Ten (and a half) years of blogging

It's come to my attention recently that I missed the 10 year anniversary of this blog. So much for the resolution to keep it updated with original content and being strict about sticking to a publishing schedule after a 2-year slump!

On January 24, 2009 I published my first post. It's been a decade of huge change and I feel I owe much of that life overhaul to this blog, Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino.

Why I began a blog about Italian food and lifestyle

I started this blog because I felt I owed it to my son. He was going to grow up in a single-parent family with an Italian mom, the least I could do was keep a record of all the great dishes my nonna and my mother made for me (both women raised their daughters as single moms).
After starting, and becoming obsessively consistent with my blog writing, I soon understood that the recipes were a bonus, what readers were most interested in were the personal stories, the intimate reflections, the journal entries.
I was mildly intimidated by the technology and, as I expanded my professional engagements, worried about the time sink. But I felt the urge to write, it was––in a moment of deep professional change––the best therapy I could ask for.

My first post was how a bowl of Minestrone saved my psyche after a demanding rainy Sunday. For the first two years, I blogged twice to three times a week and had a blast. I wrote mostly posts that revolved around the sensorial or emotional allure a certain dish or food gave me, these posts almost always ended with a recipe. Later I slowed down to one blog post per week, then I started linking to blog posts and articles published on other platforms, like The American and Casa Mia. Now I'm down to two posts per month. If any.

From that very first entry, to the present, I have written 470 posts. Some were hugely popular, others nobody read. Some I changed the title to (but still kept the crazy URL), and some I've removed altogether. Overall, the engagement––that initially skyrocketed over the course of only a few months, and that has somewhat endured despite my hiccupping entries––has been mind blowing.

The posts my readers loved the most on Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino were:

• Carbonara recipe (48 comments, 5,839 page views)
• Ossa dei Morti recipe (45 comments, 6,221 page views)
• Arrosticini (40 comments, 8,046 page views)
• Gluten-free Rome (35 comments, 55,422 page views)
• Italian fish and seafood names, translated (35 comments, with whopping 107,669 page views)
• Italian superstition (33 comments, 23,229 page views)
• Parmigiana di Melanzane recipe (30 comments, 27,540 page views)
• Gnocchi from scratch recipe (30 comments, 10,673 page views)
• La pasta! (29 comments, 54,661 page views)
• Orecchiette alle cime di rapa recipe (28 comments, 36,112 page views)
• Frico, soft and brittle – recipe (13 comments, 21,118 page views)

If you look at the posts listed above, what's interesting, is how over time page views grew, compared to the number of comments, which intead slowly dwindled. In the past readers not only commented but many wrote long answers that resembled letters, or posts themselves. That's not counting spam comments, often in other languages, and linking to some form of product or service...
This was all happening before there were so many different social media outlets like Facebook where the comments turned into a virtual room where people opened conversations and sometimes actual debates.

Blogging's Changed

Life, new job opportunities, a growing child and a million other reasons account for why I slowed down my blogging, and thus engagement. But I feel I should also take into account the fact that blogging, in itself, has changed.

Now with Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Pinterest, it's our job to engage and grow our audience on all platforms, which personally is a big challenge. Podcasts and videos have also replaced the longform written word.

Many bloggers have assistants(often virtual) to help with posting, photography and video, content development, answering emails, newsletter compiling and other chores. But for most food and lifestyle bloggers, it's still a single person hobby.

As for me, my ten (and a half) year-old blog about the Italian food and lifestyle continues to be a place where I love to engage with my readers. Thank you for joining me over the years! I'm grateful you're still here, even though I've not been consistent.

Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino is still my favorite way to communicate with you.

If you feel the same, please leave a comment letting me know what topics you'd like me to write about; what recipes you'd like to see here; and how you feel about blogging and blog-reading ten years after first landing on this site. I'd love to hear from you. Grazie!

I'm baaack!

Yes, I'm back. As some of you may have noticed, I have resumed regular posting. Something that hadn't happened in a while. A long while.

To celebrate the resuscitation of Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino, I'm happy to kick off a brand new post series (I love series, just like I love lists). I have yet to decide what to call it. For now, let's just say that the post you're reading replaces and outmaneuvers all previously published (and broken) apologetic "sorry-for-not-being-consistent-in-updating" posts.

