Boasting one of the most authentic Sicilian food festivals in the region of Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley and Western New Jersey, Holy Cross Society members are proud to pass on the traditions of their ancestors, who migrated from Santo Stefano di Camastra in the Province of Messina. The organization has evolved since its 1911 founding while staying true to its deep Sicilian roots. Each September, they host their annual Holy Cross Celebration & Sicilian Food Festival, which began as a reenactment of Santo Stefano di Camastra's own La Festa del Letto Santo in which classic Sicilian foods are served, a queen is crowned, and music and fellowship are shared.
I spoke with Jim Palmeri, a member of Holy Cross Society's Board of Trustees and webmaster of holycrosssociety.com, whose grandparents were founding members, about the organization's history, how it promotes Sicilian heritage, the challenges it faces, and its goals as members embrace the future.
What is the history of the Holy Cross Society?
It started with my grandparents and that generation, who came from the same town in Sicily, Santo Stefano di Camastra. Like many organizations at that time, it was what we call today a mutual aid society, providing assistance with reading and writing English, immigration law, financial assistance, and job placement.
We are into the third and fourth generations of people from that same town in Easton, Pennsylvania, with about 65 families still with connections to the homeland.
2011 Queen Gina Palmeri holds court between former Auxiliary President Sandy Callery and former President Tony Tumminello.
How does the society continue to promote Sicilian heritage in the community?
We have a meeting once a month. There's a Men's Society and a Ladies Auxiliary. Every September, we hold a festival at the same time as one held in our town in Sicily at the church called Letto Santo. About 114 years ago, our grandparents reenacted the same celebration here as their relatives did in Sicily. We focus much of our work around that festival because it's a bit of a homecoming time.
So families come back to town. Usually, there are two days of festival time, Friday and Saturday. Then, on Sunday, we have a Mass of the Holy Cross at our local Catholic church, where we all process in. The priest talks about the Holy Cross. (It's the Feast of the Holy Cross on the second Sunday of September.)
We also crown the queen. Usually, she's the granddaughter or daughter of one of our members. And she has a court. She has to write an essay about why she should be part of the celebration. We're promoting our Sicilian heritage to the next generation.
Much of the learning is stories we tell about our parents or grandparents; many of us travel back and forth to our Sicilian town and still have cousins there. So we talk with them about what they're doing and what's going on in that town, and share what's happening in this town.
Every year, one of our members, Sal Panto, who is also the mayor of Easton, does a trip there and invites people to go. He has opened it up to the public to get enough for a group, but there are always several members of our society. It's really kind of a cultural exchange and immersion.
Those trips started on the hundredth anniversary of the Holy Cross Society when we did a bit of a pilgrimage. Maybe 30 of us went to Santo Stefano and spent almost a week connecting with our relatives. It was a really good way to reinvigorate the relationships. Then, a group from Santo Stefano came to Easton to celebrate our hundredth. We went over in the summer, and they came over in September.
Tell us about your members.
Right now, we'll get 35 to 40 members to attend a monthly meeting of the 80 members, which is pretty good. Our charter is closed. You must be a relative of someone from Santo Stefano or married to someone from Santo Stefano.
Holy Cross Society members march together in procession.
What are the highlights of your annual celebration?
Years and years ago, the organization used to actually march through the streets of Easton, and people would come out and donate money, and they would go from house to house when many of the Italian people lived in the inner city. Now, with suburbia, that doesn't happen so much anymore. So we still do a procession, but we do it around our chapel grounds just outside of the city instead of through the city streets. It's kind of a neat thing.
The Lehigh Valley Italian American Band comes back every year on Saturday night, and they play. There was a song called "#9" that was composed by the leader of what was the predecessor of the Italian American band led by a guy named Charlie Perello. That song has persevered so much that we still play it today at our festival. When it goes on, people start to clap and sort of sway along with the song, and they know it. It's almost like the Notre Dame fight song; it's recognizable. But that's part of the tradition of the festival. It's part of connecting our roots.
Lehigh Valley Italian American Band performs for Holy Cross Celebration attendees.
How are you reaching the next generation?
Every organization—whether it be our organization, Rotary, or Kiwanis clubs—is wondering what will happen with the next generation. And we have been extremely fortunate. Our children, who are now in their thirties, forties, and fifties, are getting involved. Their kids are now in the queen's court and learning about their heritage.
We give out higher educational grants to children who are from our lineage. And if we have money left over from that fund, we then extend it to students who are attending Catholic schools.
One of our members, our former president, Nick Alfero, is very big on making certain that it's fun for the kids to be there, so they understand that it is not just a carnival. That's part of their heritage. And we serve all kinds of Sicilian food. We still have the tripe; we still serve the octopus salad.
In addition, we have Christmas parties for the kids now. We'll do an Easter egg hunt, and for the first time, we're going to have a picnic just for the families. During the celebration, we're all working. So it's part of a homecoming, and we interact with people from the public, but now we're going to have a picnic just for us.
What do you hope to share with your members and community?
I think we share with the members that people came here as immigrants for a better life, hoping that most of them are living a better life (which I believe those who belong really kind of do), and reminding them of the hardships that their grandparents experienced to come to America and why they came to America.
My grandparents came over pre-World War I. And Sicily wasn't a great place to live then. My cousin, Pippo Torcivia, lives in Santo Stefano. He's a very successful ceramic artist. The town is known for its ceramics. So if you go there, there's a bunch of ceramic factories.
Pippo and I are second cousins because his mother, my grandmother, and their brother, Uncle Santo, were siblings. Our great uncle and my grandmother came to America. Pippo's grandmother was left in Sicily because she was married. The other two were still single when they came here.
One night, when we were talking, Pippo told me that my Uncle Santo would come back to Sicily. He was a bachelor. He worked on the railroads. So, he did well for himself. And he didn't have a family. He would go back and forth and buy people shoes. He would give his sister money to live on.
As Pippo is telling me this story, he's crying. He pulled me aside and very seriously said, "Can I ask you where Uncle Santo was buried?" I said, "Yeah, I know what the cemetery is."
He says, "Would you take me there?" And I said, "Sure." And on the way, he turned to me and said, "Can we buy flowers somewhere?" So, I took him to a greenhouse that was not far from the cemetery.
I took him to the cemetery and showed him the grave. He went with these flowers, sat there, and sobbed like a baby.
To me, that brought it all together, how we're two cultures that are really bound. So you have to tell those stories to the kids about where they came from. And we have some pretty darn good young adults who are coming in and joining the organization.
Chiara Barbera considers herself blessed to have grown up surrounded by all four of her Sicilian grandparents (nonni), who emigrated from the Catania Province to Australia about six decades ago. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she found herself reflecting on the impact they'd had on her life.
"I have this fear that our grandparents are going to leave this world, and we're not going to remember all of their traditions," Chiara says. "And I basically wanted to capture that and keep those memories alive."
Her solution? A digital platform called Experience Assaggio where subscribers can tap into the best insights nonni have to offer. Viewers can "pull up a chair" at the Assaggio Traditions Table and witness a collection of nonni, including her own, sharing traditions, recipes, gardening tips, and pastimes.
Chiara and I chatted more about her brainchild, challenges, memorable stories, popular videos, future plans, and more.
What challenges did you face starting Experience Assaggio?
I was in Italy during the pandemic, and that was very challenging. I had all of my grandparents in Australia, and I really craved spending time with them and making sure that I could capture everything I could from them and learn as much as I could. So basically, the idea was born in Italy, and then I actually came back to Australia after the first wave of the pandemic.
I spent 14 days locked in a hotel room during quarantine, which was actually my saving grace. I got to work on something productive while I was locked in this tiny little room. And then when I got out, I was just so excited to get started.
People ask me if it was a challenge to get the nonni on board, but it actually wasn't. And I think that's just a testament to the type of people nonni are because they were just like, "Oh, whatever you want to do. I will make you happy."
Viewers can tap content ranging from recipes to gardening tips.
Can you share a memorable story from producing the experiences?
Caponata was one of our first recipe experiences that we recorded. I wanted it to be as natural as possible so they could just feel comfortable. And at one point, the nonna was like, "Can you see what I'm doing?"
And I was like, "Yeah. Go around the camera and have a look."
(And I've actually left this in the recipe experience. I wanted people to see this. It was just such a beautiful raw moment.)
So she turns around, walks around the camera, and looks. And she's like, "Oh, yeah. They can see me."
It was just amazing because they weren't born with the technology. I think that was probably one of the cutest moments. We're really blending the two worlds with technology and nonni.
How do you select the nonni to feature on the platform?
They have to be 75-plus. And I'm very strict about that because they've lived through incredible life events. And besides that, it's really open to any nonni who can share their recipes and traditions.
What videos resonate most with viewers?
The most popular videos have been the caponata, cotoletta, and sugo and meatballs. I think they're probably the most popular because the caponata is very easy to make, and people want to connect and bring people together for a meal.
Your platform features music. How do you choose the playlist for each class?
I have personally curated each one with intent, and all of them kind of give you a romantic, carried-away feeling that you're in Italy and experiencing all of those beautiful feelings of the older times. Most of them are actually songs that I sing with my grandparents.
What are your future plans for Experience Assaggio?
I've got a platform now called Vera Italia, which is basically Assaggio's big sister and serves to connect local Italians with travelers. It's a way for people to travel to Italy but also to connect with the local people and really live that true Italy, which is why it's called Vera, which means true in Italian. It gives locals a platform to share what they're doing and connect with people who really want that immersive Italian experience. And we've got some incredible people there.
Obviously, we've got a lot of cooking classes. Then we've got everything from fishing tourism, where you can go on a fishing boat with people and see how they fish, to basket-making with this beautiful man who learned how to make baskets from his father.
It's a way to ensure that these humble people are seen and noticed, and they can be rewarded and encouraged to continue sharing their traditions.
At the moment, we're in Calabria because my great-grandfather, who was Sicilian, migrated there, and soon we'll be looking to expand that to Sicily.
Experience Assaggio aims to preserve and share traditions.
What do you hope subscribers take away?
I hope they take the chance to dedicate some time to connecting with a recipe, a pastime, and the grandparents who have so much to share. I hope they'll take away the love, warmth, and wisdom that I've been so blessed to receive from these grandparents and share a little bit of nonni magic with them as well.
The tradition of La Settimana Santa, Holy Week, brings people out of their homes to watch and participate in various daily processions of statues through the streets. It's also a time to enjoy sweet bread, often flavored with anise, which is typical of the Lenten season. Among the favorite bread recipes is pani di cena—really cookies—which are shaped like crosses. While this "bread" is often served on Holy Thursday, you can enjoy pani di cena year-round.
Food writer Enza Whiting features a pani di cena recipe on her blog, Enza's Quail Hollow Kitchen. Enza was born in Palermo and lived in the town of Valledolmo for the first four and a half years of her life.
We discussed pani di cena and what Enza hopes her family and readers will take away from her recipe.
Tell us about your pani di cena recipe.
My grandmother made these cookies for us when we were kids. She would shape them, cutting them in the shape of a cross. They were always served on Good Thursday, right before Easter.
It was a Sicilian tradition in the church that the elders made these cookies. They would have these church communities or church groups aside from the priests, and whoever was the head of that community or that committee for that year would make these cookies for all of the other members of the committee. So they would make the pani di cena.
They were always made on Good Thursday, and they would get a sugar lamb. It was part of the tradition that they sacrificed for their community by creating these cookies and giving them out in all the towns.
My mother told me the story about when my great-grandfather was the elder, and it was his turn to make these. My grandmother was maybe 15 or 16 years old, and she was the one who made them all.
They didn't all have ovens in their homes, so the town had ovens that everybody would use. All the women would get together, bake the cookies, and then take them to the ovens to bake them in their local oven. I guess that's how they used to make their bread, too, because they didn't have ovens in their homes; they had to use a public oven to bake their bread. So it was very communal.
The other thing my grandmother would do for us was make the little crosses, but then she would also make pupa cu l'ova using the same dough. She would put a colored egg in it and bake it. My favorite thing on Easter was getting the hard-boiled egg with my cookie.
Pani di cena is actually more of a cross between bread and a cookie. My grandmother's recipe is more of a cross between bread and a cookie. I call it a cookie; my mother calls it bread. When you bite into it, it is somewhat crunchier on the outside and tender on the inside. However, the inside has more of a soft cookie texture than the texture of bread that you would normally think of as soft bread. It is made with yeast. So, it is a yeast recipe, but the texture is different from that of some of the breads you will see.
Why did you start Quail Hollow Kitchen?
Being Italian, food is a big part of your tradition. It's how we celebrate things; it's how we communicate with each other.
I remember when we were kids, we had dinner together as a family every night, and my mother would make meals with whatever she had in the kitchen or the refrigerator because there wasn't a lot of money growing up. So, they had to be creative and use what they had available. But dinnertime was always sacred. That was a time when we sat down as a family.
My dad was really big into talking to us about what was going on in the world because he wanted us to really understand what was happening around us and how it impacted us. During those dinners, my parents also spent a lot of time talking about where they came from, what life was like for them growing up, and how different it was for us here because it was important that we appreciated all the sacrifices that happened to get us to where we were.
So, for me, food and our traditions have always been really important. We continue to talk to our kids about those things because I don't want them to forget about their heritage, their history, and what life was like for other people so that they can enjoy the things that they enjoy today. We do all of that around food. It always seems to be the center of these family functions, celebrations, and communications.
I started Quail Hollow Kitchen mainly because my grandmother had passed away, and I was really worried that as my mom was getting older, I was going to lose all of her recipes. So she was able to carry on my grandmother's traditions with food, and I wanted to be able to somehow memorialize it so that even when I'm gone, my kids can still have access to all of that information. And it's named Quail Hollow because that is the street that I live on.
When I got into it, I realized that I really enjoyed all the different aspects of this website. So it's grown from there, but it still centers around all of our Italian dishes and foods, and really makes sure that all of our Sicilian foods are front and center, somewhere our family has access to.
What do you hope at-home bakers will take away from this cookie recipe?
Personally, for my family, because it's been a part of our family, and we have made this every year for as long as I can remember, I hope they understand that this has been handed down for many generations.
For other readers, I hope that they want to try it because it may be different from something that they're used to. Maybe they will learn something about how other people have enjoyed foods around the Lenten holiday and Easter that might be different from how they've celebrated it.
It's really about keeping that Sicilian heritage and history going. I have other blogger friends who do similar things within their cultures. I think many of us out there hope that as the world continues to progress, we don't forget some of the things that made our families what they are.
La Befana arrives on her broomstick the night of January 5, bearing gifts for good children. Illustration by Elf Moondance
January 6 marks the Feast of the Epiphany, recognized in Christianity as the arrival of the three magi, who brought gifts to baby Jesus. But across Italy, the morning is also celebrated for the appearance of presents from a benevolent witch called La Befana.
To learn more about this Santa Claus-like character, I reached out to Alessandro Testa, an associate professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, Prague. Dr. Testa specializes in the history of religions, social anthropology, and the ethnology of Europe. He's also explored whether Christmas hides a deeper connection to ancient pagan traditions. We discussed La Befana's origins, how she is celebrated, the evolution of La Befana gift-giving, and what society can learn from Italy's beloved witch figure.
What are the origins of La Befana?
We know it is a figure that was quite likely already present in the Middle Ages, but the first sources date back to the 16th century or 17th century. We are not sure about its exact origins. Usually, these are syncretic figures made up of different symbolic elements from different traditions. We are not sure what these traditions might have been; they were probably pre-Christian rituals or ceremonies at the end of the year. Ultimately, La Befana is a hag. In Italian, we also use La Befana as a synonym for hag or crone, an old witch, or an ugly witch with some pejorative connotations.
