Italians and their food

Every great culture will tell you that their cuisine is the best. Gourmands will tell you that classical French cooking reigns supreme. It is what most "Fine Dining" restaurants base their dishes on. Chinese, real Chinese, not the typical overcooked, greasy Chow Mien found in most Chinese restaurants, Italian, Thai, Spanish, Indian and various other cuisines can make their case as well. People from those cultures will tell you their food is the best. It's what they grew up eating and what they are the most familiar with. I grew up eating Italian food. I won't tell you it is the best cuisine in the world, since you may have grown up eating other types of food, but I will tell you that Italians celebrate great food more than any other culture I know. A great meal is almost a religious experience. Friends and family gather to eat, drink, talk and argue, but the focus is always on the food. There's always too much. Maybe we fear we'll run out of food tomorrow, or someone will waste away. Great food and lots of it is a sign of prosperity even if we're not really well off. During the Depression, my Grandmother would feed her family and half the neighborhood great meals (always more than enough for everyone) even though they were no better off than any one else and worse off than most. Whenever my family gets together, no matter how many their are, we always wind up congregating in the kitchen, no matter how small the kitchen may be. We talk about what is being cooked at the moment and what we're going to have for the next meal, or some great dish we had recently, or some great dish we want to try. It's not an obsession. Nobody in my family is overweight or has an eating disorder. It's just an appreciation for one of life's great pleasures. Oh. The picture above is a seafood cous cous my wife had on the last night of our most recent trip to Sicily. As in most Italian dishes, it was made with ingredients caught or harvested that day, prepared simply, served with great pride, and proportioned to feed a family of four.