Media is so visual these days. I feel I have dedicated way more time to my Instagram than I have to updating this blog. I owe my readers an apology. Especially those who have remained loyal and that have stayed on board. I'm obliged to explain what happened in these last few years. I need to account for my blog's disappearance from your feeds.

I'm doing this in pure Lola fashion––steadfast readers will remember Lola was my blog signature and nickname––spelling out the reasons for the "slump" in list form. For old time's sake.

Now that I'm back I hope you will resume your regular visits to my virtual kitchen, stop by for a chat, and uncork that good bottle of wine I have been saving for you. I will soon be remodeling the space, but the welcome will be the same warm, friendly one of when we left off a few years ago. You'll come back to the usual weekly family stories, recipes, lists and tips. In the meantime, please accept my apologies for having been away. Here's why:

1. I lost my office job one month before Christmas.

This threw me into a dark hole of despair. A single parent, no longer in my employable prime, jobless, no outlook in the forseeable future. The situation was un disastro. Yet, I picked myself up and left nothing behind of the dreadful year that was 2014. Several affirmations, and sleepless nights later, I managed to enter 2015 on a high. In hindsight, losing the job was the best thing to ever happen to me, because it left space for what the future had in store for me.

2. I became an entrepreneur.

In April 2015 I partnered in the launch of Casa Mia Italy Food and Wine, a cultural association that offers food, wine and cooking adventures in Rome, Florence, Sicily, Naples & Amalfi. Emilia-Romagna and Puglia may be new areas in development, but you did not hear it from me. In the months building up to, and following the launch, I quickly learned that running a business is no easy task. Obviously, I shifted most of my focus onto the newly inaugurated business, which made it impossible to maintain my old blogging habits.

3. I wrote and starred in a TV show.

In June 2015 I showed up to a meeting with Gambero Rosso, Italy’s number one food network, with a 1-page pitch for a show on cheese. At the end of the meeting my writing partner drew me back down to planet Earth, "We start filming next week." I don’t know exactly how it happened but on November 12^th the pilot aired, followed by 9 other episodes of Season 1. Which were then followed by Season 2 and now Season 3. I've been busy researching new topics and writing new shows, plus co-running the culinary travel business, updating the blog regularly became virtually impossible.

4. I cheated on my blog.

As the partner responsible for the social media and blogging end of the business, I began crunching multiple food and travel blog entries for the Casa Mia Italy Food & Wine blog, as well as for The American in Italian Magazine, a collaboration that first started in 2010. You loyal readers know this because most of the posts published on this blog in 2016 and 2017 were blurbs linking back to the magazine. Again, I apologize for that.

5. My Dad flew away.

It was October 23^rd when at 5 am I received the telephone call I have been dreading my entire adult life. It was my Dad’s wife, Terry, telling me to get on a plane and get over to California asap. "Your Dad's in the hospital. Hurry." I left that same morning from Fiumicino airport with a handbag containing only €45, my passport, a pack of tissues and lip balm. I spent the last days of my father’s life holding his hand, whispering things left unsaid, reassuring him of all my love, and watching him fade away. I flew back to Rome on November 3^rd, knowing that was going to be the last time I'd see him. He closed his eyes and flew away November 19^th, 2017. I wrote a farewell post dedicated to him and not much else since.

6. I traveled.

My siblings and I came together in California at the end of August for the interment of my father's ashes and to celebrate his life. It took each of us varying amounts of time to process, mourn, accept and resume regular breathing after his passing. I packed 2 small carry-ons, one for me, and the other for my 12-year old son. We boarded a direct flight from Rome and 13 hours later the cabin poured what was left of our limp bodies on the tarmac at LAX International. I will describe the adventures that followed in a special dedicated post; one that will be part of another new "travel" series. You know how much I like those.

And then there was cheese

I think an apology is in order.

I update this blog irregularly.

The occasional posts I have been publishing are for the most part links to other sites to which I have contributed my writing.

It's not that I've been lazy, though.

Designing, developing and leading food, wine and cooking adventures in Rome, Florence, Sicily Naples & Amalfi for Casa Mia Italy Food & Wine, the company I co-founded, has definitely kept me busy.

And then there was cheese.

Another reason for not being consistent with blogging is that I've been all over Italy filming a cheese show called ABCheese. I wrote a few posts on this topic and an article for my column on The American. The show airs on Italian cable TV, with plans to hopefully sell internationally soon. I will keep you posted when that happens.

