again (or more than likely, Dad would laugh at us and Mom would tell us to “suck it up and take some Motrin”).
The kitchen has always been my favorite room in any house I go to. Food is a huge part of that reason but it’s also because of the way I grew up. As the years have passed and family members with them, I am left with the memories of what was. Holes will always exist when we all get together but somehow the table still is not empty. Every chair is filled with family. The laughs still soar through the hair riding the waves of the smell of whatever has been thrown in the pot that evening. We all gather around the table and enjoy each other’s company in the kitchen because it was the room where it all happened.
