“Mangia!!! C’mon, Eat Something!”
My mother had a saying, “His eyes are bigger than his stomach.” This was directed at people who loaded their plates but left the dish full, a criticism usually aimed at ravenous politicians as well as gluttonous diners. When I mentally return to my boyhood holidays, my nostalgia is often “bigger than my stomach.” Or so I think. When I become objective again, I realize that Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year’s Day and any other celebratory event at the Maltese household was always accompanied by enough food to satisfy a hungry army on the march.
My mother and her sister, my kind and loving Aunt Marge, would collaborate on planning the table. Today some people complain that guests for dinner are finicky about their diet, and hosts have to take into account what their guests want to eat. “Matilda is a tuber vegetarian, only eats turnips. And Maurice is on a Jurassic diet, only eats swamp weed and dinosaur eggs.” What is new about that? Mom and Aunt Marge….
“So, Marge, for Christmas dinner who makes what?”
“Bobby likes the mushrooms fried in olive oil and garlic. I’ll make that.”
“Should we have lasagna or pasta?”
“Jimmy likes lasagna with ricotta and sausage.”
“And Ray likes pasta, with meatballs and maybe sausage.”
“Right. We’ll make both. I’ll do those dishes.”
And so the planning went. Every sitter at the table would have his or her dish available. Watching Mom and Aunt Marge cook was equivalent to watching an Indy 500 pit team collaborate. “Marge, I need the whattayacallit.” “Okay, Lee, I’ll go down the basement and get it.” Somehow my aunt knew what the whattayacallit was.
My younger brother Jimmy and I would be interrupted in our playing with our new Christmas toys and told to get dressed and help with the cleanup before our relatives arrived for the 2 PM repast. My aunts and uncles and cousins would shake the dusting of snow off their coats and before they sat down my mother would be asking them, “Want something to eat before dinner? Olives, salami, cheese? I can make you a quick sandwich.” Most would refuse, but there were one or two takers. “Maybe a small sandwich, prosciutto…and some provolone? A few pimentos on top? Thanks.”
While the adults chatted about the state of health and relationship difficulties of all relatives and friends not present, I shared my toys with my cousins or we just reenacted Dick Tracy, detective nonpareil, or Davy Crockett at the Alamo. In a short time, the Italian dinner bell sounded. “C’mon, everybody sit down. Time to eat. Mangia! Eat!”
A small digression. When my soon-to-be-engaged-to-me girlfriend Polley came to my house (and our dinner table) for the first time, it was Midwestern Anglo-Saxon face to face with Eastern Italian. She, of course, wanted to make a good impression on my parents. My father started her off with a tumbler of Italian red poured from a jug. My mother then slid a five inch by five inch slab of thick layered lasagna on her plate. Now what Polley did NOT know was that the ten pound hunk of lasagna that filled her up was an Italian hors d’oeuvre. She was shocked to realize that the main meal was still to come. In front of her appeared stuffed roast beef, baked potato, sausage with onions, steamed broccoli drizzled with olive oil, roasted chicken, salad, and, for this special occasion, cannolis and bubba rum pastries. As Polley worked her way through each dish, my father replenished her tumbler with vino red. A short while later I looked at her flushed face as she asked, “I am really sleepy. Mind if I lie down for a few minutes?”
As Polley recovered lying down on our living room couch, I asked my parents what they thought of her. My mother smiled, no words necessary. My father nodded his head, a good sign, then paused, shrugged and said, “But, girl can’t hold her liquor.”