We know the word Befana from the 16th century and that it was associated with this kind of figure, but we are not sure about the etymology. I see this similarity with the Epiphany as significant because, in Italian, Epifania, which is like the transliteration into Italian of the Greek word, is similar to Befana. This could be one of the possible origins of the name. But the truth is that there is no consensus on this. From the 19th century onwards, just like with many similar Christmas traditions, Santa Claus or the three kings, these customs crystallized and acquired their final form, which we still observe nowadays. We have this benevolent witch or benevolent witch-like figure who brings gifts and is kind to children, or at least to good children. She leaves the gifts in socks or by the fireplace at night and, as many traditions want it, flies around on a broomstick.
Tell us more about how La Befana's arrival is celebrated.
In Italy, every region, every town, and every village has its own traditions concerning La Befana. Normally, the night before the Epiphany, on the 5th of January, some mumming or dances occur, or a bonfire is lit. Very often, during the bonfire, a puppet is burned, representing the old year, which dies out and has to be burned. And in this respect, it is a typical winter festivity. If we consider other winter festivities such as Saint Lucy with the lights and the candles, Carnevale, Christmas traditions, or end-of-the-year traditions, they're very often associated with this dismissal of the old, of what must be forgotten, destroyed, or put aside, so that the new can come again, cyclically. And in this respect, the burning of the Befana puppet is very typical. These fire/light traditions are very common in this period of the year. So, there's also this seasonal, obvious association with the fact of burning what is old during the darkest period of the year when you need warmth and light, which the fire provides. These elements come together, but the burning doesn't happen everywhere in Italy.
What is truly widespread in Italy is the gift-bringing for sure and the fact that there is a witch who is poor and wears rags and broken shoes. There is this element of Christian moralization that probably occurred sometime during the 18th or 19th century in which the good children are rewarded, and the bad children are not, just like Santa Claus or Krampus and many other similar traditions. The bad child gets coal or garlic, and the good child gets a gift.
What kinds of gifts are given?
That's very regional. It has changed in time because of the different availability and level of wealth or prosperity. It was usually fruits or dried fruits, something that could be kept, that could be eaten. That was useful. Then sweets started to appear later. But even more recent are toys, books, and clothing. I received when I was 10 a copy of Lord of the Rings. You could see this small sock bulging in the shape of the book. Nowadays, La Befana is just a sort of duplicate of Santa Claus.
What can society learn from the story of La Befana?
What is interesting about La Befana is that she is kind of a made-up figure who emerged at some point literally from nowhere. There's no story behind her or myth, as is the case with Santa Claus. But, of course, there's been a process of interpretation or overinterpretation perhaps of the figure. And now she is considered a very positive figure in spite of her appearance. There is a sort of moralizing discourse that wants it that the Befana, in spite of looking like a witch, is actually a benevolent figure, not malevolent. The lesson to be learned being: Never judge a book from its cover!
On the 5th or 6th of January, you have—in the big cities especially—people dressing up as La Befana and acting as La Befana would with the kids. So, another moral to take away is respect for diversity. This is yet another value or meaning of La Befana today.
While pyrotechnics may have Chinese roots, the colorful fireworks we have today came from Italy. Starting in the 1830s, Italians combined metals and explosives to develop vibrant sky spectacles. That led to the birth of Italian family fireworks businesses, such as Zambelli and Fireworks by Grucci, America's largest and oldest pyrotechnics-production companies.
Arkansas resident Andrew D'Acquisto, who has family in Porticello, Sicily, has worked with fireworks for about 40 years. We sat down to chat about how the pyrotechnician got started and what happens behind the scenes during your typical fireworks show.
How did you get started with fireworks?
I was interested in working with them and just didn't know how to get a job in particular. And so I asked people who I saw. People I asked had gotten started through their family or friends of their family. I started going to the fireworks convention and asking people, and it was the same; they'd either been through this family or knew someone next door that the family knew.
Then I got a copy of American Fireworks News, a newsletter about fireworks in particular, and they had ads and people buying and selling stuff in the back pages. There was an ad from the Grucci family looking for some help, which was surprising. A well-known name. It would be like if you were a guitar player and saw Bob Dylan advertising for "Extra Musician" or something. But they had gotten a contract one year and had a lot of little shows to do. So they were hiring extra people. At that time, I was in Arizona and drove up to see them in the springtime. They had a training session and a little show we did at a church for practicing, followed by some classes.
They started calling me, maybe once or twice a year, on the 4th of July. Sometimes, they started on New Year's. The first job I did was in Florence, Alabama.
But then I did a job down in Little Rock. It was near Memorial Day, and it happened to be their grandfather's 80th birthday, so a lot of the family came down for that. We had a cake and a small get-together after the show.
I just started working for them, and I've traveled to different parts of the country and world with them, including Dubai and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a couple of times.
What have you learned about Italian fireworks?
What you see normally are shells that are more round, which shoot out the mortars. Italian fireworks are long and layered. They call them salamis. Each section will go off, and then the bottom shot will go off. It's just a different style of making, hand-wrapping, and putting them together.
What goes on behind the scenes for a fireworks show?
The main thing is driving there because they're strict; you must have a commercial driver's license for whatever size truck you have. But then, when hauling the load of fireworks, the truck needs to have special placards on it, and then it needs to stop and get weighed and inspected.
We'll get to wherever we're going, and the first thing we'll do is unload most of the truck that's set up. There are racks of mortars, which are the pipes or tubes that shoot the fireworks out.
You unload those and then nail any racks together, set them up, and put legs on them to make sure they're at the right angle, going up and down, so they're not going to fall over and go towards an audience. So they're going to the sky.
Most jobs are electrical now. So first, you'd set up all the motors and then unload the individual boxes, and they're choreographed. We'd have a diagram of where we'd unload the boxes or troughs, put them where they needed to go, and load the shells into the mortars.
We attach a wire from each fuse with the leader, which would set it off because it is set off electronically. Those get wired into smaller boards, and the smaller boards get hooked into the cables. Then, the cables, depending on the size of the show, all get hooked into a box, and they're selected at the proper cue time. So the wires would run the distance to that main control box and then be wired into the proper sequence or the order they're supposed to go off.
Now, a lot of fireworks are set off and choreographed to music, so that number one will set off one or two or three that are supposed to go off at that time in time with the music. There are different tracks, but we lay those down and connect them all. That may take a day or two or even weeks for extra world-size performance, and then we run a test on everything to make sure everything was hooked up properly, that there are no missed cues, and that they're ready to go when we start the display.
That would often be tied to a computer or someone with headphones, so it would be a matter of laying everything out and connecting it.
It's a long time for, say, a half-hour show. It might take two or three days to set everything up like that, depending on the size. Now, some shows are set up on barges, so you'd have to load everything from the truck onto the barge and set that up the same way. Then, you have to set up communications, which include headphones or walkie-talkies, to keep in touch with everyone. And then get their orders to shoot in sequence.
So basically, we just set up the mortar stands, load them, and then ensure the igniters are hanging out. Then, we wire them to where they go to the control box, lay out all the cables, and connect all the cables.
How have fireworks shows changed?
Years ago, it used to be all hand-loaded. The first job I did was by hand. I worked with an older gentleman, and he was hard to keep up with!
Can you speak to the Italian tradition of fireworks?
They get together to celebrate religious holidays and those named after the church, such as St. Joseph's Day or St. John's Day, and then have their special feast. And they would mostly be hand-manufactured.
I met some Maltese people who would get together, and their church group had a little band. They'd practice their different instruments and be playing. Another group would get together, making and setting off the fireworks for the church's feast days. The whole town would come out because they're all from a single church in each town. They would celebrate the entire town, and people would come from all around to enjoy it. They did a lot of things, like hand-rolling paper tubes and wrapping them up with more paper and string.
What do you most enjoy about fireworks?
It's like hearing the song that makes you feel better. It lifts you up and makes your life easier. You appreciate it and share it with your neighbors.
With fireworks, it doesn't matter if your neighbors may not all be of the same tradition or speak the same language; they all share the same ooh and ahh or enjoyment of it. There's a spiritual uplifting when you can just look up to the sky and say, "Oh, we're in this all together."
A thick and spongy savory tomato pie, sfincione is the grandmother of what Americans call Sicilian pizza. As is typical in Western Sicily, my nonna would top hers with anchovies, onions, breadcrumbs, and cheese. We looked forward to enjoying it with our Christmas Eve feast, always saving some room for her cookies.
Nonna rarely wrote her recipes; when she did, there were never any measurements. Luckily, folks like Italian-American siblings Michele and Joe Becci of Our Italian Table are doing their part to preserve food traditions. Their recipe for sfincione is approachable, and the result resembles what Nonna would have prepared.
I recently corresponded with Michele and Joe, who shared their background and connection to this recipe, how sfincione differs from pizza, favorite side dishes, and more.
Tell us about your background.
We are two siblings who grew up as second-generation Italian Americans in the small town of Phillipsburg, New Jersey—a place that welcomed a large influx of Italian immigrants in the early 20th century. Our love of cooking began in our childhood, helping our mother in the kitchen. Standing on chairs, we would roll pasta dough, shape gnocchi, or (gently) stir the simmering pot of passatelli. Together, we rolled meatballs, kneaded dough, helped make the sauce, and fried eggplant. Our mother was forever sharing her specialties with family and neighbors, near and far. Thankfully, she passed on her passion for cooking to us.
Our grandparents emigrated from Sicily, Naples, and Marche in Italy. Their arduous journey across the sea to a new life only deepened their desire to continue the traditions and rhythms of their former lives in a new land and build a life surrounded by the love of family. Growing up, large family gatherings were the norm, and good food was the foundation for a lifetime of memories filled with laughter and love.
This celebration of family, tradition, and Italian culture is at the heart of everything we do, which is why we first launched Our Italian Table, our food blog, over 15 years ago. Working from opposite coasts—Joey in California and Michele in Pennsylvania—our blog has brought us great joy, allowing us to share our passion with our readers. Today, Our Italian Table has grown to include our annual magazines (our most recent issue, "From Sicily, With Love," is over 100 pages dedicated to the land of our maternal grandparents, Sicily) and our recently launched podcast, A Tavola, along with an online shop that features carefully curated Italian products from artisans we know and love—items we proudly use in our own homes and kitchens here in the U.S.
What is your connection to this recipe?
Our mother's family is from Santo Stefano di Camastra in Sicily. Many from her village immigrated to the town in the U.S. where we grew up, Phillipsburg. There was a bakery called the New York Italian Bakery, an institution that had been around for over 40 years. We can still remember how excited we would be when we would jump in our Dad's station wagon for a trip to the bakery. The aromas in the bakery were magical—the smell of the piles and piles of breads and Italian cookies gleaming behind the glass display cases—but our favorite display case was the one that held the trays of Sicilian pizza, oily and thick and tomatoey. Whenever our parents allowed us to have a slice of pizza, they would scoop a slice out of the pan and hand it over to us, oily against the parchment paper. We were made to wait until we were back in the car to eat our prized possession, and we devoured it.
How is sfincione different from pizza?
Sfincione, often called "Sicilian pizza," is quite distinct from the classic pizza most people know. It's not the thin, crisp-crusted Neapolitan or New York-style varieties. Sfincione has a thick, soft, and fluffy crust, more akin to focaccia. It's baked in a rectangular pan, which helps create a thick, spongy base that's both light and substantial. The name "sfincione" itself hints at its texture, derived from the Latin word spongia, meaning "sponge."
The dough is covered with a mix of onions sautéed with tomatoes, anchovies, and breadcrumbs, which add a bit of savory crunch. Cheese—usually grated caciocavallo or pecorino—is sprinkled over the top. The anchovies, onions, and robust cheese provide a savory punch, while breadcrumbs on top add texture and a rustic finish. Oregano, Sicilian oregano if you can find it, is used in the sauce, giving it a unique Sicilian flavor.
What are some popular sfincione side dishes?
We love to serve sfincione as part of an antipasti board that includes maybe a simple mix of briny olives, cured meats, and cheeses. When served as a meal, we love to serve a bright, lemony salad, perhaps peppery arugula dressed lightly with lemon juice and shaved Parmigiano. A classic Sicilian fennel and orange salad also works beautifully to add brightness alongside the deep flavors of the sfincione. Occasionally, when we have a larger crowd, we might also serve a platter of seasonal grilled vegetables such as zucchini, eggplant, and peppers drizzled with extra-virgin olive oil and red wine vinegar.
What do you hope readers take away from your recipe?
We want readers to come away with a sense of Sicily's culinary soul and an appreciation for the simplicity and depth of flavors that define traditional Sicilian dishes. Sfincione isn't just a "Sicilian pizza"—it's a rustic, satisfying dish with a story, a connection to Sicilian street food culture, and a distinct personality… a taste of Sicily in its most comforting form, a reminder of the island's ability to transform humble ingredients into something memorable and delicious. We also hope that our readers will feel inspired to make sfincione at home and to gather and enjoy it like in Sicily, where sfincione is meant to be savored slowly, with friends and family, in the warmth of community.
It's the quintessentially Christmas image: chestnuts roasting on an open fire or, for most modern cooks, in the oven. Just visualizing it calls to mind the earthy aroma, something commonly encountered on the streets of Palermo this time of year. There, le caldarroste are served as street food dusted in snowy white salt in paper-wrapped cones.
Pennsylvania-based blogger Anna Maria Lucchese has fond memories of Sicily's roasted chestnuts and shared her experience in a post on her blog, Solo Dolce.
Born and raised in Sicily, Anna Maria studied biology at university and earned her doctorate in genetics and oncology in Italy. For study-related reasons, she and her husband moved to the United States. They intended to stay for a short time, but that didn't happen. Today, both work in Philadelphia in the field of research, and in Anna Maria's free time, she dedicates herself to her blog, where she explores Italian cuisine in depth.
Anna Maria recently shared her experience with roasted chestnuts and tips for recreating the flavor at home.
What makes roasted chestnuts a popular street food in Sicily?
Chestnuts are a seasonal delight because they are harvested in the fall. They are available throughout the cooler months, so they are ideal, especially during Christmas. Roasted chestnuts are a common treat at family get-togethers and regional celebrations, bringing back fond memories of childhood for many Sicilians.
How are roasted chestnuts traditionally prepared and served by vendors in Palermo?
The roasted chestnut vendors in Palermo are truly unique. They create a captivating scene, surrounded by fragrant smoke rising from a metal cylinder. Inside, glowing embers rest at the bottom, with chestnuts placed on top. As the chestnuts roast, they're often sprinkled with salt, which interacts with the heat to create a fine, white powder that resembles powdered sugar. This visual and sensory experience draws in passersby, inviting them to indulge in this traditional winter snack. The vendors' lively presence and the warm aroma of roasting chestnuts evoke a sense of nostalgia and community, making them a beloved part of Palermo's winter streets.
What memories do you associate with roasted chestnuts during the Christmas season in Sicily?
My memories take me back to my time in Sicily, in my hometown, during the winter holidays. I remember walking along the Corso, the main street of the town, with friends. We would stop by the vendors to buy warm, roasted chestnuts, which became our delicious snacks as we strolled. The warmth of the chestnuts in our hands and the comforting aroma filled the air, creating a sense of joy and togetherness. Each bite was a reminder of the simple pleasures of winter, and those moments spent with friends made the season truly special.
What are some tips for preparing roasted chestnuts at home?
Buy chestnuts (Look for fresh, shiny chestnuts that are firm to the touch. Avoid any with blemishes or holes) in the supermarket, cut them, sprinkle them with salt, and bake them at 450 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 to 40 minutes. Or if you have a chestnut pan (or a heavy skillet with holes), you can roast them on the stovetop over medium heat, shaking occasionally, for about 15 to 20 minutes.
What do you hope readers will take away from this recipe and your blog?
I hope readers will take away a deeper appreciation for the simple pleasures of cooking and enjoying traditional foods like roasted chestnuts. My blog aims to celebrate the rich culinary heritage of Italy, sharing not just recipes but also the stories and memories associated with them.
