October 14, 2024 • 21 mins
We have just one week until the new series of Ruthie’s Table 4 starts on the 22nd October!
And in just 21 days, the U.S. Presidental election will be underway.
This week we are revisiting an episode from Series 2 with former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Considered the most powerful woman in American political history, she recalls how her five children would help her prepare dinners for the Democratic Party in the early days of her political career, her memories of childhood meals in Baltimore, and her love of everything chocolate.
Ruthie’s Table 4, made in partnership with Moncler.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to River Cafe Table four, a production of iHeartRadio
and Adamized Studios.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
There is an infinite amount of subjects I'd like to
discuss with Speaker of the House Pelosi, but you know
the rules of River Cafe Table four. We only discuss food,
memories and how food fits into our lives, family, work,
and values. Nancy Pelosi and I share the same aspirations
(00:37):
and concerns inequality the environment. The difference is that I
wake up every day worrying about the world, and she
goes to work every day to change it. In an hour,
fifty guests will be arriving for dinner in our home
to celebrate this awesome woman. While we are talking agripher
(01:00):
cafe chefs are cooking risotto ammaroni, poaching Langestine, roasting pumpkin,
And because Speaker Pelosi loves chocolate, We're going to have
two chocolate desserts, a bit of chocolate sorbet and a
rich chocolate cake.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
I'm very happy to read the recipe for chocolate sorbet,
one of my favorite basic foods. In order to achieve
this work of art, you take seven hundred and fifty
milli liters of water, two hundred and fifty grams of
castor sugar, one hundred and fifty grams of cocoa powder,
(01:42):
one hundred milli liters of recchio romagna. Gently boil the
water and sugar together to this light syrup. Add the
cocoa powder, quit gently stirring for fifteen to twenty minutes
until the coco powder is completely He dissolved strain, cool
(02:03):
and add the brandy. Put the mixture into an ice
cream maker and churn until frozen or freeze and flat
freezer trays.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Thank you. Before we go into food and values, and
food and family and food and memories, tell me about
your love for chocolate.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
My earliest memories are about loving chocolate. I remember once
when I was a very little girl, my big brother,
who was a teenager. My parents said, you can have
the car if you bring Nancy home some ice cream. First,
he brought vanilla ice cream home. I put it under
the bed, never ate it because it wasn't chocolate. Why
(02:50):
would he bring me vanilla ice cream? But I've always
loved it, and as time has gone by, I've loved
it darker and darker and darker.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yeah, what about ice cream? Because I did read that
you have ice cream for breakfast or is that an
urban myth.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
No, it's not an urban myth. It's convenient, it's right there,
it has long shelf life. I don't have to worry
about it. It's right there, and but I have it
for breakfast. It's a great way to start the day.
I don't have it every day, but I have it often.
And when I was younger, I used to have it
(03:29):
before I went to sleep, a pint device chocolate ice cream.
But as time has gone by, the later the chocolate,
the less sleep I have.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
You find the caffeine and the chocolate. So as a child,
so you ate chocolate. Did your mother know that you
were having a pint of ice cream before you went
to sleep? And that was fine.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
It was not usual. We didn't have sodas or soft
drinks or anything in our home like that. Everything was fresh,
except we had chocolate ice cream.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
I love ice cream. When I go to the River Cafe,
my restaurant, or go to any restaurant, the dessert I
go for is always ice cream.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Well, people say to me, you're going to some of
the fanciest restaurants in the world and you're ordering chocolate
ice cream. For dessert. Don't you think you should have
something more sophisticated.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
I think it's delicious. I think it's the way to
end a meal. Should we go back then to your
mother and your older brother. How many of you were
there in your family?
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Well, I'm talking about my oldest brother. At the time,
there were seven children, six boys, one girl. I was
the youngest, and I'm talking about my brother who was
like eleven years older than I was. My oldest brother.
When we talked about if you want to have the car,
you have to get ice cream for Nancy first.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
So your parents had six boys and then they had you.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
One of them died when he was young, So I
was really raised with five boys.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Yeah, and the Della Sandra household of six children. How
is the food? Who cooked?
Speaker 3 (05:02):
The cook cooked? And my mother, may she rest in peace,
bless her heart. She had a cook and what was
what was it like?
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Well, it was very.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Italian, but it was also very fresh and delicious. Sin
of the rest, I mean the cook would come in
the morning and make breakfast in that What would that be?
It could be anything you want. It could have eggs
or you could have oat meal. There were some standard things.