In the meantime, if you're interested in learning what the show is about, and watch me make silly faces when I taste amazing Italian cheese, you can click on the link to enjoy episode 1 of season 1 (uploaded in Italian with no subtitles).

Buona visione!

Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino nominated Best Food Blog!

I knew it was the flu coming. Those initial aching symptoms, head, bones, eyelids... everything starts aching. It was past the day of my blog's 6th birthday and I couldn't find the energy or desire to celebrate. That gloomy morning, all I wanted to do was just lay in bed, and feel very sorry for myself.

Lazily checking my blog reader I chanced upon the Italy Magazine Annual Blog Awards post, and eager to find out this year's fortunate nominees, I clicked through to the shortlist.

My heart skipped a beat. And it wasn't the flu.

Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino has been nominated for Best Food Blog!

Yes, it has! If you've been reading this blog for the past 6 years, or have just arrived here, you need to know this is a very big deal for me. Blogging has changed my life, and Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino, a crazy long name with an impossible URL, is the butterfly cocoon.

Italy Magazine is a platform on all things Italian: food, lifestyle, language, culture, art, fashion, accommodation, travel and more. Every year the magazine gathers nominations for a number of categories honoring the best in food, travel, art & culture, fashion and living in Italy. My little food blog – started on the rainy night of January 24th, 2009 – is now in very good company, nominated along with 9 other great blogs in the running for Best 2014 Food Blog. I still can't believe it.

Want to help me win, and appropriately celebrate 6 years of happiness? If you're an Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino fan – PLEASE VOTE!

It takes a few seconds and there is no registering required, all you have to do is click on Vote for Best Food Blog under Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino, and you're done!

Here, I'll provide the link for you: http://www.italymagazine.com/blog-awards/2014?field_blog_category_tid=44499

I really appreciate your vote! If you think anyone else might like to vote for me too, it would be great to share the news with them ;-) Voting closes on February 27th, winners will be announced March 3rd.

And if I win, there will be pizza and bubbly for everyone ;)

Until then, GRAZIE and buon appetito!

On the Radio

If you'd like to hear me interviewed live on public Italian radio in a live episode of the intelligent food and wine appreciation show called Decanter, hosted by two very hot Italian men who love eating, drinking and rock music, you can download the podcast recorded live on January 29th.

4 years of blogging

This blog's birthday is coming up. Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino turns 4 years old on January 24th!

Thanks to blogging, and all that has happened since – and perhaps thanks to – that fortunate night when I wrote my first post, a lot has changed in my life. Through blogging and my activity on the social media, I have

• changed careers, transforming my graphic design and showbiz past into a sweet memory. Now I'm relying on a steady income, and doing exactly what I love: writing about food and life in Italy
• I have published 370 posts to date on AO+P alone, which gain a good average of daily pageviews (despite long periods of laziness)
• positively improved my life pattern, which now includes plenty of playtime
• as recipe tester and restaurant reviewer, I have upped my weight by several hundred pounds (working on reducing those figures)
• as a food docent, I take foodies around Rome on delicious walking tours of my city
• I have written scores of articles, guest posts and features on other websites other than my own
• I have a column on a great online magazine
• I was hired to write 2 guide books, and a travel handbook
• I have written 2 manuscripts, working on a third
• launched the Roma Every Day photoblog, the Forchettine blog and the Rome City Guide for Kids blog
• garnered 2950 followers on Twitter
• connected with 1400+ Facebook friends, and 7300 following my public updates
• I recently purchased a second hand DSLR camera and a smartphone, through which I am learning the rudiments of photography
• received press mentions on, and was interviewed by, some of Italy's major newspapers and international web platforms
• starred in a web series in which I interview celebrity chefs
• above all, I have built wonderful connections with hundreds of fellow bloggers, readers, fans and followers

I think I deserve to take the day off to celebrate. 

This will probably happen in the company of my son, the inspiring muse behind all my food and lifestyle writing. Had it not been for his extraordinary eating requests, and his extensive naps, I never would have started blogging in the first place. 

Barring rain, I will be spending Jan. 24 outdoors and then seated at a table, eating spaghetti aglio olio e peperoncino, as a tribute to the luck this long and unpronounceable recipe name has brought me. 

