Italian American Family

For most Italian-American families, women are the ones responsible for cooking dinner while the men traditionally sit back and rest after a long day of work, but that was never the case in my home. Once my dad walked through the door, he would take off his blazer, put on his apron, and cook dinner as my mom laid on the couch in our living room and watched TV. For my dad, every day was spent facing the ups and down of a turbulent stock market, and cooking was a lifelong passion of his that always relieved him of his stress. In fact, before he was a fulltime investment banker, he was a chef at his own restaurant. My mom, meanwhile, would spend the day like a traditional housewife up until the point when my dad came home. My dad’s dinners were like a collective sigh of relief. They meant that my Dad’s day of facing unexpected obstacles was over. They meant that my Mom could finally relax. They meant that the time for work was over, and the time for pleasure had begun.
It’s no secret that my dad has always loved food, and cooking dinner for our family brought him to a place where he was at peace. The only thing that I would ever see him watch on TV was Food Network; and over the years, he filled an entire bookshelf with various cookbooks and food magazines. In fact, cooking is how my dad met my mom in the first place. After he opened a restaurant in Staten Island, she tried it, and asked to meet the chef. It was the first of …show more content…
Although the celebration of my dad’s dinners was unspoken and perhaps invisible to me growing up, I know that there was never a sad face at the dinner table. From the moment my dad placed the meal on the table and my mom walked in from the living room, there was nothing but laughter, family, and some really tasty Italian