December was a busy month in the kitchen as my mother baked her way through all of her Sicilian cookie specialties. Come Christmas, we'd wrap up our finished batches and bring them to my aunt and uncle's home, where they'd be added to a nearly overflowing tray of classic holiday Sicilian confections.
One of the prettiest among these was the pizzelle, a thin and delicate waffle cookie dusted in powdered sugar and made with a hint of anise extract.
Produced in the Abruzzo region of Italy since the 15th century, this cookie, alternatively known as ferratelle, nevole, or catarrette, is also enjoyed in Sicily. The region, historically known as Abruzzi, was, after all, once part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, so it's no wonder there are shared recipes.
I recently stumbled on Maria Vannelli's blog, She Loves Biscotti, where I found a pizzelle recipe. Maria's recipe looks just like the cookie I remember, but with a twist: it's plant-based. The Montreal-based dietician and content creator developed this vegan recipe for her daughter so that she, too, could enjoy Christmas cookies.
Maria shared her background, her favorite Italian Christmas memories, and the special significance of this recipe. Among her recipe development goals is making recipes more accessible so everyone can share holiday traditions through food.
Tell us about your background.
I was born in Montreal, Canada. My dad was born in Ripabottoni, Campobasso, in the Molise region of Italy, while my mom hails from Molinara, Benevento, in the Campania region. Both emigrated to Montreal, Canada, in the early 1950s, where they met, married, and raised a family. My dad owned an Italian grocery store, and my mom was a homemaker, which fueled my fascination with food and ultimately led me to become a dietitian. As the eldest of three, I grew up speaking Italian and had the privilege of living with my paternal grandparents, which deepened my connection to my Italian heritage.
What kinds of foods and recipes left a lasting impression?
I have countless "food memories" tied to family gatherings, making it challenging to pinpoint my favorites. Sunday lunches were particularly special, always filled with love, laughter, and a sprinkle of family drama, with homemade cavatellias a staple that beautifully represented my nonna's Italian traditions. It is still my favorite pasta to this day.
The excitement and preparations for holidays like Easter and Christmas also left a lasting impression, with an abundance of mouthwatering food prepared from scratch! Whether it was my mom's lasagna or her homemade cannelloni, every dish was a labor of love.
Living with my grandparents meant our home was always open and inviting to extended family and friends. At least once a week, I would come home from school to find a great aunt or uncle visiting. This often meant a delightful spread of biscotti and Italian cookies—an amazing after-school snack and probably where my obsession with Italian cookies began.
Did your family bake Italian cookies for Christmas?
Yes, my mom and nonna baked a variety of Italian cookies for Christmas! Some of my favorites include almond biscotti, struffoli, chiacchiere, pizzelle, and mostaccioli, Christmas Eve fritters, and chestnut cookies, also known as calzoni di castagne. Each cookie brought its unique flavors and textures to our holiday celebrations. My mom would also make beautiful Christmas baskets filled with these cookies to share with family and friends.
Do you have any special memories attached to Italian Christmas foods?
Absolutely, I have so many special memories attached to Italian Christmas foods! One of my favorites is the time spent in the kitchen "baking" with my mom and nonna, especially when they would make pizzelle. They made ferratelle one at a time with a stovetop pizzelle press with long handles.
Watching them work their magic was such a joy, and I can vividly remember eating the pizzelle faster than they could make them! Those moments were filled with laughter and the delightful aroma of these freshly baked treats, creating memories I'll always cherish.
Did your family observe Italian Christmas traditions?
Yes, my family certainly embraced Italian Christmas traditions. In the days leading up to Christmas Day, the kitchen was a lively hub of activity, with my mom and nonna bustling about, baking and making homemade pasta as they prepared for the big meal.
On Christmas Day, we would begin by attending Mass, which set a meaningful tone for the festivities. Afterward, the final touches for our festive meal would continue, with everyone pitching in to ensure everything was just right. Once the main meal was served and enjoyed, we waited for more of the extended family to visit. While we waited, there was always a spirited game of Scopa, adding to the day's excitement. Finally, we would indulge in homemade desserts and fruit platters.
These family traditions on Christmas Day created lasting memories for me. Although many loved ones, including my mom and dad, are no longer with us, we continue to cherish those wonderful memories as we celebrate with my brother, sister, and their families.
Being the eldest, my family now hosts Christmas, and I take great pride in continuing the traditions by making some of the traditional foods my mom and nonna would prepare. It's a way to honor their legacy and keep our family heritage alive.
Inevitably, as we gather around the table, a story is shared—whether it's a food memory of past celebrations or a humorous anecdote from our family history. These stories add warmth and connection to our celebrations, reminding us of the love and joy that has always been at the heart of our Christmas gatherings.
For the younger ones, these "stories" serve as a bridge to their heritage, connecting them to their great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents they never had the chance to meet. It's a beautiful way to keep our family history alive and instill a sense of belonging in each generation.
Mara cools her pizzelle on a rack to ensure they stay crisp.
Tell us about your pizzelle recipe. How is it similar or different from the traditional recipe?
My daughter's journey into veganism inspired my vegan pizzelle recipe. I wanted her to continue enjoying one of her favorite Italian cookies, so I adapted my nonna's traditional recipe.
Seeing her joy when she tasted these vegan pizzelles for the first time was such a heartwarming moment! This recipe combines my family's traditions and her dietary choices. After some experimentation, I found that using flaxseed creates a batter with just the right consistency, giving the pizzelles a wonderfully crisp texture without any vegan butter.
The intricate patterns that pizzelles are known for come out beautifully in this vegan version, thanks to a well-heated pizzelle press. These vegan pizzelles keep our Italian traditions alive while being perfect for plant-based diets, making it easy to enjoy this cookie together!
Does this recipe have special significance to you?
These vegan pizzelles hold special significance for me because they help keep our Italian family recipes alive while being perfect for plant-based diets. It means so much to enjoy this beloved cookie together as a family!
Christmas is a time for baking special cookies and treats, and pizzelles are classic Italian waffle cookies that many families make during the holiday season. By adapting this recipe, I can honor our family's culinary heritage while ensuring that everyone can partake in the joy of baking and sharing these delicious cookies. It's a wonderful way to connect with our traditions and create new memories together!
What is your goal when developing recipes like this?
With my pizzelle recipe, I hope at-home bakers will see that it's possible to honor tradition while accommodating different dietary needs. I want them to feel inspired to get creative in the kitchen and adapt cherished recipes to fit their lifestyles, just like I did for my daughter.
My goal in developing recipes like this is to bring people together through food, making it accessible and enjoyable for everyone. Cooking and baking should be a joyful experience filled with love and connection. By sharing this vegan pizzelle recipe, I hope to encourage others to create their own special moments and memories around the table, celebrating both tradition and creativity!
I was just a little girl the first time my nonna pulled out a deck of cards to show me how to play a game called Scopa. We'd visit every Sunday, so I could always look forward to another after-supper game. Memories of playing it inspired a few scenes in my first novel.
The game's name comes from the Italian word for broom, as the winner gets to sweep all the cards from the table. And unlike a standard deck, these are slightly reminiscent of the tarot with 40 cards, divided into four suits: denari (coins), coppe (cups), spade (swords), and bastoni (clubs).
Cards display values between one and seven with four face cards rounding out eight through ten: fante (the knave), which is worth a value of eight; cavallo (the knight) in the Neapolitan-type deck or donna (the queen) in the Milanese-type deck, which are both worth nine; and re (the king), which is worth ten.
Many of these decks, which vary regionally, are richly illustrated and have become collector items. I recently had a chance to see several styles shared by Toronto-based Tony Costa, who took time out with Joseph Cafiso of Woodbridge, Ontario, for a discussion on all things Scopa.
Both are members of Toronto-based Villa Charities, an organization dedicated to enriching lives through experiences and services that honor Italian culture and heritage. Tony serves as vice chair, and Joseph is a member of the Cultural Advisory Group. Both men are Italian-born. Tony emigrated with his parents as a young boy from Calabria, while Joseph came from Ragusa, Sicily. They shared the game's objective with me and how it ties them to their Italian identities.
How did you start playing Scopa?
Tony: Card playing was part of what my family did when my friends and relatives would visit. It was done mostly in the wintertime, and it wasn't really done throughout the summer because the summer had other activities. Throughout my adolescence, we would play; I only started playing poker and all the other stuff later in life.
But I grew up with Scopa, Briscola, and Tresette. People played for beverages. Whoever won the game would get a glass of wine, for instance, or a bottle of beer. Some people would never win and weren't even allowed to drink water. That was part of the game. You had to win to drink something. So that's how I grew up with it.
Italian cards are similar but yet distinct by region. You can travel throughout Italy and find different types of cards. I've collected 10 regional versions. When I met my wife and started going to her place, for instance, my late father-in-law used to play with the Milanese ones, so I had to learn those cards when we started playing. When I was traveling fairly often, whenever I saw a new set that I hadn't seen, I would purchase it for my collection.
Joseph: I was in my early teens when I learned with my grandparents. We used to have a farm that we'd go to in the summer, and we spent the evening playing by the moonlight in the early '60s.
Later, I played with my friends. I don't play it as often anymore, but it's interesting how I have two boys, and my boys know how to play it, even though they were born and raised in Canada. They played with their friends at school.
I used to be a teacher, and at this particular school, about 20% of the student population was of Italian origin, so we organized Scopa tournaments. I was amazed by the number of people who loved to play, and they used to play just for fun.
Now, if I play, it will be with my peers. We play it at Christmas time, usually when we get together to play Tombola, the Italian version of Bingo, and other card games.
What is the objective of the game?
Tony: Basically, you're going for four points. The way you do that is everybody gets three cards, and four cards are put on the table. If you have a card like the four, and there's a four on the table, you can take that card. Once you get through the three cards, you take another three. Or you can do combinations; in other words, if there's a two and a four on the table and you have a six, you can take your six and pick up the two and the four together.
If there happens to be only one card left on the table and you happen to have that card, let's say there's a four on the table and you have a four in your hand, you can take the four, and that becomes a Scopa. That's a point in and of itself. And hence the name of the game, Scopa.
You're trying to accumulate as many of the denari as possible because one of the points goes to the individual who accumulates most of these denari cards. That's one. The second thing you want to do is try to get the seven of denari, which is a point in and of itself. So whoever accumulates that seven gets a second point. The third point goes to the one who has the most cards picked up. The fourth point is something they call a primera, a combination of four cards with an inherent value to each card. You have to put together your four highest cards, one of each suit. You can't have more than one of each suit. And whoever has the highest value in those four cards gets the fourth point.
I've seen some games where you get five or six plus your four points, and the game doesn't last very long because it's up to 11 points.
Joseph: Some people play to 11. I've known people who play up to 15. For some reason, it has to be an odd number.
How does Scopa connect you to your culture?
Joseph: It started as part of family recreation, a way to get together and stay together. Nowadays, we have so-called family games, whether it's Monopoly or Risk or other games, and you still have Checkers and so on. Playing cards goes back centuries. But for me personally, it's just a way of being together with friends and family and having a good time because when you play, you also talk about all kinds of things. You talk about food, the weather, and relations. I mean, you joke around, you tease one another. It's a way to connect, be together, and strengthen bonds between friends and family.
Tony: Once in a while, I'll take out the cards. I have three daughters, three sons-in-law, and a bunch of grandkids. My daughters and I have played since they were little, but now I've introduced it to my non-Italian sons-in-law, who enjoy it. And some of my grandchildren are also starting to play it. So it's a way of keeping our culture—one small thing within our culture, but it's an important one, similar to our food. This is one of our pastimes.
What advice would you give someone new to the game?
Tony: Enjoy its simplicity because it isn't a very difficult game to play. We had a get-together at Villa Colombo, where some people had never even seen a deck of cards of this nature. Within one session, they understood the game, and they were able to participate. Now, mind you, they needed some help, but by the time that second and third evening came, they needed no more lessons; they were squaring off with the best of us who had played before. So enjoy it as an opportunity to be with other people. Don't take it seriously.
Scopa is a good beginner's game; you can pass hours and hours. People gravitate to this because it doesn't require money. It doesn't require you to buy expensive equipment. You just need a deck of cards. You have hours and hours of fun for a couple of bucks in a day.
Joseph: It's a social game, and it has that way of putting people together, especially for people who live alone or don't have family or too many friends. It is a great way to meet people. And without any pressure, financial or otherwise, you can have a good time and have a few laughs.
Christina, who celebrates her birthday on December 22, has fond memories of her mother and nonna baking cuccidati and other Christmas cookies starting the day after Thanksgiving. She shared with me the secret to her twist on tradition, what this cookie means to her, essential Sicilian baking ingredients, and her goal with recipe development.
Describe your cuccidati recipe. How is it different from the traditional recipe?
I love this recipe. It's different in that it's vegan. The original dough is made with eggs and butter to create a shortbread-like dough, whereas mine is made with olive oil and coconut sugar to achieve a tender dough that you can roll. And I don't decorate them with sprinkles, so I guess I break all the rules.
Does this recipe have special significance to you?
My whole family loved figs. My nonno had a fig tree that was so abundant that we could not use them fast enough. My husband and I love figs as well, so this is a lovely way to honor my nonno and still make a sweet and healthy dessert.
What are the essential ingredients for baking Italian or Sicilian, specifically?
Good flour (in my case, sprouted whole wheat, but in Italy, I use farro flour), extra virgin olive oil, pine nuts, hazelnuts, almond and vanilla extract, and orange water.
What is your goal when developing recipes like this?
My goal for baking is the same as my goal for cooking. I want people to think differently about food. I want people to discover the true joy of cooking for themselves and creating dishes that their loved ones can't wait to eat. And most importantly, helping people realize that cooking is simple and easy when you use fresh ingredients. Nothing beats home cooking.
With baking, I hope people see how easy it is to create deserts that nourish us, satisfy our sweet tooth, and don't steal our wellness.
Opened in 1996 by the late Giovanni and Carolina Scordato, Scordato Bakery is one of the few Milwaukee bakeries serving specialties like Sicilian cookies, cannoli, bread, and sfinciuni.
But it wasn't always that way.
"When we first opened the bakery, there were so many Italian bakeries," says Scordato Bakery Vice President Antonella Scordato-Lorenz. "Now, there are hardly any left. It is hard work, and it's not easy. So, I'm not surprised that there are not a ton of traditional bakeries left in Milwaukee, but we are proud that we're one of them."
I recently had the opportunity to chat with Antonella and her brother, Alessandro Scordato, who serves as the bakery's president. The siblings shared their background, what goes into a typical day at Scordato, their favorite menu items, ways they ensure authenticity, advice for those interested in running a bakery, and more.
Your family is from Sicily. Tell us how Scordato got its start in Milwaukee.
Alessandro: Our parents married in Bagheria. Our dad came first in his early twenties. He started working at his uncle's bakery, Peter Sciortino Bakery. Our mom came a few years later, and they were here until 1980. We moved back to Italy for a few years, between 1985 and 1987. But they decided to move back to Milwaukee, and our dad and his friend decided to open up their own bakery called Roma Bakery in the Bay View neighborhood.
They had that for a few years. Then, our dad sold his partnership to his partner, Sal, and decided to open his own place with our mom in 1996. That's how we ended up with Scordato Bakery at our current location. We've been there ever since.
Antonella Scordato-Lorenz and Alessandro Scordato
What kind of influence did your Sicilian upbringing have on you?
Antonella: I think it was just more about our parents' work ethic than anything. I guess it's just making sure we're keeping the tradition alive and keeping the roots of the types of things that we grew up with, the pastries, food, and things like that.
Tell us about your experience taking over the bakery in 2019.
Antonella: Our mom passed away in 2000, and then it was the three of us, my brother and I, with our dad. My brother's son, Giovanni, came to work at the bakery when he was old enough, and later, our stepmom, Irina, joined us. Our dad kind of retired even though he was there almost every day.
