Are you Italian-American? I hope you don't mind me asking ....

Only if you help make the gravy, OP

Hi Mario, I'll have to bring a store-bought jar, if that's ok.

[quote] Only if you help make the gravy, OP

Sauce!

To have all of the siblings together with their kids, plus my parents, was more of a monthly thing lately. And covid created a disruption obviously.

[quote]Are you Italian-American?

There's no need to ask. They'll tell you unprompted.

I can see why even, if Covid weren't an issue, r4, that it would be a monthly thing. Who wants to do all that cooking every week, even if it's pot-luck?

I'm surmising that, like a lot of other ethnic groups where weekly Sunday church was still a thing, post Catholic mass, why not have a meal?

During and post Covid the world sure is different. Socializing, even family socializing, seems to be becoming a thing of the past.

Yes, big family get togethers on a weekly/monthly basis is quite common in Italian families

... and what does YOUR people do?

[quote] even if it's pot-luck

It's a soupluck not a potluck.

Pow-wows, social events, shared meals, but not too often on Sundays and certainly not now during the pandemic.

I'm Native American, r7

[quote] and what does YOUR people do?

What's wire hangers doing in this closet when I told you - no wire hangers ever?!

Yes it was growing up.

The meal was at noon or 1:00-ish.

Pasta, braciole, meatballs, sausage, broccoli rabe or green beans , bread, salad, pastries from the bakery.

As an only child with parents/grandparents dead and cousins scattered all over the country and world, the tradition is long gone.

@r9, Cool, why do you ask?

- r7

r12, I just ate a couple of plates of spaghetti and meatballs. It's rare for me to have that, especially on a Sunday and it got me to thinking about the depictions in movies such as "The Godfather" about Italian-American families and their Sunday dinners.

I wondered if it was real and still a thing.

Oh, I forgive Columbus, too. It would disrupt my serenity if I hung on to that resentment, so, I don't. Besides, North America wasn't going to go unnoticed.

[quote]Are you Italian-American? I hope you don't mind me asking ...

May I suck the cream out of your big Canoli?

An Italian Sunday dinner is the occasion for family bonding and celebration. There is no need for a special occasion, it happens every Sunday. The family gets together for lunch right after Sunday Mass: 6 Italian meal courses and everyone is involved in the preparation, in one way or another.

Italian Sunday dinner is actually at lunchtime. The meal takes so long to eat that often it will last to dinner time.

Traditionally lunches were the most important meals of the day. After lunch people would go for a nap and have a light dinner at night.

Italian meals have a completely different structure compared to other countries.

We love abundance!

For a family Sunday dinner, we have a minimum of 6 courses including:

Appetizers/stuzzichino

Primo piatto: first dish which is usually pasta, risotto, soup or gnocchi

Secondo piatto: second dish: fish or meat

Contorno: side dish: vegetables and/or potatoes

Cheese

Fruits and/or desserts

Espresso and liqueur to close

For drinks, we only serve water or wine, no sugary drinks.

The drinks have to combine with the meal and enhance, not overwhelm, the flavors.

We end the meals with an espresso or/and a liqueur to help the digestion.

I had an eyegasm reading your post, r15

@r13, Naturally inquisitive is good

I'm on a diet...could I just suckle on a big Eye-talian cock during this marathon meal?

No wonder old Italian women get so fat..

Do you eat this big Sunday meal in the upstairs kitchen...

or the downstairs kitchen?

^ Upstairs winter, downstairs summer

Didn't you mother ever just fix you a bowl of soup for your Sunday meal?

I get so hot for Italian-American men. I really do. I want to suck n fuck em so bad!

[quote]I get so hot for Italian-American men. I really do. I want to suck n fuck em so bad!

And you probably can...

but you can never take care of them the way their mothers did

My mother was always on a diet.

She'd say, "I'm having a Figurine bar. Would you like me to make you a sandwich?"

Similar to R11, we did that growing up but all the parents, aunts and uncles are all dead and everyone moved away.

Italians are very sensual...

Were there ever any male cousin make-out sessions?

Omg I loved Figurine bars! I was a fat gayling and could eat the whole box easy. I think they were made from puffed tree bark or something.

@r26, Yep, same in my family :(

My family did it every Sunday until the pandemic. Usually 15-20 would attend, sometimes a few more. Now it's once a month or every six weeks. I begged my mother to change it to monthly years ago. It was like her cooking Thanksgiving every Sunday.

Was anybody out in their families? Did you bring your partners to Sunday dinner?

