Why I can never really be Italian

Angela

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I call it "The Foreigner's Lament". :grin:

I was reminded of this discussion with an Italian friend of mine by a post from Tardis Blue on how you know you've been in France too long. I don't know why I seem to have never posted it here.


Why I can't ever be really Italian:

I can't wear sunglasses at night.

I can't get those darn sweaters to stay tied around my neck.

I get hives from scarves.

I want to sit down when I get my morning coffee.

I absolutely refuse to get all dressed up to go and get the mail from the mailbox (for the older crowd)

I cannot figure out how to cross my legs in a very short skirt, and look seductive and decent at the same time (for the ladies, of course)

I will not walk cobblestone streets in mile high stilettos.

I actually want to go in the water when I go to the beach. The heck with my make-up and hair.

I will not pay $35.00 dollars or more to rent a lounge chair on the beach with every other Italian in the country. Has anybody in this country heard that beaches are supposed to be free?

I am actually sick of all this attention from men.

The thought of hitting on strange women also makes me break out in hives.

I just thought of another one. I can't play the tamburello.
You have no idea how some Italians would hate this one.

I really do think you can be overdressed for something.

I absolutely refuse to iron my husband's underwear or the sheets (this is for the older crowd) or

I never iron

I do not know how to look surreptitiously in passing windows to check my hair.

I will never in my life be able to get in a size two dress.

I'll never get liver trouble, because I don't even know where my liver is, nor what it does.

I've never gotten a stiff neck from un colpo d'aria in my life.

(This is related) I actually like air-conditioning.

Ice in my drinks DOES NOT ruin my indigestion.

I will not drown if I don't wait for three hours after my meal before I put my toes in the water.

I will not wear a fur coat when it's sixty degrees out.

I don't care how the dish was made, I never cook anyway, I just want to eat it.
Re: I Can Never Be Italian Because.....

I'm having a great time with the premise of this thread. Hope you will enjoy it too.
These are meant to be humorous, not serious. Of course, not all Italians fit the "mold" I've posited here and in previous posts, and not all Americans think this way. Some very sophisticated tourists come to Italy from all over the world. However, I give you my word, I've either seen, or heard, similar kinds of views, although I'll admit I re-worded them for comic effect! Also, my portrayal of Italians in prior posts was done with much love. I wouldn't want to be anything else.
 
Continued...

"I can never be Italian because-

I really don't want to live with my mother for the rest of my life (It hurt me just to write this; if you think Italian men are attached to their mothers, just try to detach most of the Italian daughters I know from their mothers! I would LOVE to be able to live with her for the rest of my life.)

I don't want just a little dab of gelato on a cone; when I want ice cream, I WANT ICE CREAM!.

How can anybody take people seriously who don't like the idea of an all you can eat buffet?

How can anybody take people seriously who don't rush to go to the bars that offer two beers for the price of one?

When I want a cookie, I don't want to lose a tooth chewing it. (Biscotti)


(Related) Breakfast is bacon and eggs, not some funny coffee and a cookie hard enough to use as a lethal weapon.

Starched shirts make me itch.

Listen, I don't care if this tie isn't alla moda; it's as great now as it was fifteen years ago.

If it's green, I don't eat it.

I think soccer is for sissies.

I will never wear pink or red pants; those lime green shorts I wear to go golfing are a totally different story.

Listen, if he wanted somebody who knows how to cook, he should have married a chef. (women)

I will never spend more than ten bucks to get my hair cut. (men)

I can't live anywhere that doesn't have Sweet n Low, low fat food, bottled dressing, vegan restaurants..

If I had to go to an Italian post office more than once in a lifetime...well, have you ever heard of post office rage?

These people have never heard of LINES.

I LIKE going 55 mph in the left passing lane.

Walking anywhere is for sissies.

The Italian food is so much better in the U.S.

These people don't even know anything about their own country; nobody could tell me how to get to FLORENCE! That Firenze place was pretty nice, but I told everybody I was going to go to Florence.


