What was your family food culture when you were growing up? I grew up in a predominantly Italian Family. My mother is Sicilian and father is Hungarian. Most of my Hungarian relatives are still in Hungary, but all my Sicilian grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins all live here in Vancouver Canada. None of us are more than a 1/2 hour drive away now.and when I was younger, everybody lived within blocks of each other. Almost all events (Christmas, Easter, New Years, Birthdays, etc.) were always celebrated together and always involved food. My mom worked and so Grandma was the babysitter until I was about 12 years old. I remember watching her making fresh pasta and bread and sometimes got to help out turning the handle on the pasta machine. Sometimes I got to help grind the pork through the meat grinder for sausage. Then there were the cannolis. She fills them with a pudding like cream rather than ricotta and were a big hit with the other Italian families in the neighbourhood. Making shells for cannolis was usually a large production, with my mom and aunts helping out as they would make several months worth of shells to store for use whenever the occassion presented itself. Often when my grandmother would make something like fresh pasta or cannolis, she would send me off to deliver some to the other Italian ladies who in turn would send me back to Grandma with some of their homemade specialties. Was meal time important? Mealtime at our house was extremely important and everybody ate together at home, at the atble and no TV. Also, the whole family (uncles, aunts and cousins) would get together at grandma's house at least twice a week for dinner. Was cooking important? Even though my mom worked, she did as much cooking as possible and made all the same recipes my grandma did, however she didn't have time to make bread and pasta from scratch. She also ventured outside of the italian menu and cooked other cuisines as well. What were the penalties for putting elbows on the table? We were taught more about respecting the food and not wasting it over proper etiquette and refined behaviour, however basic manners were always expected. Who cooked in the family? Mom always cooked at home and I would occassionaly help. Mom and I were always interested in good food and making it. Dad knew nothing about good food - he didn't care and would eat just about anything. At grandma's house, grandma did most of the cooking and the aunts all helped. Grandpa worked the grill in the summertime. My uncle would usually make the sausages and smoked salmon for the whole family. Were restaurant meals common, or for special occassions? Restaurants were not common growing up - grandpa would always say "Why do you want to go to a restaurant for when the best cook and the best food in the world are right here in front of you" - except with a very thick italian accent. The one exception was chinese food - everyone loved chinese food and we would sometimes go out or have it delivered. My mom was a little more westernized and liked going out for a nice meal once in a while. We liked going out for steak and crab. Whenever we ate something we really enjoyed at a restaurant, I would ask my mom to replicate it at home. She usually did it quite successfully. Did children have a "kiddy table" when guests were over? We had a kiddy table out of necessity, as more and more cousins appeared, we ran out of room at the main table. Sometimes at Christmas time (when family friends were invited as well) there would be over 25 people at my grandparents house for dinner. When did you get that first sip of wine? My first sip of wine was pobably at about 5 years old - cut with some 7-Up. I loved watching grandpa make the wine down in the basement. Every year, he would get what I think was about 100 boxes of grapes delivered from California and then crush them in their press. The back yard was filled with boxes of grapes and bins of discarded stems and pulp. They had 3 huge barrels in the basement and dozens of jugs and they would provide the supply of wine for my aunts and uncles as well give some away at Christams as gifts for the mailman and garbage men. Grandma would then make red wine vinegar out of some of it. They don't make wine anymore as they are getting to old now and only one of my uncles has kept it up but to a much lesser degree. Was there a pre-meal prayer? No. Was there a rotating menu (e.g., meatloaf every No set menu. Dinner was usually based on what was fresh at the market. However, as my mom became busier and busier she spent less time shopping for ingredients the way my grandparents did (market, butcher, bakery, deli) and just bought things at the big supermarket. How much of your family culture is being replicated in your present-day family life? Its funny that as a kid I would sometimes be embarassed about my culture and food. I would show up to school with a sandwich my grandma made and it would be on a big crusty bun and have mordatella, proscuitto and provolone and would smell different and look different than everyone else's pb+J or packaged ham and processed cheeses. My friends would wonder what I was eating and think it was strange. They would come over to my grandparents' house and see grandpa "burning" peppers on the grill thinking we were bad cooks or see dried meat hanging from string in my grandparents basement and think we were insane for not keeping our food in a fridge. Every summer my uncle would hook up a trailer and drive 4 hours away to get a load of red peppers and tomatos from the Okanogan Valley in the interior of BC, where some of our best produce comes from, so the family could prepare our roasted peppers and crushed tomatos for canning. I always loved our food but most of my friends were growing up on WonderBread and frozen dinners so it seemed alien to them. Now I look back and wish I hadn't been embarassed by it all and should have been asproud of it as I am now. I don't know who said it, by I read or heard somewhere an italian american chef saying that all those who gave my family strange looks then are now paying me top dollar for the food they once thought weird. I thought what a coincidence, because now my friends all love when I cook Italian or introduce them to foods they have never tried before like fennel, radichio, gnocchi, cannoli, aged provolone, ricotta, roasted peppers. For a long time I never really though about my heritage much, but in the last few years I have made an effort to not lose a lot of the traditions - mostly the food. I do almost all the cooking at home (and my wife couldn't be happier about that - she would rather clean up), we eat together almost every night (sometimes its not possible due to work schedules), and I am slowly acquiring my granmother's recipes - or at least trying to convert her descriptions of " a little of this and little of that" into a basic blueprint for the dishes and executing them pretty closely to hers. I try not to "one stop shop" at the supermarket and as much as possible spend time picking the best from the produce market, butcher, etc. And I am hoping to go back to visit Sicily again soon.
