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Thursday, October 1, 2020

Italian American Heritage Month



Italian American Heritage Month

Some of my favorite memories revolve around my grandmother's kitchen. Family dinners seemed to be a weekly event for my grandparents and my great aunts and uncles. There was always pasta and meat sauce. Sauce is not proper sauce if it isn't made with neckbones; it also requires hard-boiled eggs and of course meatballs. Dinner would soon be followed by coffee and cake. If we were lucky, the dessert would have been brought by my Uncle Carl, who believed in mixing by hand, twice the amount a recipe would demand. A cloud of smoke would hang overhead, the conversation was lively, full of laughter, and interspersed with English and Italian. The hand gestures flew about wildly as the volume at the table would increase. The words "mangiare, mangiare, bella!" ("eat, eat, beautiful), were called out anytime I stopped chewing. For me, my Italian heritage is about family, food, good conversation, and laughter that was brought about by my Great Grandmother coming to America to start a new life.


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Explores the secrets of Italian-American cuisine with recipes for such dishes as veal parmigiana, baked cannelloni, lasagna, and pizza, as well as a variety of dishes that use authentic Italian ingredients and cooking techniques.




In this warm collection of personal essays and recipes, best-selling author Ann Hood nourishes both our bodies and our souls. From her Italian American childhood through singlehood, raising and feeding a growing family, divorce, and a new marriage to food writer Michael Ruhlman, Ann Hood has long appreciated the power of a good meal. Growing up, she tasted love in her grandmother's tomato sauce and dreamed of her mother's special-occasion Fancy Lady Sandwiches. Later, the kitchen became the heart of Hood's own home. She cooked pork roast to warm her first apartment, used two cups of dried basil for her first attempt at making pesto, taught her children how to make their favorite potatoes, found hope in her daughter's omelet after a divorce, and fell in love again--with both her husband and his foolproof chicken stock. Hood tracks her lifelong journey in the kitchen with twenty-seven heartfelt essays, each accompanied by a recipe (or a few). In "Carbonara Quest," searching for the perfect spaghetti helped her cope with lonely nights as a flight attendant. In the award-winning essay "The Golden Silver Palate," she recounts the history of her fail-safe dinner party recipe for Chicken Marbella--and how it did fail her when she was falling in love. Hood's simple, comforting recipes also include her mother's famous meatballs, hearty Italian Beef Stew, classic Indiana Fried Chicken, the perfect grilled cheese, and a deliciously summery peach pie. With Hood's signature humor and tenderness, Kitchen Yarns spills tales of loss and starting from scratch, family love and feasts with friends, and how the perfect meal is one that tastes like home.



From an impoverished upbringing in an Italian city that came under Tito's rule and two years in a refugee camp with her family to restaurant work in New York as a teenager, 13 cookbooks, and an Emmy Award for Lidia's Kitchen-here's Italian cuisine queen Bastianich's story for the first time. With a seven-city tour.



"The New York Times" restaurant critic's heartbreaking and hilarious account of how he learned to love food just enough
Frank Bruni was born round. Round as in stout, chubby, and always hungry. His relationship with eating was difficult and his struggle with it began early. When named the restaurant critic for "The New York Times" in 2004, he knew he would be performing one of the most-watched tasks in the epicurean universe. And with food his friend and enemy both, his jitters focused primarily on whether he'd finally made some sense of that relationship. A captivating story of his unpredictable journalistic odyssey as well as his lifelong love-hate affair with food, "Born Round" will speak to everyone who's ever had to rein in an appetite to avoid letting out a waistband.



She's the iconic leader who puts Donald Trump in his place, the woman with the toughness to take on a lawless president and defend American democracy. Ever since the Democrats took back the House in the 2018 midterm elections, Nancy Pelosi has led the opposition with strategic mastery and inimitable elan. It's a remarkable comeback for the veteran politician who for years was demonized by the right and taken for granted by many in her own party--even though, as speaker under President Barack Obama, she deserves much of the credit for epochal liberal accomplishments from universal access to health care to saving the US economy from collapse, from reforming Wall Street to allowing gay people to serve openly in the military. How did an Italian grandmother in four-inch heels become the greatest legislator since LBJ? Ball's nuanced, page-turning portrait takes readers inside the life and times of this historic and underappreciated figure. Based on exclusive interviews with the Speaker and deep background reporting, Ball shows Pelosi through a thoroughly modern lens to explain how this extraordinary woman has met her moment.



This novel tells the story of Josephine Rimaldi - her joys, sorrows, and passions, spanning more than seven decades. The book begins in turn-of-the-century Italy, when fourteen-year-old Josephine, sheltered and naive, is forced into an arranged marriage to a man she doesn't know or love who is about to depart for America, where she later joins him. Bound by tradition, Josephine gives birth to seven children. The last, Valentina, is conceived in passion, born in secret, and given up for adoption. Josephine spends the rest of her life searching for her lost child, keeping her secret even as her other children go off to war, get married, and make their own mistakes.--Publisher description.



In his acclaimed novels of Italian-American life, Peter Pezzelli explores themes of friendship, hope, and second chances. With Villa Mirabella, he invites readers into the lives of an unforgettable family--and into the warmth of one very special bed and breakfast. . .



It's 1949 in south Philadelphia. Diligent, hard-working, and proud, the Palazzinis have built a solid life for themselves and their three sons. Now that World War II is over, their sons, each one a decorated veteran, have returned home to the family cab company, to rejoin their world as it was before they left. But their future and fortunes are forever changed by a telegram, and the nephew who delivers it.



Soho Press associate publisher Grames offers a richly imagined debut novel drawing on her grandmother's history. Beautiful, smart, and unyielding, Stella Fortuna grows up in a mountain village in early 20th-century Italy, suspected of being cursed and castigated by her father for not bending to patriarchal expectations. The family immigrates to America before World War II, and Stella continues protecting not-as-sharp little sister Tina, with their estrangement in old age framing the narrative. With a 200,000-copy first printing and a seven-city tour.



While traveling in 1883 with her Italian American family (including a meddlesome little sister) and other immigrant pioneers to a utopian community in Idaho, fourteen-year-old Teresa keeps a diary of her experiences along the way.



Experience la dolce vita in extraordinary programs first seen on public television. Italian Americans celebrate the culture, traditions, amore, flair, and passion for life shared by these colorful people. With Luciano Pavarotti, Joe Mantegna, Stanley Tucci, Geraldine Ferraro, and more.

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