I Can Never Be Italian because....

I WANT to wear baggy sweats and a baseball cap every day.

When I see a bar, my first thought is .... Let's get WASTED!

I could never drink those aperitivo things...they taste like motor oil!

I think white socks look great with leather sandals.

The people in the stores never know how much things cost in DOLLARS!

They just can't seem to learn English. (ed. comment: Don't see why this should be such a problem; they don't speak English in New York either!)

I don't understand why they have to put all these statues of naked people all over the place.


Just thought I'd add this quote from an English traveler, Sir Thomas Beecham: "I have just been all around the world, and have formed a very poor opinion of it." I just LOVE it.

Most of the time, if not all of the time, these aren't my opinions at all. I am slightly making fun of American tourists and things I have heard them say or do. I am, I admit, also affectionately making a little fun of Italian life. Equal opportunity for all.

If you look at the thread from the beginning, you'll see that it's meant to be a humorous thread about how Americans view Italians, and Italian life, and how Italians (well, really a semi-Italian like me) view some, not all, American tourists.

I was thinking more of things like Campari, or Chinotto, or Sanbitter. I've literally seen Americans spit them out!


Well, people don't always run true to stereotype, do they? I live in the states for the majority of the year (and have done so for a long time) and I still can't stand American football. During the superbowl, I read or go online! Now, baseball I like.

I can never be Italian because:

I can't talk and conduct a concert with my hands at the same time. When I try I knock things over...

(As for gesticulating: I used my hands so much when I came to America, and the nuns so disliked it, that they tied them for a while. It didn't totally work; I still knock over people's wineglasses from time to time, especially if I'm telling a story. Maybe I haven't lost that trait because I'm a bit dramatic. Strangely, my father, from Parma, always used his hands, while my mother, from Toscana, almost never did. But then, she was a much more restrained, reserved person in every way than my fathe, or me, for that matter. A caress from her was a pretty rare thing, and one eagerly wished for, whereas I'm very touchy feely with those I love.)

I can't go through life with a husband who's prettier than I am, and dresses better than I do. ( I actually did do that. He was prettier than anyone I'd ever seen, and I come from an attractive family. It was very annoying.)

I am not going to wait for a MAN to get ready to go out.
 
Well, to get back to the list:

When 7:30 comes, kids shouldn't be seen OR heard!


(I also was almost always unable to get my children to bed at the time my American friends thought proper. I mean, I knew families where the kids were in bed at 7:30 so the parents could have a "civilized" evening!


The thing that really fried me was the fact that the same four year olds that went to sleep at 7:30 or 8:00, were put down for an afternoon nap!!! My daughter would go to sleep, alright, but then she wouldn't settle down until eleven at night. My son??!! God help me; even if he was exhausted, he wouldn't sleep during the day for love nor money. I even tried driving him around in the car seat to put him to sleep, and I was the one who got sleepy. Finally, I called my mother and asked whether I had ever taken an afternoon nap by the time I was two or three. She was a saint; she had never interfered, but she did answer. When she said no, that was the end of that! I think we're just too high strung as infants for all this daytime napping, at least my family is.

We did eat dinner at a pretty civilized time, too, if for no other reason than that I worked outside the home, and didn't even get back until six most nights. I'm pretty fast in the kitchen, but even I can't get a dinner on the table in less than an hour or an hour and a half or so!