^ Yes, I did, never a problem. One thing about Italians, love is love no matter who it is

[quote] Who wants to do all that cooking every week, even if it's pot-luck?

Even with all the cooking and dishes, I’d rather have everyone come to me. I hate being out of the house on Sunday nights.

Sentimental fool that I am, this thread has me verklempt, and I'm not Italian-American, or Jewish, for that matter.

Mama Mia! This a-thread! She's a- gonna enda in tears!

It does my heart good to see the "upstairs/downstairs kitchen" mentioned.

I could never figure out why my mother and grandmother preferred their basement kitchens to their actual kitchens.

Did anyone else's fathers/grandfathers/uncles put Anisette or Sambuca in their coffee?

I hated the Chinotto Italian soda when I was a kid but love it as an adult.

R33, that sounds like my parents. Their house (my family home) is still the nexus of all family get-togethers, even though it makes sense for one of us to host (a more central location, can accommodate people). But my parents are elderly and home-bodies, and getting them to not host is like pulling teeth.

I came here for the Puppazza reference

I leave disappointed

I love the Italian focus on digestion. I got a long lecture in Rome once for trying to order a cappuccino after noon, which is apparently a big no-no because of dairy harming the ability to digest the rest of the day’s meals.

Not my family, but it might as well have been...

Shit R40- They sure is UGLY!

Anthony's mother is yelling for him for Sunday dinner out the window in Boston's North End.

" They sure is UGLY! "

Not all of us...

Momma's boys!

R43- That's better. And I am half Italian. Where the fuck was that picture from? It looked like a Mental Institution Cafeteria.

Let's represent, Okay!?

And this thread is actually really wonderful.

^ I don't know I just googled "Italian family" I'm half Italian too

Oh, you don't want to go that route. One advantage to dating closet cases is that you don't have to attend dinners with your boyfriend's family.

^ What if you like your boyfriend's family?

That type of weekly family meal is still portrayed weekly on Blue Bloods, though the family portrayed is Irish, not Italian. But Catholic after Midday Sunday Mass.

Our family was very atypically Sicilian and only gathered together for Christmas Eve, weddings, and funerals. Oh, and for swap meets.

R41, I think the guy in front of the tv is pretty handsome.

We pretty much stopped doing anything like that once my grandparents passed away. But it wasn't specifically on Sundays, it could be any weekend day really. Might be a Friday evening or a Saturday afternoon.

I attended a Catholic school & church in a predominantly Italian neighborhood, and Fridays were the best because they sold pizza's. We always got pizza for lunch, it was $3 for half a pizza. The cafeteria would smell amazing. You could smell it all throughout the school actually. During lent they also sold huge fish dinners.

What does the pizza possess?

R22 No soup, pasta fasul

It possesses tomato sauce, cheese, pepperoni, black olives, and basil.

Wait someone please layout the time line. If these Sundays dinners take all morning to prepare, when are these cooking grandmother's going to church?

[quote] You could smell it all throughout the school actually. During lent they also sold huge fish dinners.

Oh, that brought back memories. All the other kids complained about school lunches. I liked them.

r56 Nonna went to 6:00 A.M. mass, or she'd never have time to get everything done. Plus she stopped off at the local Italian bakery to pick up the cannoli, sfogliatelle, cream puffs, etc. Maybe a cheesecake.

Everybody came to the house I grew up in, it was my grandmother's. We were 6 originally, but as people married in and kids came along, it got a bit crowded. Like so many upthread have said, once nonna died, that was it, nobody wanted to do all that work. For my grandmother it was never work, only joy and love to have everyone together. I never remember her sitting down with us, as things had to be kept going in the kitchen. And it was only in her later years that she accepted washing-up help.

Gone are the days, and we're all a bit poorer for it. Salute, nonna!.

I had a similar experience to Bronze’s. Oh, how I miss my Nan (she thought Nan was chicer than Nonna) and her cooking! And she made it seem effortless. My mom (not Italian) learned to cook all the Italian favorites. For dessert, black and white cookies or cannolis from Arthur Ave. I guess I should’ve learned how to cook from them but I didn’t.

I can still smell their kitchens…

I our family, Sunday dinner at Grandma's was always a thing. My mother had 4 sisters. At least two or three would show up for dinner and the one who lived farthest would come after dinner. Saturday and Sunday morning would be about cooking. (The men went to church with the kids.) We'd eat dinner around 2-2:30 PM. Then the men would sit in the living room or outside on the porch and discuss politics (argue) and sports while the women sat in the dining room and gossiped and criticized the kids. All of them. We all had mothers, but we were raised by a committee of aunts. And all the Italian kids I knew did the same. If Grandma was dead it went to the oldest sister. Around 6 PM the sisters would put out a light buffet left from dinner, and then everyone would go home after Ed Sullivan. Oh. The Men ate first, separate from the women and kids.

