I love Italian food. Nine times out of ten if I get to choose where we are going to eat I am picking Italian. However if I have the choice, I will always pick a home cooked Italian meal from my mother.
I guess you could call me a snob when it comes to Italian food. Nothing comes close to my Grandmothers, but my mom and my Aunt's cooking are a solid second. Now when I eat Italian food I am always comparing it to their cooking.
The only real problem with this is that nothing can compete. I am always thinking that other cooking is not authentic, or it is not flavored right. It becomes almost impossible to enjoy Italian food when a member of my family is not preparing it. This also translates to the commercials I see featuring pre-made Italian food dinners. They always claim that their food is rich with authentic Italian ingredients, but that does not mean that the flash freezing makes it taste as good as something from scratch. I also like how they have a bunch people in chef hats hand rolling out the dough when you know that they have to have a machine that is making it for them. However these commercials do always show large family gatherings when they eat their food, which is actually pretty accurate in my family. If my parents decide to have a big meal, it is usually because we are having a good gathering of people over.
Something I also found funny was when Negra was talking about the depiction of cooking food from scratch being a huge community effort. The Characters will go to their local shops where everyone knows everybody else and it took the effort of a lot of people to make this one meal. While I think that the movies have definitely taken that idea a little to far, cooking a large home cooked Italian meal is a lot of effort. Everyone helps out at some point, and in the end it all pays off.
So are these media depictions that far off. Some are and some are not that crazy. I guess it all depends on your viewpoint.
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