Some people do eat pretty early here, work schedules and commuting time permitting, (and then snack later!), but I was really sort of making fun of the fact that in America, people eat earlier the older they get. Restaurants take advantage of that fact by creating what they call "early bird specials". They charge less if you go to the restaurants early, and that way, they fill the place at what would normally be a "dead" time. It gives older people an incentive to do what they want to do anyway, which is to eat earlier. People like this sometimes have a very hard time in Italy when they find all the restaurants closed at this hour, and I eavesdrop on their complaints shamelessly. LOL

However, it's also true that Americans don't understand why businesses should be closed at any reasonable, or indeed, unreasonable hour. Restaurants that open for lunch are usually open through the rest of the day, and places like diners might be open 24 hours a day. And stores! It is very convenient to be able to go to the 24 hour supermarket to get the ingredients you forgot to buy that you need to make the cupcakes for your child's class the next day, or to be able to go Christmas shopping at 10Pm after the kids are finally asleep. It's just...it seems as if there's no demarcation line between business and....LIFE, if you know what I mean.)

To continue...I can never really be Italian because...

I don't know how to even get my food at the autogrills...hello?...lines?

(I have indeed been known to get run over and knocked flat in the Autogrill...just not pushy enough, I guess...OR, I have also been known to get left behind like poor Rosalba in Pane e Tulipani!)

There's something seriously wrong with people who tell you that a pigeon...uh...unloading on you is good luck.

I do not want to do everything at the same time as everybody else does it. What if I want to have supper at 6:00 P.M.? You gotta problem with that?

(I still don't understand why a bird doing it's business on me is a sign of good luck.)

I can never be Italian because I want a glass of milk with my spaghetti all' amatriciana!

(OMG, I shuddered when I wrote that...EWWWWWWWWWWW!

I never gave my children glasses of milk to drink with their meals either, no matter what the American pediatrician said. Ewwwwwwwwwwwwww!!! They ate enough meat, cheese, green vegetables and fruit every day to provide every nutrient they needed. How to feed a child was not something I was willing to be lectured about by Americans whose own kids only ate McDonald's chicken fingers.)
 
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Re: I Can Never Be Italian Because.....

I just got back from shopping, so, of course, I thought of some more.

I don't want to be treated like a criminal just because I don't have exact change, or want to pay with change...It IS money, BTW! At least in the U.S. I only get a cough and the death stare if there's a man behind me on line at the supermarket.

I want the price to be attached to every item I want to buy; I don't want to negotiate it (I only do that for houses and cars!) AND I want the price to be the same for everyone!

I want to be able to take 20 bathing suits and ten pairs of jeans to the changing room to try on, if I feel like it, and with my own mirror!

I don't understand why in some places I'm not allowed to put my own fruits and vegetables in a bag.

(People who say this have never heard of GERMS! I just wish someone would stop people here from putting their germy fingers all over the food. I always feel like the germs are still there even when I rinse them off at home. Yuck!

The only bow to customer hygiene at my market, and at the local Whole Foods for that matter, is that they provide little wax paper type tissues that you're supposed to use to pick out your rolls, or muffins, or bagels. (sometimes tongs) Only problem is that the bin is usually empty, and I never see people use the tissues even if they are there. (Except for moi, of course)

I get particularly grossed out when I see people pawing over stuff like lettuces or green beans. With lettuce, especially, you can't use hot water on it after all. Yikes!)

I also wonder about something. I have sometimes cooked with American friends who are really, IMO, negligent about hygiene when they're cooking with chicken, and I don't know if they're just aberrations, and most Americans are better in that department. I actually saw an educated woman put raw chicken on a platter, take it outside for grilling on the barbecue, give the platter a wipe with a paper towel, and then put the cooked chicken back on it. Needless to say I ate the hamburgers that night!

I was taught to handle raw chicken as if it were nuclear waste. When I cook with my family in Italy it's the same. A lot of use of salt to disinfect, in fact, brining it in salt water, which of course makes it more moist and delicious when you cook it, and everything covered with cloth when it's put outside, etc. It's just not the same here.


I just finished speaking to family, and so I have two more to add.

I can tell I am losing my "Italianinity" because:

I only say one si, while they all say, "Si,si", or even "Si,si,si"! or Emphatically Yes!

