Nonno (random memories from my childhood)

Let's talk about Nonno

He's 92 years old, and in his day he could boil a mean hotdog...no hotdog anywhere else in the world and certainly not Nathan's Famous tasted better. Nathan's (and I'm talking about the original) came in at a very close second.

If the Nonna's were the cooks, then the Nonno's were the gardener's. He kept 2 fig trees in the backyard and grew basil. We had more figs than we knew what to do with. In exchange for our figs, we would get tomatoes from the Collucci's garage roof, peppers (the long Italian kind) from the Randazzos side yard, zucchini and zucchini flowers from the Cinquemanos' backyard, and eggplant from the Donato house. (I have no idea where they got the eggplant from- they didn't have a yard!).

The figs from Nonno's trees were the sweetest figs in the world, and we ate them cold, with thin thin thin slices of prosciutto, or just plain...as many as we wanted, but if he caught us stepping on them (this was a favorite and fun game) he would come after us with a madness in his eyes that you didn't easily forget!

He would eat soft-boiled eggs for breakfast every morning, and he would let us crush the empty shell between a napkin when he was done. Crushing that shell was one of the most satisfying things in the world, and my cousins and I would get into some serious pushing and shoving in order to be the one who got the honor.

We would sit in the backyard on hot summer nights and eat what we called Ciceri (dry-roasted chick peas) and Lupini Beans. The Lupini beans my grandparents ate came in big jars of salted water. The outer skins were tough, and so you had to bite down on them to release the meat-if you held them just so you could actually shoot them at your brothers when Nonno wasn't looking. He never got mad for finding the beans that you said you weren't shooting all over the backyard, but if you had stepped on them...well then you better run.

to be continued...

Written by Deb on January 28, 2003 03:22 AM