Fellow Italian Americans: Let's talk about the GUILT around food

OK, OK, I've eaten at Olive Garden once. I didn't like it, and I felt guilty about it, so that must make it all alright, right? What about at-home cooking? What would your family say about a typical dinner you make?

Think Italian-Americans place a lot more emphasis on this family dinner tradition than Italians do now. It's important still here in Italy, but like everything else has become extremely changed. It's a lot like everywhere else, they have supermarkets and buy boxed pasta, pre-made sauces. It isn't the end of the world for regular Italians to cook a dinner with these things, it's actually the norm. Few Italians make their own pasta, but if they want it fresh they'll go to the market. I think growing up Italian-American is a lot different (at least in my experience) than growing up now in Italy. I've noticed, myself included, that Italian-Americans clutch to the traditions they've grown up with no matter how far from modern Italian life they now are. All you have to do is venture into Little Italy in New York to realize that Italian-Americans and Italians who emigrated are almost completely out of touch with current Italian practices. They've changed so many things that it's hard to call any Italianesque food made in America "authentic" Italian food. It doesn't mean it doesn't taste good. Those who have grown up in Italy a long time ago have the traditions of making food in certain ways and this food is still important to Italians, but it isn't something that is made everyday. Instead the traditions come out in the way they gather or on holidays...

I was joshing with folks here, taking off from the Olive Garden threads. As the child of an Italian chef (the man's been cooking since 1949, no joke), I get this from my Pop more because he taught us all how to cook the "old" way, the way he does it. When I visit my cousins in Trieste, we have "regular" meals :-)

Those who have moved to the States still want to think of their homeland as the same place they left 10, 20, even 50 or 60 years ago. For some reason I seem to have a lot of friends (my husband included) who are first generation Americans. Either they moved here when they were very young or their parents moved here just before they were born. And we've often talked about how their parents' view of their culture is frozen in time from whenever it was that they emigrated. Meanwhile, "back home," progress has happened just like everywhere in the world, to varying degrees.