Although the best spaghetti AO+P are the ones made at home, in the old grubby frying pan with the good olive oil, young garlic and the chili peppers from Calabria, I won't be cooking it on this blog's birthday, though. When I say "day off" I mean it. I'll decide where to dine on perfectly slippery, spicy, garlicky spaghetti on the day, with only a lazy stroll between me and the eatery's doorstep.

There are good trattorie that occasionally make this dish, but since it is one of those homestyle fixes everyone knows how to prepare (even Italian men!), it's hardly ever a restaurant menu item. Good thing is no trattoria or other informal osteria will ever raise eyebrows if you ask for a plate of AO+P, they might not even charge you for it.

This is just a small list of places where I can usually score some good Spaghetti Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino in Rome. Feel free to add names.

• Da Lucia – Vicolo del Mattonato 2/B – Tel. 065803601 (Trasevere)  
• Da Giovanni – Via della Lungara, 41/A – Tel. 066861514 (Trastevere) 
• Da Francesco – Piazza del Fico, 29 – Tel. 066864009 (Navona) 
• Agustarello a Testaccio – Via G. Branca, 98/100 – Tel. 065746585 (Testaccio)
• Lo Scopettaro – Lungotevere Testaccio, 7 – Tel. 065757912 (Testaccio)  
• Da Roberto – Via della Magliana, 763 – Tel. 066550662 (Portuense)  
• Trattoria Ponte Mollo – Via Tor di Quinto, 11 – Tel. 063333608 (Flaminio)  
• Hostaria Da Edmondo – Circonvallazione Clodia, 90 – Tel. 063701272 (Prati)  
• Dar Pallaro – Largo del Pallaro, 13 – Tel. 0668801488 (Campo de' Fiori)  
• La Capanna – Piazza Dante, 23 – Tel. 06730369 (Esquilino)  
• Pommidoro – Piazza dei Sanniti, 44 – Tel. 064452692 (San Lorenzo)  
• Cul de Sac – Piazza Pasquino, 73 – Tel. 0668801094 (Navona)  
• Buccone – Via di Ripetta, 19 – Tel. 063612154 (Piazza del Popolo)  
• Armando al Pantheon – Salita dei Crescenzi, 31 – Tel. 0668803034 (Pantheon)
• Li Rioni a Santiquattro – Via Dei Santi Quattro, 24 – Tel. 0670450605 (Testaccio)
• Fontanella al 30 – Via del Pigneto, 30 – Tel. 0670613871 (Pigneto)
• Osteria La Quercia – Piazza della Quercia 23, – Tel. 068300932 (Campo de' Fiori)

Happy Birthday, Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino!

Again, apologies

I apologize.

This blog has been inactive for a ridiculous amount of time.

I found 25 unmoderated comments and have been receiving emails form friends who complain the lack of updates. That is unacceptable!

Work and my life have really taken a toll on my blog time, but that's no excuse, especially when on the reading end are folks like you who are so affectionate, loyal and actually interested in what I have to say!

Take Debbie, for example.

Not only has she been on one of my foodie walks, awarded me with a trophy, she also likes to send things in the mail. Last month we received a box full of goodies and happiness, photos, clothes and love.

And Jeff? He's a keeper. When he last visited Rome he brought me some of his state's specialties, a toy for my son and he treated us to lunch in one of my favorite places.

Cannot forget to mention Geli, Rosaria, Eddie, Jim and Lori, among the first to follow this blog from its very beginnings in 2009. They have been a constant source of compassion, love and sound advice. I'd also like to remember the friends that are no longer posting, but looking over us from heaven, Renee and Tessa, along with Brian and Moannie, and the other angels I've had the fortune of crossing paths with thanks to this blog.

There are many of you that I'd like to thank for hanging in there and always supporting this blog. You have to trust me, I'll keep posting – and I promise it'll be more often.

So, this is not goodbye, it's a loud and ebullient arrivederci!

I made the papers!

There was a lovely article about my food blogging in the Rome issue of Corriere della Sera this weekend. It talked a bit about my childhood, my family, how I came to blogging, and how my career has evolved out of film and into food writing. It was a very well written article, and condensed the friendly, hour-long chat I had with columnist Maria Egizia Fiaschetti, who penned the story.

Here is an online version of the printed article.
Definitely going into my book proposal package to publishers!

Disaster avoided

It's been one hot 24 hours here at Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino.