It was hard to keep him at home. He worked his whole life and enjoyed what he did, speaking to customers and having a presence in the store. And he lived just a few blocks away, so he was never the type to just stay at home and watch TV. He was always hands-on.
Alessandro: Before our dad actually got sick, his body was starting to age, telling him, "No," but he still wanted to be there. So he would come in, not work as much as he did before, but he was around. But my sister and I took over.
We worked there pretty much our whole lives, and I did some other work when I was a teenager, but I always helped out in the store, so I got used to the hours and the work and everything little by little. Over time, it was just part of both of our lives, so it wasn't that difficult.
Our dad was always there to point us in the right direction if need be. So, once he was gone, I think our main focus was always to maintain the work ethic he instilled in us, keep quality a top priority, and just keep the legacy going. And it felt good to be able to do that and keep going in that direction.
Antonella: After he passed in 2019, it was almost like it lit a fire under us. I remember that for years, our dad always talked about how we should remodel the store and make improvements to the business. And we're just like, "Yeah, that's a good idea."
Then, after he passed, both of us decided we were going to remodel the store. We're going to not reinvent things because we wanted to keep everything the same, but it was really nice just to kind of execute that vision that he had of redoing the store and making it look so much nicer. And it actually really helped grow our business even more, which was crazy how much just remodeling the store would've made a difference. But we've just been busy and steady ever since with just our regular customers.
Alessandro: We have a really good customer base. They're really loyal, and they've always supported us year after year, so they've been a big part of our success.
What's a typical day at Scordato Bakery?
Alessandro: I start around one or two in the morning and do all the bread and roll orders for the store and delivery.
Antonella: We have the wholesale accounts that we bake for and different restaurants in the area, and then we have to make bread and rolls for the store, of course.
Alessandro: After that, I just start on whatever cookies we need to make for that day and other items like banana bread or pizza crust or calzone, stuff like that. So I get done around 11. Then, my sister works in the afternoon, and she closes and takes care of any cakes or other pastries.
Antonella: We do a lot of weddings, especially in the summer and September into the fall. We do a lot of sweet tables, wedding cakes, and regular cakes. Those are things that I take care of along with the hiring and payroll. We do the inventory, making sure everything is stocked.
We're really lucky. We have really great employees. We're so lucky to have so many of our employees with us for over two decades. We're in a really good community. We're more like a close family.
Alessandro: The work is ongoing; it never stops. You never really get to punch out when you run your own business. So if we're not at the bakery, we're going to Sam's Club or getting inventory or Restaurant Depot. There are always certain things to take care of other than at the bakery. So it keeps us busy.
Antonella: Our busiest time of year is the holidays and then a little bit into January. So we try to close for a week or so sometime in January when we're finally caught up, and things are slowing down so we can give everybody a well-deserved break.
Next year, we'll be closed for two weeks in the summer so we can spend some time with our family in Sicily. It's really hard for either of us to get away unless the bakery's actually closed. It's not like a company where we can just punch out, and I can't relax or even think about enjoying a vacation if the store's open. So it's like we've got to close in order to relax and enjoy ourselves.
Scordato cookies are a holiday favorite.
What are your favorite items on the bakery's menu and why?
Antonella: I still obsess over cookies, especially the more traditional ones like the tutu and the Sicilian rainbow cookies. Our cannoli, especially the chocolate, are always so good.
Alessandro: We'll always have cannoli when we're feeling a little nostalgic or homesick for Sicily.
Antonella: Or the sfinciuni; I still eat that on the regular. We make it every day. We'll just cut it up and put it in the back so everybody can munch on it.
When we're on vacation and closed, I always miss our bread and rolls. You won't be able to find that nice crispy bread that we have. I look forward to coming back, making another batch, and having a nice hot sandwich on bread right out of the oven.
Alessandro: One of my favorites is what our dad used to do: a mini Italian loaf right out of the oven, still hot. You just slice it down the middle. You add some extra virgin olive oil, some Romano cheese, and maybe a little bit of tomato. I eat it right out of the oven, and the texture when you first bite it, with that crispiness on the crust, is just one of a kind.
Tell us more about your sfinciuni.
Antonella: It's a traditional sfinciuni outside of the fact that the one we make for the store doesn't have anchovies. We make it without anchovies because it's not as popular here.
Ours has a traditional thick, spongy crust. It has tomato sauce, oregano, grated Romano cheese, and spices. It's just like a meatless room-temperature pizza.
We do make it with anchovies on order, but we don't typically sell it in the store. Even though it's traditional, it's not as popular that way.
Alessandro: It's a tradition in Sicily. Each family makes its own sauce with caramelized onions. Some people use the traditional primo sale cheese.
Antonella: It's what you put into the dough before you bake it in the oven. Before you put your sauce on, you make the dough, you lay it out, and then you push the primo sale into the dough. We don't make it that way for the store because it's expensive and hard to find here.
Alessandro: We've had to change it up a little bit. But the way that we make it turns out really good, especially with the Romano cheese mixed in with the breadcrumbs and the olive oil on top.
I prefer it the day after in the toaster oven, or I just throw a slice from the day before directly on the oven shelf and crisp it up. It gets this really nice crunchy taste on the outside, but it still has that sponginess on the inside.
We don't use pizza dough; we use bread dough, and that's the only way you can get that really thick spongy size on the crust. If you use regular pizza dough, then you're just going to end up with a thinner, denser crust. So if you want that nice, thick kind of pan style, you use the bread dough.
How do you ensure the authenticity of your Sicilian recipes?
Alessandro: We use simple ingredients in all of our products, especially the cookies and the bread. We don't use preservatives. Our dad always tried to keep the same recipe from Sicily that he grew up with, and our uncle taught him that. "Keep it the same. Don't do anything fancy; just keep it original."
It shows, and it makes a difference in the taste. Quality has always been our number one priority, and we ensure that the process stays the same and that the steps from start to finish remain the same every time we do something. That's helped us stay well-known with all of our customers.
Antonella: Whenever we go to Sicily, we'll bring back ingredients that we need. We get our anise oil, which we use for anise cookies.
We try to make sure we don't ever change anything or compromise just to save a few pennies. There are cheaper ways that we can do things, but that's really not how our dad did it.
Alessandro: One example is the butter. We always emphasize using a hundred percent butter. Some places do a half-and-half, half margarine and half butter. You can taste the oily difference. Things like that compromise the product, and we don't want to go down that route.
Antonella: Even when we make our cannoli cream…. I've seen recipes that are just cheap cream cheese. We use simple ricotta and sugar and chocolate chips. We make everything the way our dad did. We're not trying to save a few pennies.
You're also known for your cakes. Can you share a memorable cake order?
Antonella: One that stands out was one of my very first wedding cakes. We've been making cakes for a long time, but this one was probably one of my favorites. It was one of those ones where when you're done with it, you step back and really admire it.
It's one of our most duplicated cakes; brides will come in, see it, and want that exact same one. It's a three-tiered cake with calla lilies that are cascading down. It's simple. There's not much to it outside of the beautiful calla lilies, but it's just one of those cakes that is just really memorable.
Then there was one other cake that I made… I don't remember the cake at all, but it sticks in my mind because as I was finishing it, the bride showed up. I was still putting it together, and she started crying because she was so happy about it.
I don't remember what the cake looked like at all. I don't even know if I still have a picture of it, but I just felt the emotion of her being so overjoyed.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to start their own bakery or pursue a career in baking?
Antonella: Find a good staff, find good people that you can rely on. We wouldn't be able to do any of the things we do without our staff.
Alessandro: It's kind of a load off knowing that we can rely on them when needed. So that helps out a lot when you can trust your employees to take the next step whenever you need them to.
Antonella: Alessandro's son, Giovanni, who was named after our father, works at the bakery, and he's an incredible help. He is such a hard worker, and he definitely helps with a ton of things: a lot of what our mom showed me how to do, like our lasagna that we make on weekends or different things, like our homemade sauce and meatballs that I used to make.
Now, I spend most of my time just making cakes and pastries, and he's able to pick up that tradition and help me with those types of things, and he's great at it. So, it's great to have him be a part of our bakery and our legacy and help us.
You have to get good employees that you can trust and rely on, and you have to make sure that you're willing to give the best customer service and always put that first. I feel like that's so important. Every time I see another good review, another five-star review on Google, I'm just like, "Well, they were impressed with our customer service." I feel like that's so important nowadays.
Alessandro: It's hard to go into a place and actually talk to the owner or someone that's part of the business. Our dad said, "It's easy to open up a business. It's difficult to keep it successful year after year after year."
It takes a lot of work, dedication, and sacrifice, and you have to focus on these things. Otherwise, you won't be successful.
Antonella: You're always kind of on call if something happens; it kind of never ends. You have got to be willing to part with time and be as dedicated as possible.
What do you hope customers will take away?
Alessandro: I'm hoping that whoever reads this understands that we're a small family business, and we hope that they appreciate all the hard work and the products that we've put out. It's difficult to find local businesses nowadays. We hope to continue the tradition for another 30 years, hopefully, and God willing. We're happy with what we do, and we're hoping to continue the legacy of our parents.
Drawing on the more than 1,000-year tradition of Sicilian hand embroidery, Palermo-based luxury lifestyle brand Manima offers such exclusive, high-end products as home decor, linens, resort wear, and wearable art, all crafted using traditional techniques.
With a beautiful atelier in the city's historic center, Manima, which takes its name from Mani + Anima, meaning hands and soul, was founded by the husband-and-wife team of CEO Carolina Guthmann and Executive President Piero di Pasquale. The company focuses on combining female artisanship with technology and social impact with a platform to connect embroiderers across villages to Manima headquarters, allowing women to be included remotely while maintaining control over the quality, deadlines, and design.
Carolina recently took time out of her busy schedule to share more about Manima and the Sicilian hand-embroidery tradition.
Tell us about Manima and how it started.
It was born from the desire my husband and I had to do something meaningful in the second part of our lives, after a long and successful career in multinational corporate companies and RAI Television on my husband's side.
We left our careers, studied and researched for over a year, and then found the project that would satisfy our wish to generate social impact, work with high-end artisans, and preserve a cultural heritage. That was hand embroidery because it has a market that never dies out; it is typically female in Italy and had a very important social role in the past until globalization hit local artisanship. It is also a form of artistic handicraft that can be done in groups and even large groups; it creates strong social bonds and can be re-interpreted endlessly.
What is your background?
I have a degree in macro-economy and worked for many years in top management roles in multinational companies, such as Procter & Gamble, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Merck.
My husband is a former TV journalist and was, among other things, an anchorman in the U.S. for RAI public TV. He has a background in political sciences and international relations and was the Director of RAI News worldwide.
What are the unique characteristics of Sicilian hand embroidery featured in your products?
Sicilian hand embroidery is rich and diverse, reflecting the island's history of 26 different conquests, each leaving its mark on local craftsmanship. This eclectic mix of influences has shaped a wide range of styles and techniques, making Sicilian embroidery truly one of a kind.
One of the standout techniques is pulled thread embroidery, a traditional Sicilian method that we incorporate in a modern and distinctive way. For instance, this technique is central to our Saline resort line, as well as our collection of colorful and vibrant table linens, giving a fresh twist to classic craftsmanship.
Moreover, throughout Sicily, many small villages have preserved and perfected unique embroidery methods over generations. We have carefully selected and partnered with some of these master artisans, integrating their extraordinary skills into our project. Their expertise ensures that each piece carries the authentic spirit of Sicilian heritage while embracing contemporary design.
When and how did the tradition of embroidery as part of a dowry originate in Sicily?
The tradition of embroidery as part of a Sicilian dowry is a reflection of the island's rich and diverse history. It evolved through centuries of cultural exchange and was a testament to the bride's skills, her family's status, and the importance of craftsmanship in Sicilian life.
This practice likely originated during the Middle Ages, influenced by the various cultures that conquered and ruled Sicily, including the Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, and Spanish, each contributing to local customs and aesthetics.
Already under Byzantine influence, Sicily saw the rise of luxurious and intricate embroidery, especially with aristocratic families, and embroidery was a way to showcase wealth and status, becoming an important element of bridal trousseaus prepared for marriage.
This further evolved under Arab influence and later in the Norman and Spanish periods. It was in later periods that embroidery flourished within Sicilian noble families and started to spread among middle-class families.
Dowries had of course also a social role as a reflection of a family's social status or as a symbolic value featuring religious or protective motifs intended to bring good fortune, fertility, and protection to the marriage.
What do the various motifs and patterns in Sicilian embroidery represent?
Apart from religious motifs like crosses, sacred hearts, and others, the rich nature in Sicily has inspired many motifs.
Flowers and Leaves: Floral patterns are very common in Sicilian embroidery, often symbolizing beauty, fertility, and growth. Flowers like roses or pomegranates may represent love, life, and renewal.
Wheat: Sicily has a strong agricultural tradition, and wheat is often a symbol of abundance, prosperity, and good harvests. Wheat motifs in embroidery might also evoke wishes for the family's financial success and stability.
Olive Branches: The olive tree is a symbol of peace and longevity, as well as a representation of Sicilian heritage and the importance of agriculture.
How is the tradition of embroidery passed down through generations in Sicilian families?
In the past, embroidery was part of a girl's upbringing and traditionally regarded as an essential skill for women, particularly in rural Sicilian communities, where it was a reflection of a girl's domestic ability, patience, and creativity.
Furthermore, in some Sicilian villages, embroidery was not just confined to the family but extended to a whole community of women across generations, and many villages are known for their specialization in specific embroidery techniques. Families in these villages would take great pride in perfecting these methods and passing them down, ensuring that unique regional styles were preserved and celebrated across generations.
What efforts are being made to preserve and promote the tradition of Sicilian embroidery today?
Locally, in some places there are efforts by small groups of embroiderers, sponsored by mayors or churches. There are many little museums in Sicily, but they are almost unknown and rarely visited. As of my knowledge, there is no other project like ours that uses advanced technology to preserve an ancient tradition.
Driven to rejuvenate Pezzolo, the Sicilian community her parents once called home, Mariagrazia LaFauci founded Trinacria Theatre Company in 2016. While the company's shape has changed, its focus on community building, placemaking, and intercultural exchange has remained in a way that defies convention.
Unlike most theater companies, Trinacria doesn't perform in theaters. Instead, they've been known to take over piazzas, terraces, and even soccer fields to perform pieces rooted in tradition as well as original productions.
I had the opportunity to speak with Mariagrazia, who also serves as Trinacria Theatre Company's artistic director, to learn more about its important work and what she hopes audiences will take away.
What inspired the creation of the Trinacria Theatre Company?
In the summers, I spent most of my life going back and forth to Pezzolo because my family lived there.
Around the time I was getting ready to graduate college, I started thinking about doing a project to help the village. Sicily has gone through a real diaspora, with many people leaving and many businesses going under.
In 2008, the year I graduated high school and went to college, the last bar in Pezzolo slowly shut down, and life screeched to a halt. Nobody had a place to meet up. That kind of really important cultural community space was just gone. I saw the population plummet after that.
Then, there was a really massive storm here in 2009 that really impacted people, and actually, quite a few people died in Giampilieri Superiore, which is the next town over, and a lot of homes were destroyed.
All of that together was just terrible and devastating. When I graduated from college, I started looking for opportunities to do a fellowship or something that would let me give back to this community. In 2016, I started the theater company here in Pezzolo to do that.
How did the company evolve over the years?
It's gone through many different iterations. In 2016, it started out with just an all-volunteer cast out of Boston and New York City. I held auditions in both places and found this group of actors. We were like, "Okay, let's go do this. Let's spend four weeks in Sicily and create a piece of theater about it."
It was such a beautiful piece, called La Storia di Colapesce, based on a local myth that's really closely connected to Messina. We toured it around Sicily and brought it back to the U.S., where we did it in Boston and New York.