"The Men ate first, separate from the women and kids. "

Man, you guys were hard core, I never heard of such a thing

is there sex on sundays?

R61, we're Calabrese, not Sicilian.

[quote] We all had mothers, but we were raised by a committee of aunts.

This was my childhood too, but Irish instead of Italian. And no one could really cook. Many of them didn’t drink much either, because of the alcoholism in the family. So it was mostly just sitting around eating penny candy and little appetizers.

"is there sex on sundays? "

Only with the wives

My stepfather's family were German Americans but had, probably turn of century, been Jews who converted to Catholicism. This was not that unusual in Central Europe. They also had these large dinners on the weekend that went on for hours. Sorta German/sorta Jewish. I bet it was a standard immigrant, second and third generation thing, that outside some groups and families is now sadly ended. The family on Moonstruck reminds me of my stepfather's family although they were not Italian.

Yes, OP, it is. When I was young, my parents moved from Brooklyn to Hicksville (they should have just left me in Flatbush, but I was three years old and fairly adorable). Up until I was 13, we'd schlepp into Brooklyn reguarly for meals at my paternal grandmother's. I sat at the small card table at the end for years. Grandma did all the cooking for I'd say twenty, whilst grandpa sat on the stairs drinking dago red from a Log Cabin syrup bottle. For years I thought he was drinking Log Cabin Syrup. I can still remember picturing how the throat would contract from doing that.

I have two regrets in life. One of them was that I didn't call dibs on a plate my grandmother had over her sink of the Statue of Liberty (she came over on the boat with my grandfather to start a new life in The United States). I always admired it but we moved away and I failed to twig to its aquisition when my father went back to NY after she died. Heigh ho.

None of the Italian Americans I know have big Sunday dinners, nor are they religious or go to church. As each generation becomes more and more assimilated, the old traditions die out.

Nah, OP.

We all jus' go over to the Olive Garden nowadays.

Mama's sick of cooking now that she got those hormone shots and the hair's not growing on her chest no more.

r60 Your last sentence reminded me of that scene in one of the "La Cage aux Folles" films where Renato and Albin were on the run from criminals and hiding out with Renato's family. Albin tried to sit down with the men for dinner and was immediately rebuffed. Some things you just didn't do back then. The women ate second, and then began other household chores(Albin was operating a sewing machine IIRC)

There's also a mass on Saturday. My neighbor was a devout Catholic, widower (not Italian) and I remember him going to the Saturday mass. Not sure what time it took place.

R59 Are you from Johnston RI?

@r59, "I can still smell their kitchens… "

My grandparents house had the most wonderful smell of Italian food that I'll never forget. A few years ago I discovered a local take-out Italian restaurant that has the exact same smell. Between the food and that smell I'm in heaven when I go there for take-out

No, the Bronx. Never been to RI.

All of you are posting things from decades ago. Modern Italian-Americans are not what they were like in 1960. Most aren't religious, and most are culturally 100% American at this point in time.

This Long Island guido would disagree

Here he is “cooking”

I grew up in the late 50's ealy60's. When I was little we had no masses on Saturday.

[quote]When I was little we had no masses on Saturday.

How OLD is "little," R78? Three or thirteen?

thirty-two

There was an incredible "let's be" thread on here a few years ago that was about an Italian-American family owned and operated NYC pizza parlor in the 1980s/1990s.

Here it is. It's genuinely touching at some points.

^ and your point it?

R83 seems like an idiot.

R84 "seems" like a WASP from Jorsey (jersey).

Just saying I'm enjoying the thread.

OK. I checked just to make sure I got it right, and the Saturday Mass that "counted" as fulfilling your obligation for Sunday mass, started with regularity as a result of Vatican II. started during Pope John the 23d, ( the good pope, and a true progressive ancestor to Francis,) . So I was about 7 years old at the time. (I'm 64 and a half now. )

R31, I am out. My family has known my partner for years.

^ Me too!

- r32

It might be the Night Fever.......we know how to do it..........

i always think of him when i think of eyetalians

The old timers were so fucking elegant: Vittorio Gassmann, Vittorio De Sica, Marcello Mastroianni, guys like that had class. They had style.

the old country gays