So as the guests sat down at our holiday dinner, they all started off with lasagna or linguini with meatballs and from there they had to make choices: baked chicken with roasted potatoes, roast beef stuffed with garlic and parsley, eggplant parmesan, cauliflower with oregano, ham with scalloped potatoes, mushrooms sautéed in butter and garlic, sausage and onions, minestrone soup with little meatballs, braciole sitting atop rigatoni, mashed potatoes with gravy, sauteed broccoli rabe, all followed by a big bowl of ensalad (Italian dressing—oil and vinegar). And whatever they chose to eat was washed down with Hearty Burgundy. Dishes just kept on coming out. My mother and Aunt Marge who sit down for a total two minutes, are admonishing everyone to “Mangia. Eat. You are skin and bones. Have some more pasta…No? How about more roast beef? No? Sausage and Onions?” We are all yelling back, “Sit down. Eat. We have enough food. Come on. Sit down! You have to eat, too.” This dialogue is the only conversation for the entire two hour meal.
When the serving plates are half empty, the men sit back, unbuckle their belts, and stare at the ceiling. My Uncle Ray tilts his head back until it touches the chair rest. “I ate too much.” My father grips his chair’s armrest and adds, “Me, too. Should have saved some room for dessert.”
Uncle Ray would tease my mother. “Eh, Sister-in-Law, why did you make so much food? Jesus fed thousands of people with five loaves of bread and two fish.” My mother retorted, “Yes, but did everyone have enough? And what! No pasta?” If my mother and Aunt Marge were there, the five thousand faithful would have feasted on a great deal more than a few rolls and a couple of pieces of baccala.
In an hour or so, the snoozers have aroused from their digestive mini-naps, dishes have been put away, leftovers stored in saved empty Polly-O ricotta containers, the table cleared for dessert. Rather, desserts. Once again the tablecloth is hidden by plates now filled with cannolis, babba rum cakes, sfogliatelles, pizzelles and panatone, almond cookies, spumoni ice cream, and zeppoles—-all accompanied by demitasse coffee spiked with anisette. The young ones eat their desserts with White Rock Cream Soda. This is the time for true conversation concerning politics, the state of the world, the local athletic teams, and, most importantly, what dishes should be served at the next holiday event.
After dessert, most guests leave, citing the long ride home to Long Island or the Bronx or middle New Jersey, the trip inhibited by stomachs rubbing the steering wheel and night vision hampered by one cannoli too many.
After dessert cleanup the holiday celebrators have shrunk to my Aunt Marge and Uncle Ray, perhaps their sons Vicky, Artie, and Bobby, and my brother Jimmy and me. Time for a few games of Pokeno!!! When the joy of Pokeno dims, and the winner pockets forty cents, the adults reach into their pockets while the kids break out their stockings filled with pennies. Poker hands are dealt and played. In a few hours the losing player is down 86 cents. Usually it is the winning player, ahead 52 cents, who asks, “Any of that sausage and onions left?” This is the signal for leftovers to be reheated, new dishes made, and the poker table becomes crowded with fried mushrooms, pulpo salad (octopus), sausage and onions, and almond cookies—along with leftover ham, roast beef and chicken.
Not too long after midnight the stomachs of the poker players/diners have drugged their owners into calling it a night so their bodies could spend the next week digesting the food. The leftovers will be consumed over time.
After Polley and I married, a visit to my mother’s ended with her stuffing brown shopping bags with steaks and chickens and roast beefs and “gravy” (pasta sauce) and whatever else she thought we would like. “Mom,” I would protest to no avail, “we have a small refrigerator in the apartment. We can’t fit all that stuff!” The packing of bags continued. At first Polley took this action as a slight, as some lack of confidence in her ability to stock the larder.
What we both learned was a common cultural concept typical of Italian American families but one that other cultures share as well. When I taught The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, one of the major themes I hoped my students would grasp was “The less people have, the more willing they are to share, while the extremely wealthy (the owners of the farms) are less likely to share, to form a bond with humanity.” In my family, food was one of the currencies of love. When my mother created a couple of gallons of fabulous spaghetti sauce, she would sing to it. “Son, it must be made from love…otherwise, it won’t come good.”
When Aunt Marge and my mother planned and cooked a feast, they were not only providing delicious nourishment. They were giving of themselves. As we all sit down at the table this holiday season, it might be wise, and just plain nice, to duly recognize those gifts.