Kathy, a blogger friend, notified me that something weird was going on yesterday when she couldn't access my URL.

Sure enough when clicking on aglioolioepeperoncino.com this is what I'd be redirected to:

The scary screenshot that appears when a domain is expired

Panic.

I won't get into how Google and domain registrars work (mainly because I didn't even know what a domain registrar was four hours ago).

To make a scary story short, my aglioolioepeperoncino.com expired May 29th, despite having paid the automatic renewal on time.

As my darling friend and cyber-expert Sara informed me, "most domain expirations are not immediate, and the domain goes into a "grace period" where they can be easily renewed by the current owner before being released as available on the market again."

After a few heated emails, a teary phone conversation with an eNom operator, and lots of venomous tweets, I finally regained ownership of my website, my followers, my subscribers, my friends and fellow bloggers for whom I've had the honor of posting for the past 2 and a half years.

Thank you for your moral and technical support in this crisis.

Addio, 2010!

Farewell old 2010, I've had enough of you. So I'm glad to see you go.

You've been nothing but trouble and disappointment. Your 365 days gave us more wars and horrible renewed conflict in many countries, the earthquake in Haiti, the BP oil spill, floods in Pakistan, Europe's near-simultaneous debt crises, terrorist and drug traffic attacks, the eruption of Iceland's Eyafjallajokull volcano, the Polish air tragedy, WikiLeaks, and the departing of many dear friends. This is your legacy.

I maintained my resolutions, but you haven't. You promised great things, and none happened.

The only good obtained has been through hard work, sacrifice, stubborn optimism and pondered choices. All of which reside uniquely within ourselves. We've matured out of the difficulties that 2010 presented. On a personal level, the hardships of the past year allowed me to find my voice, and through its expression, I have grown. I don’t feel belittled, dear 2010, instead I feel stronger and more confident. So for that I thank your obstacles and bad turns, because through many of them I have been elevated, empowered and emancipated.

Tonight I will welcome 2011 with a smile, red knickers and lots of champagne. I will eat lentils (carriers of money) and 3 white grapes at midnight for good luck. I will toast to my family, the rock upon which all my steadiness stands. I will thank God for his love and constant attendance to my prayers. 

I will bid farewell to Tessa, Renee, Mario, Corso, Piero, Aldo, Pietro, Suso, Tiberio, Claude, Mario, Arthur, Tony, Sandra & Raimondo, Angelo, Furio, Tom, Lynn, Jill, Dino, Dennis and Blake and all the many others that left us during 2010. And I will shoot fireworks, hoping they might see them from heaven.


Addio, 2010...
Benvenuto 2011 !

A prayer for 2010

The new year begins.

I am borrowing the poem/prayer below and offering it to you as a sign of gratitude. As a gesture of love. As a symbol of where I am right now. My new year's resolution is to repeat this prayer and reap its deep beneficial effects. I hope you will too.

This is a perfect moment. It’s a perfect moment because I have been inspired to say a gigantic prayer. I’ve been roused to unleash a divinely greedy, apocalyptically healing prayer for each and every one of us—even those of us who ­don’t believe in the power of prayer.

And so I am starting to pray right now to the God of Gods, the God beyond all Gods... the Girlfriend of God... the Teacher of God... the Goddess who invented God.





DEAR GODDESS, you who always answer our very best questions, even if we ignore you:

Please be here with us right now. Come inside us with your sly slippery slaphappy mojo. Invade us with your silky succulent salty sweet haha.

Hear with our ears, Goddess. Breathe with our lungs. See through our eyes.


DEAR GODDESS, you who never kill but only change:

I pray that my exuberant, suave, and accidental words will move you to shower ferocious blessings down on everyone who reads or hears this benediction.

I pray that you will give us what we ­don’t even know we need—not just the boons we think we want, but everything we’ve always been afraid to even imagine or ask for.






DEAR GODDESS, you wealthy anarchist burning heaven to the ground:

Many of us don’t even know who we really are.

We’ve forgotten that our souls live forever.

We’re blind to the fact that every little move we make sends ripples through eternity. Some of us are even ignorant of how extravagant, relentless, and practical your love for us is.

Please wake us up to the shocking truths. Use your brash magic to help us see that we are completely different from we’ve been led to believe, and more exciting than we can possibly imagine.

Guide us to realize that we are all unwitting messiahs who are much too big and ancient to fit inside our personalities.


