I know, I know. I just can't help it.... But when we vacation in the summer, there's just NOTHING like a well cooked burger (marinaded in teryaki all day long), all juicy and fat, topped with some good cheese (my dad still uses provolone), avacado, green chilis, ketchup & mustard, lettuce, a little red onion.... a big fat Colombo bun.... (can you hear Homer drooling?)
So Nikki asked me to pick my one favorite and I picked "mangia cake " food (mixed italian/english slang for whiteys, translated means cake eaters, I never understood it). Shoot me. I'd go nuts if all I ever ate was pasta. Pasta on Sunday, pasta on Monday. Pasta, pasta, pasta. My mom (honkie) couldn't cook, so my dad did a lot of the cooking. Pasta, pasta, pasta. Once in a while he'd get exciting and do rigatoni instead of spaghetti. Whoopeeeeeee! He liked it, and didn't care to spend time cooking anything else. I'm just glad he does my grandfather's sauce, 'cause my grandmother's is pretty bland (I'm going to hell for that). No Canolli. No Alfredo sauce (cause that's only for those damn northerners). No Pizza, just pasta, pasta, pasta. And when my grandmother comes to visit, she cooks pasta, pasta, pasta. Can she cook other things? Sure. Will she? No, because when she asks my dad what he wants her to cook, he says "Pasta, pasta pasta". They were dirt poor when he was young, so they didn't get anything fancy. pasta was, and is, good 'nuff for him.
I thought that was all Italians ate, and that other stuff on the menu was just for honkies. Until I visited my Zia Donna, that is. Oh man, there's so much to eat there!!! I was in heaven. I sat down at the kitchen table when we got to her house (the first time I had visited ever because they live in another country), and she had meatballs waiting for me. It was 11pm, and she had meatballs hot, waiting for me. I ate a few, and she asked me if I'd like her to cook me something, I was full already, & politely declined. Then my cousin Matthew gets home from work, and he sits down, and she starts cooking for him! It was crazy! She never stopped cooking. For two weeks! Pizza, sausage that my Zio Ferruccio cured last summer, chicken parmigiana, eggplant parmagiana, bistecca, alfredo sauce (Ferruccio is one of those damn northerners). Table wine from the cantina that Zio Ferruccio made last fall kept flowing. I was drunk and stuffed for two weeks strait.
So please, let me have my hamburger. It's my final wish. I can hear them warming up "the chair", and I'd like to finish my burger before the chaplain arrives.;)
Sorry, Nikki, it's almost lunchtime and I couldn't stop.