A Barking Good Time, My Italian Thanksgiving
November 25, 2009
Twenty years ago I was married and living in Italy and as Thanksgiving approached I was feeling a little bit homesick. While my husband knew about Thanksgiving because of me, most Italians don’t know that much about it and they definitely don’t eat turkey or pumpkin pie.
So rather than feeling sorry for myself, I decided to create a little Italian thanksgiving of my own.
The Italians call it “Il Giorno di ringraziamento” which means the day of thanks. It’s not easy to find a whole turkey in Italy, maybe I could have gone out and shot one, but that wasn’t my idea of a good meal, so what I did instead was bake a giant squash which I turned on it’s side, pasted paper wings on it, add a head with a long turkey neck and voila’, I had my thanksgiving ‘bird’.
I have to admit that it did look pretty funny but that didn’t matter. Just seeing the funny looking turkey made out of a giant squash, got me out of my bad mood. Now for how to make apumpkin pie. Hmmm….
Italians don’t eat pumpkins. They have something like it which is also a giant squash but when I called my mother for the recipe I realized that there was a bigger problem. Where the heck do you find condensed milk in a small Italian town?
I tried to explain to my husband what it was, but given that I don’t even know what condensed milk is, I wasn’t so successful at explaining it to him. Is it just milk with less water? I don’t think so. But what else is in it? I wasn’t sure.
Well conveniently at the time, my husband and I had adopted two little puppies that he had found in the street and we were feeding them puppy formula which was a kind of a milk.
Hmmm, I thought – it’s a small can and a liquid like milk. Maybe this would suffice for my condensed milk?
I decided that if it was fit for puppies it would work for my pumpkin pie and besides no one in Italy knew the actual recipe for pumpkin pie so they wouldn’t be staring over my shoulder telling me I was putting in the wrong ingredients. But just the same, I waited until I was alone in my kitchen and then I substituted puppy formula for condensed milk! I popped the pie into the oven and came back an hour later.
Looked like pumpkin pie, smelled like pumpkin pie. So far so good.
Again no one knew what it was supposed to taste like so I figured if it was horrible, no one would blame me. I invited my in-laws over for dinner and they were delighted to learn about our holiday tradition.
When it came time for dessert, I brought out the pie. They were intrigued. Italians pastries look very different from our pies. I tried to explain what it was made of, the call pumpkin “zucca” and so I told them it was a zuccone (big zucca). They seemed curious.
They ate a bite or two. They seemed to like it. My father in-law even took a second piece. I was waiting to hear a few barking or growling noises but everything was quiet.
Then my husband had to go and blow everything by saying, “Hey didn’t you tell me that you couldn’t find one of the ingredients for the pie….some kind of milk…how did you ever figure that out?” Ooops, busted!
“Ummm”, I said, stalling for time so that my father in law could finish his second piece before I admitted the truth. “I substituted the puppy formula for it.”
YOU WHAT????
Dead silence while everyone stopped eating and looked at me. Then they all looked at the pie. Fortunately my father in law had a sense of humor. He didn’t miss a beat. He just picked up his fork and kept eating as if nothing had happened. That broke the ice and everyone kept eating.
It turned out to be one of the best thanksgiving’s ever. It was different for sure but by being creative, it turned out to remain as one of my favorite. In fact I’d have to say that we had a real barking good time!
Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!
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