Also, when saying good-bye, one ciao will not do. It's "Ciao...ciao...ciao...ciao", spoken rather quickly. The last thing I hear when hanging up the phone, is still more soft "ciaos". I can't tell you how endearing I find this. It's as if they can't bear to part...to let you go, and this is one of the ways that they prolong the period.

It's the same way in person. I used to tell my Italian family that we had to go at least a half hour before we had to leave, just to make sure we had time for all the good-byes. When it was going to be the last good-bye for a while, I was usually in tears the whole time. Leave taking is so emotional for my family, at least, that my great-aunt, who was so old I never knew if I would see her again when I left for the the States, never came to the last gathering, because she couldn't take the strain of it.

She's gone now, and has left a huge hole in my life. Even in the year of her death, when she was over 100, she would call quite often on her telefonino. Sometimes it was with family news, sometimes it was because she'd seen some natural catastrophe on the news and wanted to know if I was all right. (She was hysterical during Katrina; her grasp of U.S. geography was a little hazy!) Often, however, when, upon answering the phone I immediately asked whether everything was all right (I'm one of those perpetual worriers who always asked if everything was all right.) she would say, "I just wanted to hear your voice." Lovely...lovely...lovely woman, so dear to me. Not of my blood, but engraved on my heart.

To get back from our digressions:

I can't really be Italian because:

I do occasionally want to eat foreign food.

This is changing somewhat with the younger generation in Italy, but my "Italian" in Italy friends and family really prefer Italian food, and aren't very open to eating the cuisine of other countries. Of course I'm prejudiced, but I think part of it is that Italian food is so good, and so varied, that it can keep you trying new things all your life. Then, I think certain cultures have a reputation for not being as hygienic in the kitchen, and that influences how people feel about it too.

I am the same way too, despite living in America for decades now. I cook Italian food or Italian influenced food virtually every day. Well, maybe that's an exaggeration. When I was younger and entertaining for my husband's clients, I worked my way through the Julia Child cookbook of French food (I wasn't clever enough to write a book about it), but I haven't 'cooked French' for years: too much butter and too many sauces covering up the taste of the natural ingredients.

There is a quite large Portuguese community near us, and I love their way with seafood, and chicken, although they grill their meat to death. (I can eat rabbit,and quail, and baccala there too.) I don't cook quail at home very much, because it provides a nice treat when we go out to eat since I usually don't want to go to an Italian restaurant.

A lot of Greek-Americans live in our town, and I'm not too far from Astoria, which is like little Athens, and I like their salads, and fish and lamb dishes too. I tend to make this at home sometimes, because it really is similar to Italian food.

I also serve "American" food, but it is Italian accented American food if that makes any sense.

It's funny you mention couscous. My father spent quite a bit of time in North Africa, and loved couscous. I first ate it in Paris with my mother and father. I like it very much, and I also make it at home, especially in the summer, when I barbecue the meat outside.

I guess I could say I cook and eat Italian food 90% of the time, and the rest of the time some version of Mediterranean food.

What I don't like really is Asian food. I read on ex-pat blogs all the time how Americans in Italy are pining for Thai food, or good Chinese food, or Japanese food. Japanese and Thai food I really don't like. I absolutely can't eat raw protein; I don't even eat carpaccio, or raw clams. As for Chinese food, once in a while, if it's some really good place in China town, yes, but the stuff they sell in local take outs is just not for me.

I don't know what Italians mothers do to their kids; we're fixated for life on Italian food.

 
That?s a really cool poem Angela :)
 
Thanks for posting this, I enjoyed it very much :) I don't care for Asian food either, I find it ewww! I love Italian food, French food (obviously), and Greek/Turkish is also nice. But I think if I really had to choose, my natural inclination would be to go for Italian food first. It's so delicious and fulfilling… simple, yet extremely tasty. I'd describe is a "authentic". I visited Northern Italy years ago, down to Rome… though if we're to believe the main character in the movie Benvenuti al Sud: to someone from Lombardy, Rome already feels like the extreme south of Italy ;) Well anyway, during my stay, I ate quite a lot, lol.
 
