We Are Never Full

Being an Italian-American, I take pride in my heritage. I am also particular about how I like my sausage and pepper sandwiches made. If you are not from the north eastern part of the US, didn’t grow up around large groups of Italians or in an Italian household, you may not have every heard of [...]

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It’s often said that Italians are passionate about their food, and this is borne out by today’s “pasta strike” across the country. Where else would an entire nation call and observe a strike to protest the rising prices of their national dish? Reported in the Guardian (UK), Italians are coming out in sympathy with their [...]

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Regular readers of this blog, and we still believe there are some, though we use the term regular advisedly, might be under the mistaken impression that we are firmly anti-sandwich after reading several of the “At the desk gourmet” posts in which we spoke somewhat derogatorily of “soggy, $8″ sandwiches that had spent the day [...]

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A slightly macabre headline, I know, but the point it attempts to convey is that, instead of being a pig’s idea of paradise (it would be more like a peculiar kind of mortuary, I guess), it is the pork-lover’s paradise. With an entire floor is devoted to fresh meats, charcuterie (norcineria) and cheese (the second [...]

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What is it about coffee in Europe that makes it taste so good? Why do so many people love Dunkin’ Donuts coffee when it quite obviously tastes (and looks) like gnat’s piss? And why, indeed, do people feel the need to drink a pint of coffee in one go? More to the point, how can [...]

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…Don’t be put off by their rather acrid smell and make either of two delicious dishes! When we first encountered veal kidneys we were enjoying the beginning of what was to be one of the greatest meals either of us had ever eaten. It was a six-course marathon, running the gamut from tiny, delicately-prepared pots [...]

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I suppose you could file this under “at the desk gourmet” too, since it’s delicious, homemade, eaten at the desk, economical, and big step beyond your deli soup or sandwich in food sophistication. However, since it’s not made in my home, but someone else’s, it doesn’t qualify for inclusion in that category, but, as the [...]

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We love New York-style pizza, but after returning from three weeks in Italy we really miss the ultra thin-crust personal pizzas we ate almost daily (with a liter of vino bianco frizzante) for lunch. So we decided to seek out a pizza as good as those we’d had abroad. Many places claim to sell Napolitano-style [...]

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Lunch is a tricky time for me and, I’m sure, many Americans, who enjoy good food, in a way that it isn’t for most Europeans, or at least, most southern Europeans. There is no place in American life for the leisurely two-hour, weekday lunch that many French, Italians and Spanish enjoy several times a week. [...]

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Upon returning home from our recent wedding in Italy, our guests, like us, probably felt the bump of landing in several places – the legs and spine (from airplane travel) and the wallet (from the careless assumption that a euro is only worth a little more than a dollar). We also felt that bump in [...]

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Food allergies are serious and must not be made fun of. Even my good self suffers from a, as yet unidentified form of food allergy, which makes my face and eyes swell to gigantic proportions. I first noticed it on Valentine’s Day two years ago when, shortly after enjoying my first (and last) plate of [...]

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Ahead of our recent wedding in Italy, I penned this blog post because I wanted to write about Italian potables other than wine in the expectation that after a week of chianti, our wedding guests would be ready for something different. As it turned out, many became worryingly wine-dependent over the course of their stay [...]

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