Don’t Sit On The Ravioli — Italian American Stories

Don’t Sit On The Ravioli

Some of the best times growing up Italian, were the holiday’s.  Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving were always special events, along with my grandmother’s birthday.  Besides getting to see all the aunts and uncles…  “don’t forget to kiss your aunts”  mom word warn us before we left the house and on the way in to my grandmother’s house, the food was the best.

We would always spend Easter at my maternal grandmother’s, where she lived with my mom’s brother uncle Frank and aunt Dolly ( real name Italia ) but that was off limits.  Aunt Dolly would always make a coconut cake in the shape of a lamb, Aunt Mary would make the “gravy”  or sauce for you purists, and uncle Frank would make home made ravioli.  It was quite amazing to watch uncle Frank roll out a perfect 3’ by 3’  sheet of pasta using a wooden dowel.  Always the perfect thickness.  He would spoon on the filling an make about 24 at a time, and in the end make about 10 dozen or so, and with the scraps hand cut linguini preferred by grandma.

But that’s not the story!  As uncle Frank would finish each batch, one of us would run them over to the sofa covered in sheets so that they could dry out for an hour or so before they went into the pot of boiling water.  One year, my cousin Frank, who was about 16 at the time, dressed in his Easter finery, plopped right down on the couch.  Needless to say, several Italian women screamed, Frank you sat on the ravioli.  He jumped up, ran out the door, saying “You are all crazy, who puts ravioli on the sofa”!

Almost 50 years later I wrote and recorded the Ravioli song in honor of my cousin Frank and all the good times we had.