Then there was a year gap because I went and did my master's during that year. But when we came back, I was sort of like, "That was beautiful, but how do we expand beyond just dropping a bunch of people here, doing a show all on our own, performing it, and then leaving? How do we make this a community event and space?"
So, we started to play around with this festival format, where we did workshops and storytelling circles. We put on an exhibit by a local artist, created pieces, and featured these local theater companies. Then it was like, "Oh, there's something here."
Since then, there's been more of a festival format to it all. And so it's gone through different iterations. Sometimes, we do create shows; sometimes, we don't create shows. This year was an open residency, which we've done twice now, where we just look for artists, they apply, and then we bring them in for residency. They get to kind of use the time and the space to create on their own independently, and then they share that in the festival afterward.
Tell us where you perform.
We don't use traditional theater spaces at all. We use piazzas, streets, and abandoned spaces wherever we can find them. This year, we held events on a terrace and a soccer field.
I love theaters. I genuinely love them and will always love sitting in a seat, the lights going dark, and all the bells and whistles that come with it. But I think that space can be intimidating for people sometimes if it's not the kind of space you regularly engage with. Sometimes, it can feel a little bit like you're going into the temple or church of a religion you don't belong to, and you're kind of like, "When do I sit? When do I stand? What are the rules? What do I say?" And that feels intimidating for people.
We take it from that context and just plunk it into, "This is your piazza. If you're going to answer a phone call, your kid's going to run across the piazza, or you're talking in the corner, we can't stop you, but we will also put on a show for you. So, if you also want to sit and watch that, great." It's a very different vibe.
How does that unconventional style translate to your performances?
Necessity is the mother of invention. We've got no stage, we've got no lights, we've got no speakers, we've got nothing. How are we going to put on the most incredible show possible? So, you take a show like Colapesce, which will take place 80% underwater and also in a volcano, and all of these things that are completely impossible to stage. How are you going to do that with absolutely zero lights, sound, set, or props to indicate we're underwater? It was like, "Cool. We have our bodies and voices. We have some music that we can make using these three instruments that we brought. Let's do it. What are a million different ways that you can make someone look like they're swimming when they're not really swimming?" And so that was how our first piece was made. It's very physical, it's very playful, it's very silly at times.
How does communal living during the residency foster creativity?
The artists who come here always live together in a shared house, sometimes even shared rooms, depending on the number of people and what they've agreed to.
For me, it's two things. One is Italian households. They're intergenerational. There are often a lot of family members. I've got my aunt, who lives five minutes down the road, and I'm probably at her house eating dinner two to three times a week. Communal meal times are so important; that family connection is so important. It's part of Italian culture. It would be weird if we didn't all eat together as a company. I always make sure you're living together or sharing meals together. And then, often, what comes out of that is people who find these points of connection.
One of the other things I do as part of the residency is each artist leads a morning warmup. They get a chance to present their practice in some way. And the people who come here are some visual artists, some of them are writers, and some of them are theater majors. They all go at it from such different angles, but they get this morning of "Hey, you're going to engage with my creative practice today, and that's going to set you up for whatever it is that you're going to do for the rest of the day, or how you're thinking."
So, these really wonderful synergies come out of that often where somebody says, "What you did today really resonated with me. I didn't realize that you did that. I want that in my piece. Can you help me? Can we collaborate on this?"
These cool little collaborations naturally and organically emerge, or people just bring wild talents, and suddenly, you figure out that this person can play a kazoo in this piece.
What impact did the pandemic have on the company?
It was tough. We had decided to do the open residency for the first time that year. We'd chosen four really incredible artists, but obviously, they couldn't come to Sicily that year.
What was really miraculous was they all waited the two years that it took for us to finally be able to travel again. And so they came in 2022, which was amazing.
It was a tough year. I had been living in London up until that year. In February, I found out that we'd gotten an Arts Council England grant to do a research and development period on a show we'd been creating called the Hades & Persephone Project.
We'd gotten this amazing grant, and I had these incredible actors ready to do it. Then, the pandemic shut the whole thing down. So, I got to go back to London in 2021, and we were able to use those grant funds to do the project.
One of the really cool things that happened during the pandemic was we created an audiobook. We took the Colapesce story we created in 2016 and turned it into an audio story. We had music, and we did all the sound effects.
During the pandemic, many people said, "Oh, Shakespeare wrote King Lear during a pandemic." But I had this feeling: We have to take care of ourselves first. We can't just be creative when things are hard just because we've suddenly got time and space to do it. So, it was also important to put the brakes on and make sure that everybody was taken care of first and foremost.
How has your work bridged cultural gaps?
One of the things I am most excited about is seeing some of the folks here who really want to get involved. For example, there's this wonderful young woman who doesn't live in Pezzolo, but her grandfather, Stephano, does. Her name is Giada. Giada speaks beautiful English. She's going to go to school for translation.
She's 18 years old but is so put together, articulate, and smart. She has come in and done translations, gotten involved with the performances, and taken on many directing roles over the years. It's been cool to see her develop this way.
Her grandfather, Stefano, was an incredible artist. He works with wood. He used to work a lot with steel, but he'll find beautiful pieces of twisted olive wood, and they'll turn into an octopus lamp or something incredible like that. A lot of people in Pezzolo didn't know that he had this incredible museum of his work in his house. And so he started featuring his stuff and putting it out there during the festival.
The two of them are a really great example for me. Every year, somebody has this incredible connection with Stefano, where they wind up at his house every day working in his shop, having coffee with him, helping with a piece, and putting his stuff on display. It's this wonderful interaction.
I feel like these micro-interactions happen all over the village when we're doing this residency.
How else have you involved the community in your shows?
Whatever we do has to involve the community in some way. And so when I'm looking for artists, I'm looking for artists who have some sort of a community focus to their work. I tell them that it can be part of the process, especially for the open residency where they're creating their own pieces. It could be part of the final piece of what you perform, but in some way, you have to engage with this community and have them be a part of what you're doing, which isn't always easy. Sometimes, people just want to sit back and be audience members.
So it's about finding people like Giada and Stefano who really want to be up on the stage, in the audience, and in the crowds. Finding ways for people who don't often go to museums or theaters to feel like they can engage is such an interesting artistic challenge.
Sometimes, it can be a really low-stakes engagement. Instead of sitting back, you'll be walking around and following the narrator. Last year, the piece that we built went through the whole village. It took you through a tunnel, and there were calls and responses to it and things like that. Some of those can be really low-stakes ways to engage, and some can be really high-engagement.
We had this one incredible artist, Heloise Wilson, who is just so phenomenal. She did this whole storytelling workshop. With the stories told through that workshop, she created these beautiful little posters that were put up around town with snippets of the stories, photos, and images. Then, she created a chorale piece that members of the community performed. She crafted this beautiful Greek chorale poem using their words, and they performed it as part of the festival. They did an amazing job, and she guided and facilitated that.
Your pieces tap into folklore and mythology. Tell us about a particularly inspiring one.
My brain immediately goes to the story of Mata & Grifone, the last full theater piece we created last year. We created this piece based on the Hades & Persephone Project. The story of Hades and Persephone is the most well-known outside of Sicily, but here in Messina, Mata and Grifone is the best known.
It's the story of these two giants. Mata is a Sicilian princess, and she's white. Grifone is a Moorish conqueror, and he's black. This is set during the time when Sicily was an Arab Emirate and had been conquered by North African Islamic conquerors. And so the two of them see one another and fall in love. Her father objects, and he locks her away in a tower.
Her father would only accept it if Grifone converted to Christianity, which he did for them to be married. And so the two of them become the rulers of Messina.
They're now the pagan deities of Messina. Every summer during Ferragosto, these massive paper mâché statues of these two giants parade through the streets.
They're known as the ancestors of all Messina people because we're all said to have descended from them. They had so many kids together. I love this story so much, first of all, because it's the story of this interracial couple on an island where I think xenophobia and racism are quite present today.
Also, Sicily itself has an incredible multicultural background. It was Arab for 200 years. It's been Spanish, French, Greek, and everything in between. There are so many cultures. It's a continent and island, and that's where we come from.
At a time where now we're facing these really harsh lines drawn, politically, especially for people who are refugees or who are emigrating from the African continent into Europe through Sicily. Seeing the really beautiful presence of these two lovers, who are the ancestors of all Sicilians, reminds us that this is where we all come from.
There's a harshness to it, a difficulty to it. Grifone had to give up a part of his cultural identity and religion to be with this person. So it's complex, it's nuanced, and it's celebrated throughout Messina.
How do you ensure your productions remain authentic and respectful to other cultures?
It's always about talking to people authentically and respectfully. If it's always rooted in a truly excellent intention, "I believe that your story is worth telling, and it's worth telling with honesty, respect, and integrity."
You're always approaching it with that lens. I'm part of this group called ITDS (Indie Theatres Dismantling Supremacy). We're this cohort of artistic directors of small independent theaters that came together in 2020 to talk about how our organizations exist in a world where there's white supremacy, and there's oppression. There are all of these systematic things that we all have to deal with, and we all have to consider how they show up in the worlds where we're working.
Something about showing care and kindness to the people you're around is so simple. When you take that care and kindness and implement it into the systems you're building—because we're all building systems—to function or survive and be sustainable, we have to systematize certain things. But when that kindness and that care are embedded in you, it's a part of what you do.
I think we've never approached it without the angle of, "We do this because we love these people, and we're going to listen to these people and listen to these stories, and we want to involve you and not force you into being involved if that's not what you want." We always bring it back to kindness, which has been a much more powerful driver than I think I would've ever thought it was.
What do you hope audiences take away?
There are different parts of an audience. There's the local audience, the Pezzolo people. And I think what I really want them to leave with is, "I live in a place that is capable of producing great art and great beauty."
Every day can be activated, brought to life, and turned into something beautiful if you just apply a creative lens to it. And the place where I live is capable of being that spark and being activated into that beauty.
When I was growing up, holiday gatherings with my Sicilian family meant that everyone brought a favorite dish to add to supper. In addition to giardiniera, bean and tomato salad, and pasta, we could always expect trays of Italian cookies. A favorite was the tetú, a dense, chewy chocolate cookie with a light glaze.
Traditionally served on All Saints' Day in Sicily, these so-called "sweets of the dead" are a hit any time of the year. Our family includes them on Christmas cookie platters, and they frequently show up on Sicilian wedding cookie tables.
I was thrilled to find a recipe for this classic Italian cookie on Alexa Peduzzi's Fooduzzi.com. Alexa's recipe is inspired by her Nana's. Her twist? They are plant-based.
Alexa and I discussed her background and the significance of the tetú (or, as Alexa says, "to to").
Tell me about your background. Where is your family from?
We're from all over the boot! One of my great-grandpas was from L'Aquila, my great-grandma was from Calabria, and I had some family up in Schignano on Lake Como.
What does your heritage mean to you?
When I was a kid, I actually thought everyone was Italian because celebrating that part of my heritage happened all of the time and just seemed so normal and universal.
I'm really proud to be Italian, largely because we're a big food family. So being Italian (to me and my family) means black olives on our fingers at dinnertime, homemade pasta swirled into savory sauces, and simple desserts like these to tos.
Walking into an Italian grocery store (like Penn Mac in the Strip District in Pittsburgh) is always the best sensory experience for me; the scent of cheese, olives, and oils smells like my childhood!
What are to tos, and how/when are they typically served?
At their core, to tos are chocolate cookies with a simple vanilla icing. They're crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. I think there's a similar version of these cookies floating around called "meatball cookies," which is very accurate given their look before they're iced.
I'm from Pittsburgh, and the "wedding cookie table" is a very important part of our culture here. So, I saw them a lot at weddings growing up. Now, we mostly have them at Christmas, and I look forward to them every single year.
What is the significance of this recipe for you?
These are, hands down, my favorite cookies.
Yes, they're delicious, but this recipe is one that I always consider "our family recipe." I've never really seen to tos anywhere else, but I always look forward to them at family gatherings.
To tos are a simple chocolate cookie, but they're so much more than that. When I bite into them, I'm always taken back to the weddings I attended, the birthday get-togethers we had, and the visits with family that included these cookies.
They're as much a memory as they are a recipe.
How is this recipe different from the traditional version?
My Nana's version of this recipe is very similar to mine; mine uses vegan butter instead of regular butter. I tried to keep my version as close to the original as possible, considering the original has been my favorite treat for over 30 years!
I'm not really sure that my Nana would have really understood my desire to make to tos plant-based, but making this recipe always makes me feel close to her, even with my tweaks.
What do you hope at-home cooks and bakers will take away from your recipes?
I hope they're able to take one of my recipes and say, "Wow, this tastes great, and it's plant-based," rather than something like, "This tastes great for a plant-based recipe."
I'm plant-based because I love animals, and I figure if I can satisfy my body with foods that don't require them, I should.
I don't believe that there's one universal way of eating for every person, but I hope my recipes show people who are interested in plant-based options how simple, tasty, and uncomplicated they can be.
What is your goal with Fooduzzi?
My goals have changed so much over the years! I started Fooduzzi almost 10 years ago, and when I first started, my goal was to take it full-time and work for myself.
That said, I soon realized that I'm a terrible boss for myself! So, it's very much a hobby and a hub where I share the recipes that I love at the moment. I'm not actively creating new recipes; I'm now sharing more of the recipes I've started making and truly love.
NOLA's muffuletta has Sicilian roots. Photo by Laura Guccione
New Orleans is renowned for its cuisine. But when it comes to several of its most iconic dishes, some credit should go to the area's Sicilian transplants, says Louisiana historian Laura Guccione.
"If you think about something like shrimp creole with tomatoes in it, a lot of people have said that it definitely has a Sicilian influence," says Laura. "And if you go to a restaurant here, a lot of places have stuffed artichokes on the menu. That's definitely directly from Sicily."
Curious about the Sicilian origins of Louisiana's plants and foods, the Delgado Culinary School graduate pursued a master's in urban studies at the University of New Orleans. Her graduate thesis evolved into two New Orleans history book manuscripts, one on St. Joseph's Day and the other on Sicilians and Creole Cuisine, both currently under peer review by LSU Press.
I caught up with Laura to learn more about how Sicilians colored New Orleans's rich history. She shared some of the more surprising food contributions and how Sicilian corner stores promoted what's become known as New Orleans cuisine.
What is your background?
I'm a native New Orleanian but grew up in the suburbs. My father's a hundred percent Sicilian. His story is interesting because his father was born in Louisiana, but in Lettsworth, Louisiana, which is north of Baton Rouge and sugar cane country. His grandfather did not like it here, so they went back to Sicily. So, my grandfather was an American citizen. He was born here but was raised in Sicily. He came back as a teenager at 17 and then lived in New Orleans. I still have direct cousins in Sicily because his brother stayed in Sicily.
My mother's family is from the very beginning of New Orleans. They're a Creole family, also Scots-Irish.
I grew up here, worked in the service industry for about 30 years, tending bar, and then decided to go back to school after Hurricane Katrina.
I went to culinary school, but I soon realized that as much as I loved restaurants, food, and cooking, I was really more interested in history. So, a few years later, I went back to get my master's degree from the University of New Orleans.
How did the challenges Sicilian immigrants faced influence their culinary contributions?
Sicilians assimilated quicker than most places, so I think it's harder to see what they've done. They immediately spread all over the city, including on the West Bank, uptown, downtown, and outside of New Orleans, because many of them came to work the sugarcane fields.
They were basically migrant workers. They would come here, spend time in Louisiana, then go to Chicago and go up to where other things were being harvested.
They went back and forth, which contributed to agriculture. Many Sicilians had small farms outside of New Orleans, almost within the city limits.
What happened with the Sicilians is that they contributed a lot to Creole cuisine. It's not as obvious as an actual dish, with the exception of the muffuletta and a few other things that are obviously Sicilian.
They were changing cuisine here because what they were growing was what they were familiar with. They were coming back and forth so they could bring seeds and plants. They were going into the field of producing, growing, producing, and distributing fruits, vegetables, and even oysters and fish.
