Maria Bertucci Compagno placed the seed-and-wine cookies on a platter in her kitchen in Mandeville, explaining how artifacts of her Sicilian heritage like this are never far away. "If I don't have cookies or meatballs or red sauce, I feel naked," she said.

The platter prepared, the former restaurateur moved to the front door to greet Guiseppe Benito Ranzino, a sausage maker and fellow Sicilian immigrant. The two friends, both 80, talked of family, music, food and the land they both left in the middle of the last century, speaking mostly in fluent Sicilian.

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Source: http://www.theneworleansadvocate.com/