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We share the Italian Food Culture (below) and Sicilian Menu Planning (Page 2) to give you understanding and joy in treating yourself to a healthy life and for preparing dinner parties to entertain guest. Inviting family and friends over for dinner is an Italian tradition, that Italian-Americans have seem to have lost the pleasure and art for. Sicilians are very warm and inviting people just like the sunny island itself. The productive American business way of life, while incredible, has caused the suffering of poor dining habits resulting in increased heart attacks, obesity, and many ailments. Family members eat at different times creating a house of strangers. Italians have a gift with preparing food and love to discuss it. |
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BREAKFAST (COLLAZIONE): The typical Italian breakfast is light and quick, since lunch is a larger meal. The Italian breakfast consist of coffee, or fresh milk or orange juice, hard crusted European bread, home made jams and biscotti cakes. Many Italians prefer to have coffee in small coffee bars on the way to work or the train station. Some cafes require you buy a pre-paid ticket, then you place your order. Otherwise you select a what you want and then pay the cashier. Brioche (croissants) are filled with fruit or offered plain. |
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LUNCH (PRANZO): Lunch time is usually 2 hours long, but the business day is extended, since Italians eat later at night. The 2 hour lunch gives Culinary Italians time to shop for fresh food and to cook a nice lunch and to take care of other errands for the family. It provides time to socialize or to go home for lunch and be with family. This is the Italian way of life, whereas, Americans have restricted lunch time and usually eat terrible unhealthy fast food close to their work place, then they rush home at 5 p.m. only to sit in traffic but finally arrive to their televisions. A full Pranzo menu has the antipasto (starter) a primo piatto (pasta, rice or soup), a secondo piatto (meat or fish) with contorno (vegetable or salad), then frutta ( fresh fruit). |
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DINNER (CENA): The
typical Italian dinner is filled with fresh food and dining can last hours on
the weekend. Here is a typical Sicilian dinner: Flavoured cheeses, olives and
"caponata" are served as hors d’oeuvre, fresh pasta with light
sauce and grated cheese, roasted meat with fresh vegetables and potatoes, a
superb locally made wine and for dessert local traditional pastry the
"siringati" made with ricotta cream and orange flavour and fried.
In the Italian home, dinner is a celebration of family, not a duty of
survival. Antipasto literally means "before the meal, or before the
pasta" and it is a custom in Italian homes never to keep people waiting
for food. As soon as guests arrive they should be served an antipasto. |
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MEDITERRANEAN DIET OLIVE OIL Olive oil is touted as a 6500 year-old miracle cure, a natural storehouse of vitamins A, E, D, and K, used to heal wounds, enliven skin cells, restore metabolic balance and invigorate the circulatory system. Experts say olive oil reduces cholesterol because of the preponderance of HDL's (high density lipoproteins-the "good cholesterol"). |
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When it comes to food in America, there is abundance, but not everyone is learned in what is quality and what is bad food, as processed fast food has over taken slow food. |
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In Italian,
with English conversion or just learn to read Italian. |
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Sicilian
Recipes from Erice |
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Excellent web site provides Sicilian cooking details |
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All Sicilian
recipe’s
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