10.

We can’t imagine a holiday without food. Or anything without food, really. It was there for the good times; it was there for the bad times. If you got a good report card, you got rewarded with food. If you were bad, you got no food. Everything was food. So on the holidays, which were such a joyous time because the whole family got together, food was an extra-big deal. You didn’t make the dishes that you ate every day, and everybody did the cookin’—Aunt Loulou, Aunt Maryanne, our grandma, our moms—it was like an all-star team in the kitchen. It took real manpower to feed the army that was our family. There were friends and boyfriends and girlfriends—we’re talkin’ a lotta people. And of course, everybody loved to eat. Plus, we’d end up spendin’ twelve, fourteen hours together, sometimes two days in a row. We’d go over to somebody’s house for Christmas Eve and be right back over again for Christmas night. For Thanksgiving, it was the same thing, and with New Year’s too. We got to see a lot of one another throughout the holiday season, and that’s what made it so special.

No matter who was hosting, we’d all get there early in the mornin’ so everyone could pitch in. That’s also what made the holidays so great—everybody sharin’ the work. Except for our cousin Nicky’s wife with the long nails who’d never lift a finger, but everybody has one of those. No offense, Donna.

Even though we’d all be goin’ over there to cook, there would—no matter what—already be food on the table when you got there. If you were really early, there was still breakfast out, bagels and butter and cream cheese and pastries—maybe some sticky buns or cheese buns from Andrew’s, a German bakery that had the most delicious pastries you ever ate. Or if it was a little later, the table would be loaded with antipasti like cold cuts, olives, cheese, roasted peppers, bread, breadsticks, maybe some things that Grandma started cookin’ the day before like stuffed mushrooms, a platter of meatballs, or eggplant. There’d already be a vat of sauce workin’ on the stove, and somebody would be mannin’ a frying pan, makin’ like 150 cauliflower fritters that you’d be eatin’ as they came outta the skillet. Then whatever was left over was piled onto a huge platter with paper towels and went onto the table.

But it wasn’t like we were all sittin’ around the table this whole time. You’d be outside screwin’ around with your cousins or watchin’ TV. If you were at Uncle Greg’s you’d be in the pool, or if you were at Cousin Dom’s you’d be playin’ pinball in the game room. Then you’d take a break, make a plate, and go back to whatever you were doin’. But when the macaroni came out, that’s when you sat down at the table. That’s when things got serious. People would be walkin’ outta the kitchen with two platters at a time, helpin’ to serve everyone heaping plates of macaroni with sauce scooped over the top. Then came the salad, drippin’ with oil and vinegar. After that was the entrées—chicken rollatini, chicken oreganata, London broil, roast beef with garlic and parsley. And after that, you got up, took a break, and maybe came back to the table for more. The women would start clearin’ the dirty dishes, but the food would stay on the table. You never took food off the table. That was a big no-no. You didn’t do it unless it was to put more food in its place.

Then there was dessert. There were things that people made, like Aunt Loulou’s Rice Pudding (here) or Fran’s mom’s Icebox Cake (here). But no matter what, everybody brought somethin’. There’d be boxes and boxes of cake and cookies—rum cakes, grain cakes, cheesecakes, lobster tails, napoleons, cannoli. There’d be coffee—Italian and American—mixed with Sambuca, Frangelico, or Tia Maria, with an extra shot on the side. Everybody, the men and the women, would be smokin’ cigarettes, playin’ poker. Eventually the table would get filled again with dried fruit, fresh fruit, and nuts. Grandma would come out with the nutcracker and everybody would start eatin’ almonds. That was what we called “dessert dessert” (see here). The men who did drink, that’s when they started drinkin’. A popular thing was Coke mixed with red wine (see here). Or maybe it was Dewar’s or more cordials. Then eventually your mother would start packin’ up all your presents, wake you up, and drive you home.

That’s what we considered normal. We never even thought that people would do things any differently. But our cousin Dom, he married a girl out in California. We remember our moms goin’ out there and complainin’ about how they barely served anything for dinner. “They didn’t have anything out on the table when we got there!” After we moved out of Staten Island and started meeting people outside of our circles, we realized that to most people, what we do is a little nuts. But forgettaboutit—that’s us.