DEAR GODDESS, you sly universal virus with no fucking opinion:

Help us to be disciplined enough to go crazy in the name of creation, not destruction.

Teach us to know the distinction between oppressive self-­control and liberating self-control.

Awaken in us the power to do the half-­right thing when it is impossible to do the totally right thing.

And arouse the Wild Woman within us—even if we are men.



DEAR GODDESS, you who give us so much love and pain mixed together that our morality is always on the verge of collapsing:

I beg you to cast a boisterous love spell that will nullify all the dumb ideas, bad decisions, and nasty conditioning that have ever cursed all of us wise and sexy virtuosos.

Remove, banish, annihilate, and laugh into oblivion any jinx that has clung to us, no matter how long we have suffered from it, and even if we have become accustomed or addicted to its ugly companionship.

Conjure an aura of protection around us so that we will receive an early warning if we are ever about to act in such a way as to bring another hex or plague into our lives in the future.

DEAR GODDESS, you psychedelic mushroom cloud at the center of all our brains:

I pray that you will inspire us to kick our own asses with abandon and regularity.

Give us bigger, better, more original sins and wilder, wetter, more interesting problems.

Help us learn the difference between stupid suffering and smart suffering.

Provoke us to throw away or give away everything we own that encourages us to believe we’re better than anyone else.

Brainwash us with your compassion so that we never love our own freedom more than anyone else’s freedom.

And make it illegal, immoral, irrelevant, unpatriotic, and totally tasteless for us to be in love with anyone or anything that’s no good for us.




DEAR GODDESS, you riotously tender, hauntingly reassuring, orgiastically sacred feeling that is even now running through all of our soft, warm animal bodies:

I pray that you provide us with a license to bend and even break all rules, laws, and traditions that hinder us from loving the world the way you do.

Show us how to purge the wishy-­washy wishes that distract us from our daring, dramatic, divine desires.

And teach us that we can have anything we want if we will only ask for it in an unselfish way.

DEAR GODDESS, you who just pretend to be crazy so you can get away with doing what's right:

Help us to be like you—wildly disciplined, voraciously curious, exuberantly elegant, shockingly friendly, fanatically balanced, blasphemously reverent, mysteriously truthful, teasingly healing, lyrically logical, and blissfully rowdy.



And now dear God of Gods, God beyond all Gods, Girlfriend of God, Teacher of God, Goddess who invented God, I bring this prayer to a close, trusting that in these pregnant moments you have begun to change all of us in the exact way we needed to change in order to become the gorgeous geniuses we were born to be.





Amen


Om


Hallelujah


Shalom


Namaste


More power to you




Oh, but one more thing DEAR GODDESS, you pregnant slut who scorns all mediocre longing:

Please give us donkey clown piñatas full of chirping crickets,

ceramic spice jars containing 10 million-­year-old salt from the Himalayas,

gargoyle statues guaranteed to scare away the demons,

lucid dreams while we’re wide awake,

enough organic soup and ice cream to feed all the refugees,

emerald parachutes and purple velvet gloves and ladders made of melted-down guns,

a knack for avoiding other people’s personal hells,

radio-controlled, helium-filled flying rubber sharks to play with,

magic red slippers to contribute to the hopeless,

bathtubs full of holy water to wash away our greed,

secret admirers who are not psychotic stalkers,

mousse cakes baked in the shapes of giant question marks,

stories about lightning strikes that burn down towers where megalomaniacal kings live,

solar-powered sex toys that work even in the dark,

knowledge of secret underground rivers,

mirrors that the Dalai Lama has gazed into,

and red wagons carrying the treats we were deprived of in childhood.

~Rob Brezsny

Happy 2010!

Italian Christmas menus

Candied dates smeared with butter, dried figs stuffed with walnuts, trays of hazelnuts, almonds, pecans and dark Brazilian nuts. Bread crumbs, cracked nutshells, bits of leftovers, empty espresso cups and wine glasses, and curled up mandarin orange peel scattered on a bright red embroidered tablecloth.

That’s the image that comes to mind when I think of Christmas Eve dinner at my mother’s house. The annual battleground after the seafood-based feast known as cenone della vigilia.