In the history of recipes, you can see that as more and more Sicilians come here, you see a change in what's being used. For example, everybody talks about the trinity [onions, bell peppers, and celery]. Paul Prudhomme was the first one to start using that. I talked to his sous chef recently, and he said Paul only really cooked with celery once he got here. Where does celery come from? It comes from Sicily.
A lot of old gumbo recipes barely have anything in them. Through the years, you see more onions; you see more celery and peppers. Because what do they eat in Sicily more than anything? Peppers, onions, celery, and tomatoes.
What's a surprising Sicilian contribution to New Orleans cuisine?
If you look at the history of the poor boy, it was created by the Martin Brothers. But they went to their Sicilian baker neighbor to have the bread made.
Baguettes from France are long and skinny with pointy ends. They went to their neighbor and said, "We need to change this because we want to make these sandwiches, but we don't want to lose that end. We want something rounder and wider."
So Sicilians and the Martin Brothers created this loaf of bread that is now synonymous with the city. And what do people come here for? Poor boys.
Another contribution is the muffuletta. Can you describe its creation?
No one will probably be able to prove how it really started. There's Central Grocery and a place a couple of doors down called Progress. They both said that they created the muffuletta. Progress is gone, so it's pretty much accepted that it was created at Central Grocery.
The story goes that Central Grocery sold the bread, which, if you go to Sicily, the muffuletta is just a round bread. Sometimes, people would serve it hot with olive oil and fennel seeds on it, but it's just bread. It's not a sandwich in Sicily.
Central Grocery had the bread and all the pieces; they would sell the salami, cheese, and olives in the big barrels and bundle up stuff for the men to go to work.
One day, they said, "Why don't we just put it all together and make this easier?"
That's an example of a Sicilian-owned grocery store having an impact. What is the history of these stores?
At one point, probably in the early 1900s, maybe even heading into the mid-1900s, most of the grocery stores were owned by Sicilians or their children. They tended to be on a corner, and you didn't have a major grocery store, so that's where you probably got everything. You probably knew the people. And then there are lots of stories where the Sicilian families would let people buy on credit. So, there was definitely dependence upon the neighborhood, and the neighborhood depended on the grocers, who sold everything from flour to clothes.
Mandina's Restaurant and Napoleon House both started off as grocery stores. Most of these places started off as grocery stores, became bars, and then became restaurants.
The story with Napoleon House is that the owner at the time said, "We'll make some sandwiches." And then it just evolved from there. Now, it's probably one of the most famous restaurants in the world.
What is your goal in writing about Sicilian-New Orleans cuisine and culture?
I really just want to shine a light on what I feel is a somewhat neglected history. I want something that could be used as a reference later. It's like all this work I'm doing is not just for me but for posterity.
Sicilian folk music, ranging from lullabies to harvest songs, has served as a cultural backbone for centuries. A fusion of Greek and Byzantine hymns, Arabic Maqam, and Spanish styles, the island's unique sounds were recorded and cataloged by American musicologist Alan Lomax as part of his Italian Treasury: Sicily.
Lomax recorded the voices of peasants, shepherds, salt and sulfur miners, cart drivers, and fishermen and uncovered music related to festivals, dance, religion, and storytelling. In doing so, he also introduced the sounds of Sicily's traditional musical instruments, many of which I highlight along with video performances below.
Ciaramedda
Native to rural Sicily and Calabria, particularly in the province of Messina in Sicily, the ciaramedda or ciaramèddha consists of a goatskin bag, a blowpipe that inflates the bag, two chanters (the part of the bagpipe used to create the melody) that are typically made of fruit wood or heather wood, and two or three drones, which provide the harmony.
Friscaletto
Once commonly played by shepherds, the fiscaletto or friscalettu is similar in appearance to the recorder that most American schoolchildren are taught to play. But instead of plastic, it's typically made of cane, featuring a hollow cylinder with seven holes in the front and two holes in the rear.
Marranzano
Colloquially referred to as the "jaw harp," a name that originates from jeu-trompe, the French word for trumpet, the marranzano or marranzanu is similar to instruments found throughout Asia. Italy's first marranzani can be traced to the 16th century, and there's evidence of its use in Sicily and Sardinia in the 18th century. Giuseppe Pitrè's Canti popolari Siciliani (Sicilian Folk Songs) was published in 1870. Since then, this circular metal instrument has become a part of Sicilian folk tradition.
Tamborello
Whether it originated in western Africa, the Middle East, Greece, or India, most scholars believe that the tambourine was one of the first instruments created by humans. It dates as far back as 1700 BC, roughly within the New Stone Age or Neolithic Period. Called the tamborello in Italy, this percussion instrument was traditionally made of stretched skin over a wooden frame. In Sicily, it's typically played during tarantella dances.
The putipùor cupa cupa is a friction drum composed of three key parts: a bamboo reed, a drum membrane, and a cylindrical sound box. The sound is made by rubbing a wet hand on the reed, which vibrates the membrane. Drum tones vary based on the size of the sound box and the thickness of the membrane.
Among the cornerstones of rural life in Sicily was the tradition of using and maintaining a public oven. It was a practice born from necessity. Because few rural people had their own ovens throughout Italy's history, communities would rely on one that was communally shared.
Ancient Rome once hosted a vast network of at least 500 public ovens, which spread throughout Europe from the 14th to the 19th centuries. Citizens would bring dough to bake bread together in the community oven, which was a place where the rich and poor would bake side-by-side, stories would be swapped, and relationships would blossom.
It lasted until after World War II when most people purchased their own ranges and baked in their own homes. Much was gained in convenience, but was something lost in shedding this ancient practice?
Several people have asked that question, which has led to the creation of community ovens across the United States.
Vermont art teacher and former librarian Jen Burton and her friend Mark Woodward, a former state legislator, founded the Johnson Community Oven in 2017.
A family-friendly place where locals have gathered to communally dine on fresh-baked pizzas, the oven is primarily supported by donations and grants. Elmore Mountain Bread, Jasper Hill Farm, and Foote Brook Farm have all contributed food. And residents have donated building materials and wood. The oven has served as a glue, further connecting people in this town of just over 3,000 people.
Jen and I recently sat down to chat about how she and Mark got started, what goes into running a community oven, how it's used, and how the Johnson Community Oven ties to public oven tradition.
What exactly is a community oven?
I guess it doesn't have to be the same thing everywhere, but in Johnson, it's an oven that sits on town property and is available for anyone in the community to use. You need to sign up with the town, fill out a form, and say when you'll use it. Hopefully, you will get a little bit of training from an oven volunteer. Often, people will reach out to someone on the oven committee, and committee members will run the oven for their event.
There's a community pizza night that happens for about eight weeks each summer. The oven committee, along with other volunteers, organizes and hosts it. The pizza is free—by donation—and the committee often gets grants and other donations to supplement the cost.
Tell us how you got started.
My stepmom and her partner built an oven in their backyard, and they sometimes fire it up and invite people in the neighborhood to bring their own baked goods, like bread and other things, to bake. I knew about that, and then I heard a piece on Vermont Public Radio about an oven in Norwich, VT. It had been there for a long time, and somebody had just started using it to bake bread once a week. People would sign up for a loaf of bread.
Mark and I both independently heard that story. He kept talking about how he wanted a bread oven in town, and I decided to take action.
I did the groundwork to get the approval from the town. I had to defend the idea at a select board meeting, where everybody grilled me with questions for an hour. A big question was where to put it; there was a lot of conversation about that.
Once we had the approval, we hired a local mason to build it. People contributed stones and other items to be built into it, which added another aspect of community involvement. That was Mark's idea and turned out to be pretty cool.
Describe the oven and the space where it's located.
It's a big stone wood-burning oven, probably about six feet across each side, and it sits in a 12 x 16 structure. It's on a green in town next to an elementary school. In the summer, we have a Tuesday night live concert series there. So, the oven is kind of an extenuation of how we use that space in town.
How many pizzas can you fit in there at a time?
About three pizzas can be cooked at once. On a good night, they've made up to 90 pizzas for people in just a few hours, so they really crank out the pizzas. They do a great job.
How else is the oven used?
It's been used for birthday parties, retirement parties, and a few fundraising events. The library has started to collaborate with the oven committee on pizza nights. They've been providing some activities and music.
How has the use of the Johnson community oven changed?
It was built in the fall of 2017. We didn't use it much that winter, but we started to use it more the next summer. Initially, it was a free-for-all, with everybody bringing toppings and everybody making pizza, including kids. It was nice—messy but nice.
Then COVID happened, so we couldn't really do it that way anymore. The committee worked together to formulate a new plan in which just a few people made the pizzas, and nobody else was around. A pickup system was developed where we would tell people online what would be available that day, and they would come to pick them up.
We started to give people whole pizzas in boxes, and they would pick them up and leave instead of hanging around the field. Once COVID started to abate, people started to come onto the field again and spend more time with their neighbors. We had more volunteers helping with the baking, but this core group of people was still doing all the work, like making and cooking the pizzas.
Just this year, they started to open it up again and have more people come in, with more people bringing ingredients. And now it's a bit back to being more of a community-involved event.
I think people like it to be more participatory, and I think the people running it appreciate not having all the pressure on them. Also, there tend to be just one or two people who cook the whole time because that is more of a skill, but I think a wider range of people are coming in, bringing things in, and making the pizzas.
You talked about pizza. What other dishes can be made in the oven?
Richard Miscovich's book From the Wood-Fired Oven is a really great resource. I took a class from him to learn more about using ovens, which was really helpful.
I still love his onion recipe. He just put onions in a pot and put them in the oven; they're one of the best things that comes out of the oven.
But I've made bread, cookies, and garlic knots in that oven. The nice thing about the oven is that after the high temperatures of the pizza cooking, you can use the lower temperatures to do other things in it. So there's a cycle to it where you can cook at the high heat with certain things and then cook other things at the lower heat. People don't take advantage of it in that way as much as they could.
How does this oven tie to public oven tradition?
NPR's Shankar Vedantam has talked about how food really brings people together, so a lot of the reasoning behind doing it was based on that. It just felt like there needed to be something to bring different factions of the town together.
It's something that has been a central component of a community for hundreds or maybe thousands of years. Some towns only had one oven, where people would come to cook, so everybody would see each other there and have to cooperate.
So, part of the foundation for wanting to build it was to build something that would bring people together and make them work together toward a common goal.
In Vermont, we have Town Meeting Day. It's a cultural phenomenon. It's one day when people come to vote on their town budgets. It's an interesting thing that I don't think many other states, if any, have.
We have a potluck on Town Meeting Day. The oven is right next to the elementary school, where the town meeting is held. Over the past few years, people have made pizza for the potluck.
How would you describe the experience?
Overall, it's been a positive experience for the town. I think a lot of people really do like it. It's a very positive, family-friendly experience.
A classic Italian soup, traditionally made from vegetable scraps and paired with beans and sometimes pasta, minestrone is the perfect first course for a Sicilian supper. There are a variety of ways to prepare this meal starter, but I was drawn to a recipe by Nadia Fazio of Mangia Bedda.
Nadia's blog reflects her quest to transcribe all of her mother's classic recipes. It has an even deeper meaning for her now that their mother has passed.
I sat down with Nadia to discuss her Sicilian-Canadian upbringing, the origin of Mangia Bedda (and its name), the right way to make minestrone, and the art of shelling your own beans.
What's your background?
I'm Italian-Canadian. Both my parents, however, were born in Sicily. They are actually from the same little town in Sicily (Naso in the province of Messina). My father emigrated to Canada in 1954. My mom, after they got married, came here and joined in 1959.
What was it like growing up Sicilian Canadian?
My siblings and I grew up with all the typical Italian traditions that they brought over from Sicily. It's interesting because it appears that when people came here from Sicily, it was sort of like time froze. They maintained the exact same traditions, with regard to food and family, that they practiced in Sicily.
I grew up with the typical Sicilian foods, all the traditional foods, all homemade from scratch, especially at this time of the year, all of the preserving, making the tomato sauce and all the different vegetables, the beans, and roasting the peppers and the eggplants and all of that.
I grew up surrounded by that, and I think my memories of my childhood and my parents are all, for the most part, actually centered around food, and I didn't appreciate it at the time. I really did not appreciate it.
I remember being dragged to a local farmers market in Montreal, and I found it so drab. I mean, I was a kid. It was boring, and it's one of my favorite places today.
Another memory that stands out is going to a farm outside of the city to get fresh milk (probably unpasteurized at the time) so that my mom could come home and make ricotta with it.
Tell us about your project, Mangia Bedda.
I started this blog almost 10 years ago as a little part-time hobby. It slowly grew and evolved, and I realized that my mission was really to transcribe all of my mom's recipes so that they wouldn't be lost. Most importantly, I wanted to write them down and get the correct quantities of ingredients because whenever you speak to an Italian nonna about how much flour goes into a recipe, it's as much as needed.
I started going to my mom's home to prepare one recipe at a time, watching her make it and stopping her at every step. "Wait, Mom, I've got to measure. I've got to weigh; I've got to write down how much it is." So that's what I did because I wanted to make sure that I had my favorite recipes. And that's even more dear to me now. I'm so grateful that I had the opportunity to do that.
I lost my mom a year ago, actually. So I am ever so grateful that I had that opportunity to do that because I have the recipes, not only for me, but I see how much they're appreciated by the types of comments and feedback I get from my readers, who are so happy that I took the time to document them. They share these memories of growing up with these recipes and are so happy that there's a place where they can get them.
Where does the name of your blog come from?
Bedda means my pretty one or beautiful one. And that's of significance to me because when I was little, I only met my nonna twice in my lifetime. She lived in Sicily, but I remember I was two years old when I met her, and apparently, I didn't want to eat. She always said those words to me, "Mangia, bedda," to coax me to eat.
What does this minestrone remind you of?
The first thing that comes to mind is memories of this time of year, specifically because this was when my mom made huge batches of minestrone, and she had all the vegetables from my dad's garden. So, if I look at all the ingredients and the recipe, the celery came from the garden. The tomatoes came from the garden. The zucchini and the green beans came from the garden. Oh, and some of the greens, I put in fresh spinach that's easily accessible, but you can use any greens in the garden.
I remember my mom making huge batches. She would freeze it before adding pasta and put it into freezer bags. She had a freezer full; we used to have the deep-chest freezer that we had in the garage at the time. She would take out a bag at a time and cook it up for us.
So, what exactly is minestrone?
It's an Italian vegetable and bean soup. The key component is that it's vegetables and beans. The beans are always present. Usually, they're Romano beans, but they could be white beans. It's just a medley of vegetables cooked down with these beans. There's a tomato base, and in my mom's case, it was always fresh tomatoes from the garden.
Usually, pasta is added to it as well. It's usually a small shape, like a ditalini. It could be small shells or elbow macaroni. Another typical addition would be taking spaghetti and breaking it up into small pieces. We call this spaghetti "sminuzzati." That was very, very common. In fact, sometimes, my mom might've even mixed pasta.
How do you flavor your minestrone?
Most minestrone soups are made with plain water, which is the classic way. But you could use chicken stock or vegetable broth if you want.
The herbs are also important—fresh basil, parsley, and thyme. You could add flavor with bay leaves. In just about any soup, I always add a couple of bay leaves.
I also add Parmesan rind. I think that makes such a big difference. If you want to stick to using plain water and not some kind of broth, just throw in a Parmesan rind, and I think it's fantastic. It gives a lot of flavor. And, of course, I always serve it with Parmesan cheese. Having minestrone or anything with pasta without cheese is hard for me.
Another thing you could add just before serving is a nice drizzle of olive oil. Olive oil on top adds tons of flavor.
What did your mother add that was unique to this recipe?
In our house, it was always made with freshly picked vegetables from our garden because, as I said, my mom made large batches. At this time of year, my parents often headed out to local farms and picked their own vegetables to supplement what we had. We could get more tomatoes, more zucchini, and so on.
