Sunday Dinner

As I have mentioned, my father used to be a blogger, long before it was the "in" thing to do. I remember him blogging something about "Growing Up Italian." To be honest, I don't really remember much about the content other than it sounded a lot like growing up in my house. My father, being the oldest son of Italian parents had some very specific rules about living under his roof, and not just the 10:30 means 10:29, not 10:31 and if you are going to stay out past 10:31 you might as well stay out all night because the punishment will be the same, but most importantly was Sunday Dinners. We could have plans on Sunday with whomever, but we had to be home for dinner. He didn't care if we came alone or brought an entourage of people, in fact, I think he preferred the latter, but we had to be home.

My mother, who is not at all Italian but as long as I have known her quickly assimilated and cooks like one, would spend hours in our tiny kitchen making full course Sunday meals. Pasta, meat, salad, wine... my mother is a lot things, but other than a semi recent fish debacle a poor cook is not one of them. The woman can cook.

Dan, marrying into this family of Sunday tradition, has been waiting for ten years for me to carry on this tradition. I talked about it a lot-- promising each fall that this was going to be the year...well, here we are 2010, with two kids who need to learn that Sunday is for family, tradition, and Italian dinners.