The Italians take their holidays very seriously. We live in California, so winter isn’t really tangible; we pretend we’re freezing when it’s 60 degrees out. For food, the Italians always would prepare the Feast of the Seven Fishes. But since my grandma and dad are gone, we’ve shied away from a lot of the tradition; it’s a really heavy load to make that meal.

We do some of it; I’ll do a pasta with a lobster sauce. Some Christmases we’ve made a Genovese sauce, with meat that’s cooked for about eight hours with like thirty onions and butter. We would cook for forty-five people on Christmas Eve and then thirty people on Christmas Day. On Christmas Day it was always lasagna. We’d eat with our extended family and then by the end of the evening, friends would stop by to have coffee and eat Italian pastries.