Earlier in the day the kitchen vibrates with joyful activity. We cook, drink, laugh a lot and throw food at each other, authorized to make a mess. We do it all together. We prepare the Christmas Eve dinner together, we eat it together and together we express our love for each other exchanging little thoughtful presents after midnight Mass. When my son finally falls asleep, we tiptoe into the house's many hiding places and bring out Santa's booty. We eat the snack left out for him, leaving evident crumbs and soot footsteps coming out of the chimney. And we smile in his same adorable anticipation. And that's when it truly feels like Christmas.

I kept wondering why I was having such a hard time getting into the Christmas mood this year. I tried everything: decorating the tree, building the presepe, putting up ornaments and lights all over the house, playing carols, baking cookies, constructing a gingerbread house... I included my son in all these usually infectious holiday activities because, after all, that's who I was doing it all for. But it wasn't really working. Something was missing.


And then I figured it out. I understood that there wasn't anything missing, there was actually an excess instead. There is too much of everything. Excessive frantic driving through traffic for last minute shopping. Too much constant mad rushing to conquer ground (and parking space) in horrible hysteria-mode stores and malls. Had the holiday season been reduced to racing brawl-prone folks laden with gift-wrapped boxes to the best deal? That's not Christmas! Christmas suddenly had turned into a commercial operation, and I somehow had forgotten its real meaning. To me Natale was a moment of excitement, of preparation, of joy. A traditional festive family occasion.

This shouldn't sound like a sermon, but very few things are sacred for me and Christmas is one of them. Nowadays Christmas in Italy is all about getting the perfect gift, leaving for the ultimate exotic vacation (and then bragging about it), accumulating rather than un-cluttering. Il Santo Natale–the holiness of Christmas–has been transformed into a display of money, image and opulence rather than a domestic celebration. It's a little sad, isn't it?

Thankfully the one element of Italian Natale that will never change is getting the family around a table and eating like crazy. So tomorrow evening, the dining room will be alive with chatter and laughter. After the gargantuan meal, the venue will convert – like every year – into casino royale for the Italian ritual Christmas gambling and tombola (bingo) tradition. The crumbs and nutshells get swept off la tavola with one tipsy motion and the games will begin. Usually one cousin – appropriately nicknamed 'the taxman' – always wins every game, pocketing all our invested coins, so after a few rounds everyone gets up disgruntled, belching and unzipping constricting garments. Someone always volunteers to do the monumental pile of dishes, and politics are rarely ever overlooked in the conversation. We have been known to fight occasionally on Christmas Eve for that reason. But we also stick to tradition, and play, laugh and eat ourselves into a stupor.

Like every year, my mother will be Grand Supervisor of the Christmas Eve banquet, which will traditionally include fish in its multi-course menu and copious amounts of wine, bubbly and happiness. We all help out and contribute our share cooking with her.

Needless to say, pre-preparation has already started. I am in fact posting this in a break during busy kitchen work.

This year we will be serving our Christmas Eve Dinner guests (old friends, immediate family and additional boyfriends, girlfriends, ex-spouses and the like) the following menu:

Smoked salmon canapées
Fritto di paranza (small fried fish)
Lasagna with Taleggio, mushrooms and shaved white truffles
Steamed European Sea bass with homemade mayonnaise (12 eggs)
Broccoli rabe rustic pie
Escarole rustic pie
Insalata di rinforzo (Neapolitan boiled cabbage, Greek olives and anchovy salad)
Artichokes "alla Romana" (added at the last minute)
Panettone, Pandoro and mixed nuts, dried figs and dates
Champagne Veuve-Cliquot Rosé
Rosso di Montalcino
Greco di Tufo
Limoncello
Amaro
Homemade myrtle liqueur

But Natale here in Italy is a two-day celebration, so...

The Christmas Day Lunch (for seating capacity reasons, always held at my mom's house) menu will feature:

Tortellini in brodo made with 3 kinds of meat/bones
Crown lamb roast and oven-baked russet potatoes
Guinea-fowl breasts stuffed with chestnuts and truffles
Radicchio, pears and gorgonzola salad
Panettone and Pandoro
Seasonal fruit platter
Chianti Classico
Passito di Pantelleria
Mandarin oranges

I have the oven blasting at 350°F and the smell in the house is delicious. My apron is spattered and Mr. E is wearing a Santa hat with flashing red lights. He's helping me mix ingredients. Rosemary Clooney is singing her carols for us through the sound system, and tree lights twinkle.

Something inside is tingling. I may have just found my Christmas spirit...