Growing up Italian means a lot of different things – for the most part it meant spending time with family, including aunts, uncles and cousins either making food or eating it at birthdays, picnics, one another’s homes, the beach, farms/orchards or any other place we could get together.
It’s a very passionate, rich, and expressive culture whose loud nature is sometimes mistaken for anger.
Lisa Calce, Marco Romano, Natalie Colecchia (Communication Services) and Giancarlo Cristiano (Social Services) discussed the Italian experience. These notes don’t capture all that it means to be Italian, but then again, how do you capture an entire culture on just two pages?
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- Eros Ramazzotti; Toto Cutugno; Umberto Tozzi;
- Ti Amo at every wedding/party with a DJ (Funky Joe)
- Bocce; Tombola; Briscola; Scopa
- German shepherds named “Lupo”
- Dandelions picked and eaten as vegetables (leaves, not the yellow part)
- Relatives in Montreal and New York
- Wearing black while mourning
- Speaking loudly
- Italian school on Saturdays
- Making salami, sausages, prosciutto
- Zeppole; tiramisu; panettone; biscotti
- Espresso; Canadian coffee (all other coffee that isn’t espresso)
- Castagne (chestnuts/nuts); lupine beans with olives and taralle as munchies for visitors
- Toastbread – “Wonderbread”…used for toast only
- “Shut the lights;” “open the lights”
- Wine; grapes growing in backyard
- Canning tomatoes, peppers and almost every other fruit or vegetable which often came from the backyard or a trip to the farm
- Fresh homemade pasta and pizza (the “white” kind of pizza and with spinach)
- Pontiac/Buick
- Religious holidays/saints (often held picnics in their honour)
- Fresh “hanging in your cantina (cellar)” goats, chickens and rabbits
- Ordering pop from the Mio truck
- Hockey sticks used as support for tomato plants
- First Communion, Confirmation; elaborate Weddings
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