I should add that the beans used were not dried beans that you just bought and soaked from the grocery store. They would always go out and get fresh beans. I actually did this recently. I went to a local farmers market and got a huge 20-pound bag of beans in their pods.
There was a lot of time spent shelling these beans at this time of year. They were the beans that we shelled ourselves. She also froze bags full of these beans to make pasta fagioli as well during the winter months.
What do you get out of that experience of shelling your own beans?
Oh, it connects me to my mom. When I was a kid, I was always trying to find a way to get away from these tasks. And my mom didn't force me. She let me go out and play and wouldn't hold me to these tasks. But for the last few years, I made sure to head out with my mom every year to get those beans. So we spent time the last few years sitting here, actually in my backyard, bonding while we were shelling the beans and chitchatting and talking about family and so on. So it's really special. I'm glad that I had the opportunity to do that. And now I do that with my husband and my daughter. It's just continuing that tradition.
What do you hope readers will take away from your recipe?
What I hope readers will take away is a few things. I think, first of all, the importance of preparing a simple, healthy meal from scratch with fresh ingredients for themselves and their family. I want to show them that it's really not that difficult to do so. Also, the importance of preserving family food traditions and passing them on to the next generation.
Dance and folk music are the heart and soul of Sicilian tradition, connecting people and introducing others to the region's rich heritage.
For 39 years, Amici Italiani (Italian Friends) of Rockford, Illinois, has shared and preserved culture through folk dance. With both adult and youth troupes, the group performs traditional Quadriglias, Saltarellos, Mazurcas, Tarantellas, and Codigliones, all carefully researched as members of the Italian Folk Art Federation of America.
I recently chatted with Amici Italiani Director Bea Giammarese Ricotta, whose family came from the Sicilian towns of Aragona and Bagheria. We discussed her start as a founding member, the memories she associates with Italian folk music and dance, her favorite dances, Amici Italiani's traditional costumes, and her most rewarding performance.
How did you get started with Amici Italiani?
I was one of the founding members. We had a wonderful person named Shirley Martignoni Fedeli, who, with her husband, Gene, decided to start the Italian dance troupe.
The newspaper printed a small article that said, "If you're Italian and you want to dance the Italian folk dances, call Shirley."
So, my mom saw it, and I might've just graduated from college. And she said, "You like to dance. Why don't you call?"
I did, and Shirley sounded really nice, so I went. That was pretty much it.
I have to laugh because I was such an idiot back then. On the first day of dance practice, I showed up in a legit dance skirt and tights while everybody else wore sweatpants and shorts.
We were the founding members, and we brought in a dance instructor from Milwaukee's dance troupe, Mario DeSantis, who has since passed.
He taught us a couple of dances a year, and then we went from there.
I was a dancer for a million years, and then I became the instructor, and I did that for a number of years. I loved that. Then I got pretty old. When you can't do a hop, that's pretty bad. Your knees don't like you anymore. When our director retired, I became the director.
My two daughters are in the troupe. One of my daughters is one of the dance instructors. We have two: a male and a female dance instructor.
So, it's a family thing. They grew up in the troupe. And I'm going to tell you a secret: Every time I hear this beautiful Italian folk music, I'm telling you the people I lost in my life who came from Italy and are no longer here; in those few minutes that the song is playing, they're back, and it means so much. I'll never get tired of any of that music because they're alive all over again and all the good memories and all the love is still there.
What memories do you associate with that music and dancing?
We had relatives who emigrated here in the early seventies, so they came later than my mom. They were all grown. Most of them had kids already. And in the summer, they would have these little get-togethers in their backyards and they had a trellis with the grapes growing over. And they hardly had any lawn in the backyard because they planted tomato plants, rows and rows of these plants.
I remember seeing the moon, and there were lights that they had strung above the trellis. And whenever somebody went in the house, they brought out other platters of food.
When I was young, we would have wonderful family gatherings. My zio, my cousins Carl, Iggy, Frank and Mr. Spoto, a close friend from down the street, played instruments. They would bring out their instruments after we'd eaten and visited, and they would sing.
Sometimes, the ladies would dance together. Those evenings were magical. I mean, my dad passed away when I was very young, so it was not easy. But because of all this wonderful stuff, I really feel like my childhood was enchanted.
Of course, at weddings, they would always play the music. And as a kid, that was amazing. You'd get out there and dance. You didn't know what you were doing, but nobody cared.
Tarantella dances are popular at weddings. Which is your favorite?
They're all from the southern region and Sicily. But each one has a different flavor to it. And people really loved to watch them.
We always call the Neapolitan the main Tarantella here. You could do it with as many or as few people as you want. We dance this as a call dance so you can follow along.
We have Cantania's, which I love. Catania's Tarantella is totally different.
Some are just crowd-pleasers, and I don't know why. Some use tambourines, some don't. There's a Tarantella that only uses five people, and the movements are very together.
I tell the troupe that we're not Rockettes. This is a chance to show your personality. But there are some dances where you have to be more rigid regarding doing the same thing. So those are amazing for us.
How do you get the audience to participate?
We've been hired to dance at weddings just to do what we call the main Tarantella, the Neapolitan one. But we get the bride and groom in there. We get Uncle Toto. We don't know who we're dancing with.
The difference between that and all the others is that it's a call dance. So, we have one person who calls the dance, and if he makes a mistake or does something we haven't practiced, you just do what he says—just follow.
That makes it really fun. And he says he calls it Italian, so it's really beautiful to hear those words.
How do your troupes ensure the traditions remain?
We are really committed to the authenticity of these dances. If we change something, it would be that we can't quite make a transition with a dance step, so we add a hop or something like that. But it does not change the integrity of the dance, which is so important to me.
Even the costuming has a lot of tradition. We don't use nylon fabrics; we use cotton and cotton blends, which are authentic to what they used to wear. They might get a little more "wrinkly", and need to ironed more often. But it's important.
I saw a dance troupe with young ladies in fishnet stockings. I thought, "Oh my God, no Italian father would've let their daughter leave the house like that."
I don't know what they were thinking. We try to be as authentic as possible.
Tell us more about your costumes.
A woman from Pittsburgh put together a book of Italian clothing. We would pick our costumes from the book and recreate everything.
We would take that and find a seamstress out here who could design and sew it. Now, we have a couple of dancers who can sew, which has been very helpful.
We purchase what we can. We found some companies online that like to recreate historic items. I know they're recreating things for Comic-Con or whatever. I don't know why they're making these costumes, but we can pull a shirt here or a skirt there, and it is what we want. We will hem it, and it just makes it a lot easier for our seamstresses.
How has the local community in Rockford responded?
They love them. I love being out somewhere where they're clapping with the music. And when we have a chance to dance with the groups and the audience, I love seeing them get up there.
We will do the Tarantella with them. We'll also do the Scopa (broom) dance. Everybody gets a partner except one person. It's typically one of our guys, and he has to dance with the broom. And at some point, while he is dancing, he'll yell, "Scopa!" and he'll throw it, and everyone has to switch partners.
We've done that with crowds, and they do a great job. When locals see us in costumes, they stop us and ask if we can pose with them.
What do you hope audiences take away?
When I introduce a dance, I will tell a little bit about it and the area where it originated. So, we're trying to teach them about Italy and the dances. We want to entertain them and disseminate some of our history.
The story of the Tarantella involves a tarantula. I used to bring a tarantula to performances so that the audience could see it. And I'm telling you, any child in that audience could probably still tell you about the Tarantella because they remember the tarantula. The adults remember, too.
I share the history of the dances and tell them where they come from. We have two dances from Sicily that the Moors brought over, and I love to tell people about them. The dances and music are different, but now they're Sicilian dances and songs.
What has been your most rewarding experience with Amici Italiani?
There have been a few, but a real favorite of mine was in 1994 when we were invited to dance at the opening ceremony of the World Cup in Chicago to represent Italy.
We're out there, and there are cameras all over. We're dancing. It was so exciting and wonderful.
It was at Soldier Field. We ended the performance on the 50-yard line.
I was on such a high, and then I heard that my then-husband and his relatives in Italy were watching because everybody loves soccer in Italy. And somebody said, "That's Joe's wife." Crazy. Just crazy.
Dancing connects us so much. Granted, they remembered me there, but it was the dancing that connected everybody.
My kids have been dancers since they were bambini. They did the youth troupe, and now they're in the adult troupe. They're not the only ones who have stayed in it so long. It keeps us all connected.
Antonio Bertone arrives at our interview wearing a sweatshirt that reads, "Boxed Wine Is Not a Crime." He hopes this slogan will stick and help people choose more sustainable boxed beverages like his Alileo Wines.
Cofounded by Antonio and his wife, Alexandra Drane, the Boston-based boxed natural wine company produces award-winning West Coast Sicilian varietals in partnership with Bertone's family in Sicily and imports them to the United States, where they are distributed in Massachusetts, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Texas.
Antonio shared what inspired Alileo's creation, what makes his wines unique, and why boxed wine.
What is your background?
My father emigrated from Molise, and my mom emigrated from Partanna, Sicily. When I was in the second grade, my parents decided to move us back. My sister and I were born here in the United States.
My mom was very homesick. She was the only one from her family that left and came to America. My dad's entire family ultimately ended up in the States.
So, we moved back, and I did my second to fourth grades of elementary school in Sicily and all my summers. Then, after my dad passed, my mom kind of moved back for half the year, so she would do June to December in Sicily and then December to June back in the U.S. That went on for 30 years until she passed.
What inspired Alileo's creation?
We were in COVID lockdown, and my mom was battling cancer. I think she felt this fear or sadness that once she passed, the connection to Sicily would start to degrade or disappear because I'm the last one left in America, representing the Sicilian side.
So, my wife and I started talking about starting a wine company with our cousin Rosario, a winemaker in Sicily.
Over the years, we have always joked about it at the dinner table and about how nice it would be. We all enjoyed those conversations in the kitchen. My kids got into it; they were like, "That could be so cool."
We came up with the name and the product's USP. We started it, kicked into making-things mode, and worked with some designer friends in London to design the packaging. We started getting ready for the first shipment, and then my mom passed. The first shipment, our first 40-foot container, actually arrived on her birthday the following year. So it was pretty magical that the wine has this eternal connection to her.
What's been your goal with Alileo Wines?
For our wine, we wanted to make a low-intervention, natural wine. We wanted to make something that didn't have junk in it and sugar and all the crap that gives you headaches. And we wanted to bring a younger audience into wine.
Wine is as old as time. The simpler the wine-making, the better, in my opinion.
Your wine is low-sulfite. Why is that important?
You're dealing with a low-intervention wine, which has a greatly reduced amount of sulfites in the wine. The grapes themselves produce a certain amount of sulfites, and for you to get some sort of shelf life, you have to work with some form of SO2. So we keep ours at the bare minimum, which is around 55 parts per million. The standard natural wine is 150 parts per million. Commercial wines are in the four hundreds and five hundreds, which sometimes causes people headaches and some of the negative side effects of wine.
Why did you choose to box your wines?
I come from a consumer products background. As a marketeer, I'm better against the grain than I am with the grain. Sustainability is a key discussion to get a younger audience interested.
Sicily's on fire right now; it's still 40 degrees Celsius daily. So it's important to put your money where your mouth is and act in a more sustainable or responsible manner.
In my previous careers, I always drove toward a more sustainable point of view. In our product creation, our ambition is to be a B Corp, and the box in and of itself is way more functional. Once you open a box, the wine's still good for 30 to 45 days. Transport costs are a fraction. Think about the overall energy it takes to make a glass bottle rather than just a cardboard box and a bladder.
People are like, "Boxed wine?" The rest of the world is fine with the format. It's just in America and weird days at college, slamming Franzia that has forever created this stigma. So we're here to change it.
How does your wine compare to other Sicilian wines?
I think my cousin has a special gift. When you hear about natural wines, people start to think funky and weird. And no knock to the really experimental winemakers, but we're making a commercial product. We're using grapes that are synonymous with our side of the island.
Our most popular wine is zibibbo macerato, a skin-contact wine made out of a grape that's usually used to make dessert wine. Our zibibbo is very dry tasting and drinks super lovely, all because of Rosario and his skills.
I come from farmers. My mom's side of the family were all grape and olive farmers. My dad was a farmer before he came to America. He had livestock. He had sheep, horses, and cows. So we ate incredibly well. Even though we had no money, we never knew that we didn't have any money. Because we basically produced all the things that we consumed. So to make something that's as simple but delicious and has its own profile and point of view, I think suits us.
What are your future plans?
We launched boxed water as well. We were doing a lot of popups, and it was interesting to find the format. Single-use plastic, under a certain measurement, is being banned in a lot of communities around the oceans.
Right now, we're in five states. Funny enough, we don't sell in Italy. Next year, we will start selling in six European countries.
We're trying to grow and occupy a place in the wine retail channel that serves good food. We really want to have a good connection to good cuisine.
What experience do you hope people have with your wines?
I hope they're enjoying themselves, eating something nice, and having a nice conversation. That's the overall goal: bringing people together.
Memphis-based Sicilian-American singer Michela Musolino has toured the world, performing in medieval castles, ancient temples, New York City landmarks, and national folk festivals. She's recorded traditional and contemporary Sicilian folk songs and roots music. She's even branched out into something she calls "Sicilian folk-a-billy." But no matter where she stands and how she sings, her heart remains in Sicily.
"I really feel like I got my start in Sicily," Michela says. "I probably performed more in Sicily in the beginning than here. Nobody knew who I was here, but in Sicily, I had already performed at festivals and temples. They welcomed me so beautifully. So, I always feel that even though I performed a lot in New York for many years, Sicily was more like the home for what I do."
Michela and I recently chatted about her traditional Sicilian-American upbringing and how that shaped who she would become. She shared her favorite venue, experience, and what inspired her foray into "Sicilian folk-a-billy." And because Michela's a walking encyclopedia of Sicilian folk music, we discussed the people and traditions that shaped the songs she sings today.
Tell us about your background.
My family is Sicilian. I have one grandpa who is from Calabria, so I'm one-quarter Calabrese. My other grandparents are Sicilian. My mom's dad was from Borgetto, which is about 40 minutes away from Palermo. My mom's mom was raised in Palermo by a Palermitano father, but she was actually born in Argentina. My grandmother's father took her back to Sicily when she was young so she could be raised. Her mom died when she was young, so her father took her back to Sicily so his family could raise her in Palermo, and she grew up in Palermo. And my dad's mom was from a town in the province of Agrigento called Ribera. I still have a lot of family there. My grandpa was born in Reggio Calabria, a town called Calanna.
How did you get started?
I have always been very enamored with my heritage. My mom and dad always talked about our family history and told us all the stories of our family.
My dad was a big fan of American music, especially American country music, Italian-American artists, and Italian music. So we heard a lot of music in the house.
I grew up hearing Sicilian, hearing the language, because my parents, aunts, and uncles all spoke that to my grandparents.
When I was all grown up and married and out of the house, I took a workshop for folk dance in New York City, and the people who were running were in the folk company, I Giullari di Piazza, and they asked me to audition. The director of the company, Alessandra Belloni, asked me to audition. They needed extra people in their theater company. I auditioned, and I remember coming home and telling my dad, not even that I was auditioning for the show or anything, but that I was studying folk dance and frame drumming.
He said, "Well, it's good. You should study drumming because that's your tradition. That's what women do."
It was strange hearing that from my father because he was not very big on defining women's roles. He was very progressive and open. And I said, "What are you talking about?"
He said, "Your grandma used to drum."
I said, "Wait a second…."
He said, "Your grandma had a drum."
"As a matter of fact," he says, "when your grandma came here when she was a young woman, she brought a drum with her. And your great grandma, when she was in Sicily, was known for her dancing."
So these things are in us. Then it's been this wild ride. It's still a wild ride every day, just doing something I love: working with music.
