[I still care]

24. You are greeted at the door when you visit with a meatball on a fork.

25. You are amazed, when you leave NY, that people will actually put tomato soup on their pasta and think it is sauce. It's frightening.

26. You have a garden and it has zucchini, tomatoes, and eggplant. In the front yard is a "hen and chicks" and there is at least one fig tree.

27. You know Christmas Eve as "fish night". This means at least 5 different courses of fish. In fact, if it's a holiday, you must have at LEAST six courses.

Give me time, I'll think of plenty more.

[JoeA]

Yes!!! Fish on Christmas Eve, before midnight mass.

[truth_seeker]

"27. You know Christmas Eve as "fish night". This means at least 5 different courses of fish."

I've been granted "honorary Italian status" by my wife's family by virtue of our soon to be 36 years of marriage.

Both her sides come from the Bari region, and Christmas Eve fish is STILL followed.

They came from Bari directly to California (northern and southern). Anyone named DeMarzo out west is likely related, this being a rare surname, mainly from Bari.

Three years ago we had a reunion, numbering over one hundred (four generations), spanning three days. The host and hostess fed those people twice a day.

Big Pine, California was the site. Later this month a smaller group will gather in the East Bay suburbs.

The norm is in-tact families (few exceptions). Probably half have substituted protestant faiths, for their Catholic upbringing.

One nun; no mafiosa. Anybody had those nasty, sour marinated olives? Don't know a name for them.

[ArrogantBustard]

In the front yard is a "hen and chicks"

I didn't know "hens & chicks" were an Italian thing ... I just assumed all sane people planted them ... everybody in my family does, including the military families. We've left them all over the country. Plant them when moving into a new house, dig up a few (they propagate like nothing else) for the new house when Dad gets a PCS.

[showme_the_Glory]

27. You know Christmas Eve as "fish night". This means at least 5 different courses of fish. In fact, if it's a holiday, you must have at LEAST six courses.

At my house it's always been Cioppino on Christmas eve.