Do Italians in Italy "drown" their spaghetti in spaghetti sauce? Greeks in Greece are a bit more stingy with the sauce although the spaghetti is just as tasty. I worked in Italian restaurants while going to college so I don't go out to Italian restaurants, I can make it better myself. I will go out to Italian restaurants that feature Northern Italian food.
 
Do Italians in Italy "drown" their spaghetti in spaghetti sauce? Greeks in Greece are a bit more stingy with the sauce although the spaghetti is just as tasty. I worked in Italian restaurants while going to college so I don't go out to Italian restaurants, I can make it better myself. I will go out to Italian restaurants that feature Northern Italian food.

Absolutely NOT, not in Napoli, even, where they make an art form of tomato sauce:
villa-positano.jpg


I've never seen more sauce than this there:
spaghetti-pomodoro.jpg


Btw, the food in Napoli, the Amalfi coast, Capri, everywhere in Campania, really, is absolutely outstanding, imo, a testament to the incredible quality of their produce and other food products, and their genius for cooking.

I think it's tied with the cooking of Emilia Romagna as the best in Italy.

Italian American food is another thing entirely. Some of it is very good, but it's not the same.
 
Absolutely NOT, not in Napoli, even, where they make an art form of tomato sauce:
villa-positano.jpg


I've never seen more sauce than this there:
spaghetti-pomodoro.jpg


Btw, the food in Napoli, the Amalfi coast, Capri, everywhere in Campania, really, is absolutely outstanding, imo, a testament to the incredible quality of their produce and other food products, and their genius for cooking.

I think it's tied with the cooking of Emilia Romagna as the best in Italy.

Italian American food is another thing entirely. Some of it is very good, but it's not the same.

Yes, that's what I thought. My sister makes some of the best spaghetti I have ever had and puts 90% of Italian American restaurants to shame. I will have to visit Napoli and Capriand taste some of the local cuisine. It is amazing how much more tasty the produce is in the Mediterranean. Tomatoes taste like tomatoes, peaches like peaches...
 
Yes, that's what I thought. My sister makes some of the best spaghetti I have ever had and puts 90% of Italian American restaurants to shame. I will have to visit Napoli and Capriand taste some of the local cuisine. It is amazing how much more tasty the produce is in the Mediterranean. Tomatoes taste like tomatoes, peaches like peaches...

For Napoli and surrounding areas it's because of the volcanic soil. There's a thread here I started on the Amalfi coast and Capri.
https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threa...Amalfi-coast-and-Capri?highlight=Amalfi+coast

There's also information here:
https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/32670-Ten-Italian-foods-you-won-t-find-in-Italy

Napoli with a chef and an art historian:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtjbhK8Gm5k

With Gino D'Acampo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKMlRAsmqWQ


The only places where any tomato based sauce is edible cost a fortune. In the rest I don't order tomato based sauces because I'm always disappointed, and this is New York I'm talking about. Other than New York, Philly, Boston, and a few areas in California I don't go to Italian restaurants in the U.S.
 
For Napoli and surrounding areas it's because of the volcanic soil. There's a thread here I started on the Amalfi coast and Capri.
https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threa...Amalfi-coast-and-Capri?highlight=Amalfi+coast

There's also information here:
https://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/32670-Ten-Italian-foods-you-won-t-find-in-Italy

Napoli with a chef and an art historian:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtjbhK8Gm5k

With Gino D'Acampo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKMlRAsmqWQ


The only places where any tomato based sauce is edible cost a fortune. In the rest I don't order tomato based sauces because I'm always disappointed, and this is New York I'm talking about. Other than New York, Philly, Boston, and a few areas in California I don't go to Italian restaurants in the U.S.

If you're ever in the Melbourne FL area, eat at this place: http://www.baccowinecafe.com/kitchen.html. Highly recommended.
 
I can never be Italian because pasta makes me fat. Full stop.
 

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