What is it about Sicilian music that drew you in?
I just adore Sicilian music, and it's been interesting because I'm exploring it from all different aspects and doing all different things to create things with this music. And when I try to do different projects, they only go so far. When I try to do projects outside of Sicilian music, they only go so far. And I was involved in some projects up until about last year, and there was veering off the path of Sicilian music, and all of a sudden, all these things started to happen. All these opportunities for other creative projects or other performances came all at once. It was like Sicily pulled me back. We're not done with you yet.
Describe your experiences in the different types of venues.
It sounds kind of cliche, but I find each venue and experience more enriching than the last, even if it's not the same. Let's say maybe one venue is a beautiful theater and it is full, or another venue is a very small locale. Each show has its importance and its connection, and it has its meaning. But the thing that I think had the biggest impact on me is that I feel it, and it really charted my course, something that had a huge, huge influence on me because, to this day, I'm still living the repercussions of it. It was when I performed in the temples in Sicily, and I did that for several summers. I went to a festival by chance.
I was there to do some research and to work with some musicologists, and I had my daughter. She was very little then, and I had to change the course of my trip; I thought I was going to just go see my friend, Alfio Antico, perform in Selinunte. And when I got there, yes, Alfio performed that night, but it was in the evening dedicated to the memory of a Sicilian singer/songwriter by the name of Pino Veneziano. And I fell in love with the music that they were playing.
By then, Pino was already deceased by a number of years, but they were playing his music that night. I remember my daughter falling asleep at the concert, and I walked back. I was talking to the people in the Pino Veneziano Association, and I said, "Listen, I'm a singer. I'm from New York. I'm friends with Alfio. Look, he's on my album."
I pulled one of my albums from my bag, and I'm trying to carry my daughter in one hand while she is asleep. I love this music. What can I do? I want to sing it.
They're like, "Here's the album; just sing it."
So, from that night, I met friends of mine who are still my dear friends that I would go back to see. Just going back to those temples and doing that year after year after year became a big turning point in my life. But it's also a big part of my life. And it was strange for me because this summer, I was in Sicily, and I was very, very busy on the other side of the island.
I spent time at the foot of Etna, and it was a beautiful experience, but it felt weird. I was apprehensive about going because I'd become so used to being in the protective embrace of these temples for years.
Even when it wasn't summertime, and I wasn't performing, I'd be there. I would go, and I still had to visit the temples. I still talked to my friends and visited my friends in that area. So, that venue had a profound, profound influence on my life. And as I said, from that experience, going back there summer after summer created lifelong friendships, collaborations, and a richness of music I discovered.
I was able to do a lot of research, and I feel that it's still ongoing. Those temples, even when I wasn't on that part of the island, were somehow still impacting me. I feel that what I achieved on the other part of the island I would've never done if it wasn't for all those experiences I had in the temples.
You've developed a style you call "Sicilian Folk-a-Billy." What inspired that?
What happened was quite simple: I moved to Memphis. I finally had the opportunity to get out of the Northeast. I wanted to leave the Northeast forever. I never quite felt like I was going to stay there, but circumstances in life kept me there. Then, I had the opportunity to move, and I knew I wanted to come south somewhere. I wound up in Memphis because I had heard that a lot of artists were moving to Memphis from other parts of the country. I heard that a lot of artists from different genres were moving to Memphis and not just artists making Memphis music or American blues or soul music, but all different genres. And I looked at it, I said, "You know what? Memphis, I like it."
So I came here, and COVID was still kind of a thing. It was 2021, so venues weren't really open. And I had to do a few concerts from my house, things that would be broadcast up in New York. So, I used Memphis musicians. And I wanted to make an album. I talked to somebody down here who was producing, and they said, "Well, we just did a Christmas show in your house. Why don't we do the Christmas album?"
We had been using Memphis sounds and different things. We used rockabilly, American country music, blues music, a little bit of blues, a little bit of soul, a little bit of swing.
We took mostly Sicilian traditions and added a little bit of Americana, and I felt it was going to be a good way to start off here in Memphis. It's a good way to show the movement of music, how music comes from one culture to another, and how music transfers with the immigrants.
It's like, I'm Italian-American coming to Memphis. How does the music change now with me? So that's kind of where that developed.
It was almost organic, letting the musicians here contribute their ideas and sounds. In fact, most of the musicians, except for one on the album, are Italian-American. I didn't plan it that way. It just happened.
The fiddle player, Alice Hasen, who is not Italian-American, shows up, and she says, "I was trying to listen to different kinds of Sicilian music and Southern Italian music so I could get an idea of what to play."
We're like, "No, no, no. We want to hear your style. We want you to play. You got the arrangements, but we want to see what you're going to add to it."
So that's kind of how we came up with the Sicilian folk. It's not rockabilly; it's folk music but a little bit of everything. My first album here was just my homage to Memphis. So that's where that came from. I guess you could say it was pretty much just the collision of these traditions with Memphis sound.
Let's talk about those folk traditions from Sicily.
You start listening to songs in their most basic form, which we have, let's say, the most basic arrangements that we have documented or the oldest unadulterated field recordings. When I say unadulterated, I mean the field recordings that are the oldest we have and the field recordings that are the most untouched by pop music or anything like that. You can hear the influences. You can hear the melodies, and you can hear the progressions, even the note progressions of things that are Greek, Arabic, or Spanish. For example, you can hear certain things that sound like Spanish. So, all the music reflects the different cultures that occupied Sicily.
I'll give you an idea. There's a song attributed to the fishermen who fish coral. It's a jumble—like a new language made up of Neapolitan and Sicilian lyrics. When the fishermen discovered these coral beds in Sicily, they brought the coral fishermen down from Naples because they had the skill. They taught the Sicilian fishermen how to fish this coral and worked side by side. They came up with their own language.
So, in this song, you have a mixture of the two languages, the Neapolitan and the Sicilian, and some of the chants you hear. People will say, "That sounds very Middle Eastern."
Even some of the instruments that we play, some of the old forms of instruments that are very basic with minimal strings, are very Middle Eastern. They all filtered in through the great migrations. And if we get really into the diasporas and how they float about, you can start seeing some traditions. You can start seeing similarities to India when the Roma people came through from India.
Music is a historical document because you can hear that in the melodies, chord progressions, structures, and song structures. You can hear that and say, "Oh yeah, this is very much like Spanish," or "This is very much Middle Eastern." We share some rhythms with North Africa, too. That kind of stuff. It's just a blueprint—a blueprint for history.
You spoke about fishing. Tell us about the songs of the tuna fishermen.
I've recorded a version of one of the cialome they would sing for the matanza. Those are really fascinating songs. They try to trace a lot of the words like cialome.
They say, "Well, it could possibly be Arab." But they think it even predates the Arab invasion. That is a tradition that's really buried in antiquity. They can't pinpoint where that exactly started. That's how ancient that tradition is. And it's a beautiful tradition because it's much deeper than just the hunt of the tuna. It was very much something that was obviously connected to the cycle of the seasons because it was the fish's mating season when they were coming through, and humans were attuned to this. And it wasn't just that they killed the fish; these chants they used all had a purpose.
Some were used to pull up the nets, and some were used to pull the boats out of the water.
The one I sing is very fun. They talk about a young girl, and it's an homage to that beautiful young girl. But in a lot of the fishing chants, they say things like, "God bless the earth and sky. God bless the sea. God bless the tuna that's giving its life for us."
There's such a visceral connection and a very close connection between humanity and the animal kingdom in this. And there's this show of reverence. A bounty that year meant they would survive, and they were grateful that God had given them this bounty.
They were also grateful to the tuna who sacrificed their lives. And it's actually a very brutal tradition. But life was very brutal. We forget that.
We look at the matanza and say, "Oh, it was so horrible, these men clubbing these fish to death and butchering these fish." But that was probably the least brutal thing that was happening to those people in their lifetime at that time.
Out of that tradition for work came these beautiful songs because they needed a rhythm. These men, groups of men (dozens and dozens of men) had to work together. So, the best way to work in unison is to create a melody that everybody can maintain. So there's a lot of that in this tradition of music where these beautiful, beautiful traditions have evolved out of necessity.
So, the necessity for survival, the necessity to work together, and the necessity for recognizing your blessings all came together and created these beautiful songs. We have these songs not only because they were recorded in the 1950s when Alan Lomax went through Sicily and recorded but also because the tuna matanza ended around the 1980s, so we still had people who were singing.
There's still a lot of mystery involved in that. But I don't think they could have that tradition without music because of the necessity, again, of how these men had to work together.
It creates community. And that's something that I try to always mention in my shows, too, that this music comes from the traditional community. It was a time when everybody sang. We all made music together for a lot of reasons. But it comes from a very communal place. And I think that's one of the reasons why it's so well received: it is something that we all share, and it's something that we can all share, and it's meant to be shared and enjoyed together.
What do you hope your audiences and students take away from their experience?
I just want them to have a wonderful connection with Sicily and a discovery of Sicily. I would divide the audience into people who have a connection and have some roots in Sicily and those who don't. They have similar experiences, but not necessarily always the same. For some people in the audience, this is the first time they've ever heard Sicilian music. So, I want them to understand that there is a huge body of music. There's a huge patrimonial tradition that is just waiting to be explored and understood. And I want them to feel like they're part of it. That's the most important thing.
When they have roots in Sicily, I want the same for them. But I also want them to understand that this is your heritage and tradition and belongs to you. It is part of you, and it will always be part of you, and it's a really good thing to have as a part of you. It's something that is solid, lasting, and good. There's nothing negative about it.
We might not have the same heritage, but we all have the same human emotions and can relate to that. I've had people come up to me after the show and say, "I don't know any Sicilian. I don't know what the heck you're saying when you're singing, but I felt everything."
If I can give people that feeling of belonging, that feeling of being understood and heard, then I think I've succeeded.
I have always felt that I wanted this for Sicily as well. I want Sicily to be understood. I want people to understand that, yes, Sicily is beautiful. Yes, the food is fantastic. But Sicily is so much deeper than that. She's been around a long time, and she's not going away. And she's got a lot to offer. There are so many aspects of Sicily that are so rich, and we can look at that.
Madonna del Lume, painted by Giacoma Lo Coco, for San Diego's Our Lady of the Rosary Parish
My grandparents came to the U.S. from the fishing village of Porticello, which is currently hosting festivities revolving around the legend of the Madonna del Lume, patroness and protector of the sea. The centuries-old celebration culminates in a grand procession of a legendary painting of the Madonna from Chiesa Di Maria Santissima Del Lume through the streets before it is loaded onto a fishing boat and paraded on the sea to a sacred shrine.
While my grandparents settled in Milwaukee, a contingent of Porticello immigrants settled in California—mainly in San Francisco and San Diego, which have continued the tradition of Festa della Madonna del Lume and are each hosting events this weekend.
I recently featured San Francisco's celebration. To learn more about San Diego's Festa, which takes place on Sunday, October 6, I reached out to Giuseppe Sanfilippo, a first-generation Italian-American and currently the President of the Madonna del Lume Society of Our Lady of the Rosary Parish in San Diego's Little Italy.
Giuseppe's parents were born in Sicily and came to the U.S. from Porticello. We discussed how San Diego's Madonna del Lume Society started and impacted his personal life and connection to his Sicilian heritage.
Tell us how San Diego's Madonna del Lume Society started.
The Madonna del Lume Society in San Diego was established in October 1937 by the families of Sicilian fishermen who originate from the fishing village of Porticello, Sicily. The Feast of the Madonna del Lume shares quite visibly with our community a tradition and a profound story of faith and hope. It is a story of the powerful intercession of the Madonna on behalf of a group of Sicilian fishermen who were tormented and cast off course by torrential storms at sea and faced the tragedy of perishing at sea.
These seafaring men, although experienced at sea, were frightened, unsure, and desperate for guidance and safety to return to shore and embrace their families and community once more. It was in these moments of grave darkness and fear that God answered the faithful prayers of these fishermen, who had humbled themselves in complete trust and devotion to God. God answered their prayers with a glowing light illuminating the dark sky above.
As the wise men once followed the guiding star over Bethlehem to visit our newborn savior over 2,000 years ago, the Sicilian fishermen gratefully recognized and received God's blessing and answer to their prayers. They faithfully followed the glowing light shown above to guide them safely home again.
Upon returning safely home, the fishermen continued to follow the mysterious guiding light above to a grotto near Porticello. Exploring the sea cave, they found a slab of marble bearing the Madonna's image. They carried it into town, but twice, it mysteriously returned to the grotto. The community decided to leave the image of the Madonna at the grotto and build a church on the spot to protect it. It is fervently believed in Sicily that the lives of hundreds of fishermen have been saved by the intervention of our Blessed Maria Santissima del Lume, Our Most Holy Mother of Light, the guardian and patroness of fishermen.
To this day, we continue to celebrate and honor the Madonna del Lume for her guidance and intercession in guiding fishermen safely home and into Christ's light. This story is for fishermen, but it is truly a story for all of us, wherever we are on our journey in life. It is a story of a return home, and it is also a story of a return to faith, a return to God.
How many times in our lives, especially in these current times, have we been lost, confused, uncertain, or fearful? "Lost at sea," so to speak. Whether we are fishermen at sea, laborers on land, or workers at home, this story gives each of us hope that there is always a light, no matter how dark, and there is always faith, no matter how hopeless our situation is. This remembrance of the Madonna del Lume shows us how powerful Our Most Holy Mother's intercession is on our behalf as Christ's ambassador of light to each of us.
When some of the original fishermen began immigrating to the United States, they brought their traditions with them. They formed Madonna del Lume societies in Boston, Milwaukee, San Francisco, and San Diego. The Madonna del Lume Society of San Diego was first stationed at St. Joseph Cathedral on Third Avenue before moving to Our Lady of the Rosary in 1938. Today, the Society has reached over 250 members and continues to grow and preserve the traditions of those first fishermen.
Each October, over the last 87 years, after a solemn High Mass, a faithfully devoted group of men and women, old and young alike, and a young queen representing the Society, walk in a procession with the Vara of the Madonna del Lume from the OLR Church to the Embarcadero. There, the clergy sprinkles holy water on the boats, blessing all of the fishermen and praying for their protection from harm. He also asks for abbondanza in the catch. For the last 20-plus years, we have also had fireworks, a tradition carried from Porticello to celebrate the Madonna.
Today, in Porticello, Sicily, the Festa della Madonna del Lume is also still thriving. The Festa spans the full first week of October each year, and the entire municipality participates in the procession of La Madonna with fireworks and veneration of La Madonna at the original church of Madonna del Lume.
Traditionally, on the Monday of the feast, the sacred painting of the Madonna is taken down from the altar of the village church and processed throughout the town and its port. Devotees pack the sanctuary, hoping for an opportunity to touch and rub the painting on its way to the street to possess its healing and protective powers. It's a moving moment to experience.
This beautiful religious and cultural celebration has been passed on to many of our members through their families' Sicilian Catholic heritage and many years of community collaboration to keep this special tradition alive and vibrant in San Diego. Many members have learned from a young age about the purity, grace, and strength of our Most Holy Mother as our protective, loving, and most powerful ambassador of Christ in the midst of a challenging and often chaotic world.
How does the Society engage with the broader community in San Diego?
We are one of several Marion Societies of Our Lady of the Rosary. We have joined together as one during the OLR Festa and have one procession. We are also active in the Italian American community and events that occur throughout the year.
How has being part of the Madonna del Lume Society impacted your personal life and connection to your heritage?
I have a strong connection to the Madonna del Lume, and it has inspired me to be a true Catholic. I believe in the Catholic Faith and our Lord Jesus Christ, praying through the intercession of our Blessed Mother.
What do you hope participants take away from Festa della Madonna del Lume?
Our Blessed Mother is the Light of the World who prays for us and leads us closer to Christ so that our children and youth find their way in life. This leads us all to God's grace and eternal life.
