My Italian grandma Michelina, and her sister Louisa were fantastic cooks. Both killed it with Italian food. Grandma married an Englishman from Iowa, so her repertoire expanded to accommodate the ":meat and potatoes" diet of his upbringing. ( though Grandpa told me he never had anything but chicken necks and fried potato skins til he was grown and gone from the farm). You see they were poor, and the men and older kids got the good parts and actual potatoes. I love fried potato skins to this day.
My Great Aunt, through an arrangement brokered by her older brother Catello, married another Italian, Edward ( Uncle Etch)to Karen and I). He was crazy about his twin, blond great nieces and since he and Zia never had children, they lavished us with love, and we could do no wrong. He was from a different region of Italy, actually from Lucca, in the north while Grandma and Zia were from southern Italy, Meta di Sorrento outside of Naples.
Most of you probably know that each area in Italy has it's own regional cooking and dishes, based on what grows/is raised there. Kinda of like the USA. So Zia learned to cook northern Italian dishes. Hence forth my sister and I enjoyed a childhood filled with a variety of delicious meals.
One dish I truly loved was Zia's rabbit which she browned in olive oil, with cloves of garlic and black shriveled up Italian olives. Then baked in the oven just swimming in olive oil, where she had added chunks of potato to brown and crisp in the combined juices of the rabbit, garlic, olives and of course olive oil. Holy crap that was so good, and none of us ever worried about the fat content.
Once I lost my Grandma and Zia, the rabbit was lost too. Until one day at Corti Bros. in Sacramento, I discovered fresh rabbit in the butcher shop. Imagine my delight. I would recreate Zia's famous rabbit. All was good until I got home, put stuff away, unwrapped the rabbit parts and realized..... This looks alot like my kitties, naked. The legs and haunches were identical. The cats were also eyeing me somewhat fearfully as they noticed the resemblance too.
I could not do it. I cooked the rabbit, but simply could not eat it. How could I eat my beloved Foxie, Bumie and Henry? Cause that is exactly what it looked like, only without the fur. My neighbor John benefited from the discovery. He did not have cats as pets. Even though my kitties have gone on to wait for me in heaven, I still cannot bring myself to eat rabbit.
Now that I am embarking on chicken wrangling, will I find that I simply cannot eat chicken any more? Will I see my little hens every time I look at a Chicken McNugget? OMG what will I fix for dinner if this happens? I am willing to risk it due to my love for chickens but......
I will not be buying an aquarium any time soon. And you can bet I will not be adding a cow to the Cornils menagerie.
P.S. No pigs, sheep or lambs either.
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