Task 5: I interview older people about traditional dishes

1. Interview with
maternal grandfather
by Salvatore Mallia
eTwinning Project: «Tell me your typical dish and I guess your Country
Task 5 - Typical dish: collect written and oral sources.
I interview older people about traditional dishes

2. Personal history
• My family comes from the artisan world and trader.
My father was a cobbler and, starting from the
years ' 50 he wore a small grocery store, my home
mother and sometimes also made the seamstress
because he knew how to sew and, often, helped her
husband in the shop, was a very clever woman, had
done Elementary schools. My parents were married
just after the end of the 1st World War (1915-' 18).
They had a child after 18 years, was born in ' 38
and died in ' 39 after just 10 months. Then in ' 44 I
was born and so I came to cheer the house.

3. • At that time things were rather to be desired
in comfort. There were, in fact, all the
comforts of today, the heating, for example,
was to brazier. I have always grown up in
Pachino and my parents have done so much to
make me study to have a better future and, to
tell the truth, have succeeded.

4. The cultural degree of my family was simply elementary.
But I was able to take the high school diploma, and with
the help of a scholarship I attended the university, first
the Faculty of Mathematics and then that of law. But for
various reasons, I never got a degree. However, having
undertaken a "special" (concept and Directive) career in
1968, this fact allowed, always through the passing of
examinations, to gain access to the managerial career in
the State administration.
When I was a child my favorite food was to eat the
sandwich with mortadella and/or Nutella or even with the
"country chocolate".

5. • My family, usually, at breakfast ate some homemade
biscuits soaked in milk (this was genuine because the
cows and/or sheep were passing through the streets of
the country and were milked in front). For lunch a plate
of pasta, often with the sauce, and, twice a week a slice
of veal and homemade bread (for the holidays,
especially those Christmas, we met with relatives to
slaughter the pig of which I liked the blood). For dinner,
a soup, or a boiled egg, or some cheese. Often legumes
and vegetables and fresh fruit from their own lands.

6. • The meals were served and eaten in the dining
room in porcelain dishes, on a round table called
"U Tunnu", precisely because it was round.
• I don't think my parents, whom I personally knew
when they were older, have ever eaten at a
restaurant or in a trattoria! Now the times have
changed. Today you go to the restaurant or in the
trattoria at least twice a month.
• A favorite memory of my childhood, which relates
to food was, as I said before, being able to eat a
sandwich with mortadella and/or Nutella!

7. Food preparation and preservation
• My family's meals were prepared by my mother,
sometimes helped by my father.
• My family's kitchen was different from my kitchen today.
In fact then we used fatty foods, today, instead, we avoid
them, I, for example, often eat fish. Also the foods were
genuine, fruits and vegetables were not fertiled, the
animals were bred in nearby farms, so milk and meats
were always fresh. The bread was made at home.
• My family didn't have a garden or a farm.
• My family did not buy food at the minute like flour, rice,
sugar, milk or butter, because, as I said before, it had a
grocery shop that obviously bought wholesale.

8. • My family to preserve perishable food,
before the fifties, used a crate of wood,
inside all lined with zinc where it was
placed half a slab of ice and, through a
tiny angular hole (bottom side), driped
The water that ran into a receptacle.
Then, with the hour of well-being the
refrigerators arrived.

9. Food changes
• I do not know if it may surprise you but, when I was a child I
was Wolverine of chocolate and Nutella.
• The Nutella, which was bought ready, was smeared in half
sandwich, the chocolate I ate so, as it was.
• If I could go back in time and have a food of my childhood
that I can not have today, it would be just the Nutella of then.
Today, in fact, even for the age, I can not eat.

10. I can briefly say that the changes in the diet of the
people I have observed during my life are from
fatty foods to less fatty, but more flavorsome.
With regard to food change I think that the first
ones were more good as they shone in
genuineness. Today, however, you have to be
careful because many foods, even if seemingly
more good than those of before, are often
manipulated and, therefore, can hurt.
Today's food is healthier because it's controlled,
but it's definitely not as genuine as it was then.