Sunday Lunches

I was watching the “Food” network and saw a new show called “Kitchen Boss” which is hosted by Buddy Valastro from “Cake Boss”. He spends the half hour cooking homemade Italian feasts. He had his cousin on as a guest and they were reminiscing about Sunday lunches at their Grandmothers. They were talking about how good the food was and how many people used to fit in their Grandmothers basement.

My family was blessed to share this wonderful experience as well. So I thought I would share with you how our family spent every single Sunday of our lives in my Nonna’s basement eating, yelling, exchanging stories and enjoying every moment.

My Nonna lived in a small war time home. She and my grandfather raised 6 boys in that little house with 2 bedrooms and just one bathroom. Amazing eh?

The door was always open at Nonna’s house. So when you arrived you just opened up the door and walked right in. My Nonna would yell out “Avanti” come in! And the more the merrier! My Nonna would never turn away anyone from her table. The neighbours stopped by, the priest stopped by and sometimes friends stopped by. Everyone was given a plate full of food to enjoy.

The house always smelt divine when you walked in! Whoever arrived first would go down to the basement and set the table. The table was a huge slab of wood that my Nonnu had made by attaching legs to, that was nudged up against an old kitchen table, in order for it to be long enough for all of us to sit together at. With 6 sons, who were all married and all had kids, there would be give or take, 27 of us elbow to elbow each Sunday.

Every Sunday my Nonna cooked greens of some sort. Sometimes broccoli with lemon, sometimes peas and mushrooms, sometimes beans with vinegar & garlic and sometime escarole or dandelions. There was always pasta and sometimes as a treat we’d have lasagna or manicotti. Some Sundays we had calamari that my Nonna fried to perfection or we had eggplant parm or even occasionally snails! After we ate our pasta we then had veal cutlets and salad with homemade wine vinegar & oil. Dinner was always finished off with fruit, anise and sometimes a dessert if one of my Aunts were in a baking mood. Oh and don’t forget the espresso with a shot of anisette liqueur.

After lunch the girls would head upstairs to wash dishes and get the dessert ready while the men would stay down stairs and play cards.

If my Nonna was the pro in the kitchen, then my Nonnu was the pro in the cantina. That is where his home made wine was stored. He loved to make wine and to be honest, he loved to have a glass or two! ( I type this smiling to myself) So each Sunday before the meal was served you would find Nonnu in the cantina filling up bottles of wine for the table. Wine was very much a part of each Sunday meal and we were all welcome to try some and enjoy a glass with our dinner. For us wimpy drinkers, we all added some sprite to it, and it was delicious!

The noise level at the table was quite loud. Most new comers to the table would be astounded at the level of noise and think that it was odd we were all yelling at one another. But honestly we weren’t yelling in anger, we were yelling in order to be heard over the other conversations going at the table. The conversations each Sunday were loud and fun and sometimes serious. They ranged from politics to daily events to work issues to last nights Toronto Maple Leafs loss to what was going on in school to Michael Jackson news (that was a hot Sunday topic during his trial and got one of my Uncles really riled up. Ha ha!). There was no topic left un-discussed. Sometimes there were heated conversations between family members, but at the end of the day everyone always agreed to disagree and kissed each other goodbye until the next Sunday.

If you could look in the window at us all sitting down there at that long table, elbow to elbow, you would have seen the biggest smiles on my Grandparents faces. They lived for Sundays. They lived for their family. They loved all of us unconditionally and taught us how to love the people we are blessed to have in our lives unconditionally.

My Nonnu passed away 10 years ago and my Nonna 5 years ago. They are greatly missed by our family every day. They were the glue that kept us together. But they taught us how to carry on with the traditions we all loved. All of us can make a mean pot of sauce or one of my Nonna’s other famous dishes. All of us can throw a dinner party like no other. All of us welcome family and friends to our homes and most importantly all of us love each other very much!

Salute !