Sometimes that would even drink coffee at an early age,
(05:35):
like eleven or twelve, And.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Would you all sit down to breakfast, So that would
be if six or seven children and two parents, was
breakfast and meal that you all shared.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Sort of dinner was what we shared. Now. My father,
my whole life, My father was the mayor of Baltimore
from when I was in first grade when I went
away to college my freshman year of college, he was
still the mayor of Baltimore. So our routine was he
would come home and in those days a long time ago,
he would go out to make all of his speeches
(06:06):
in the evening in black tie. Everything was very formal.
So he would come home from work, we would have
our family dinner together early. What time would that be
like five point thirty, Yeah, because he'd have to then
go on the campaign trail or just the civic engagements.
So that was the time that we were together. And
(06:28):
then of course Sunday brunch and those kinds of things.
But I'm just talking about every day and to this day,
my husband, Paul, who was born and raised in San Francisco,
I was born and raised in Baltimore. To this day,
he likes to dine at eight, and I like to
eat at five early, like a peasant.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Now well, actually I find that now in the restaurant,
more and more people are eating earlier. We used to.
Everybody used to make fun of Americans for wanting to
eat early, and now it's harder for us to sell
the later tables. Even young people. Everybody wants to eat early.
But going back to this day of your father coming
back from work and you're all sitting down, would it
(07:10):
would there be? Would it be raucous? Would it be talk?
Would everybody be? What was it like at the table?
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Would be a mixture, just depending what the mood was
at the time. But there were certain things that I
carried over to my own children, and I'm still that way.
In a restaurant I had, we always had to have
a tablecloth, you know. I mean that was a long
time ago, so it doesn't it isn't so unusual to
think tablecloth then. Now it's almost a luxury. And so
(07:41):
for my own children, we've never had a meal without
two things, some linens, whatever it might be, could be
place matt and salad and whatever else we happen to have.
And when they were growing up, the five of them
five and six years in one week to the day
a pack. I had different things I would try. I
(08:05):
would try when they came home from school. I'd say,
let's have dessert now for three thirty four o'clock, we
have dessert and then we'll have dinner later. Then I
decided wouldn't be a good idea because they came home
that they were hungry to have dinner at four o'clock,
So that they would have their dinner and then we'd
(08:25):
have dessert later. We've tried all kinds of things to
satisfy their appetites.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
I loved that you said that your families were basically
a map of Italy of those very and so tell
me about the Italian influence on the food.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Well, my father's mother was born in Baltimore, Maryland, but
her parents, which would be my great grandparents, one was
born in Venice and one was born in Genoa, so
there was a lot of that influence in the in
the food Northern and northern Italian. My mother's family was
from Compobasso, which is in the center of Italy, but
(09:15):
we lived in an Italian neighborhood, so there was every
food you can imagine in the neighborhood and every dialect
that you could imagine in the neighborhood. But there was
one thing in common, the smell of very fresh bread
early in the morning, fresh Italian bread. To this day,
it's one of the my happiest memories, the smell of
(09:36):
fresh bake bread smells.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Yeah, that's a good smell. But I think we always
talk about Italy, you know, which was became a country
very late. So you have the very strong regional dishes,
don't you. So in Venice you have the polenta, and
in southern Italy you have smartest, and then in Florence
it's very in Tuscan it's very bread oriented. And then everybody,
(10:00):
I guess came to Baltimore and there was there was
everything in every area.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Thing. You had the Tuscana, the Siciliana, the Marca John
or bruts As, the what do they call the Genovase
Gena Basically they were the other different names from the Ligorian. Yeah,
the Venezzi that goes from Venice, by the name of
(10:25):
where they came from, because they were all sort of
like city states. Whny of the northern Italians came early,
you know, As I say, my father's mother she was
born in Baltimore, probably like in the eighteen eighties or
something like that. Yeah, they came earlier than the others.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
And then the southern Italians came later. You think the more.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
Later, the middle and later. And then San Francisco is
a very Italian American city. The Bank of America was
originally the Bank of Italy. Yeah, as the Bank of Italy,
and the influence there is very Italian in terms of food.
So it was a comfortable move for me.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
And what did you so, what would a meal be liked?
Would they make? Did you have a lot of spaghetti
or pasta?
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Well, we laugh because we used to say in those
days you had macaroni and gravy and ice cream, and
then it became pasta and sauce and gilato.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Did you have pasta every day?
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Regularly? It may may not be actually every day, but
on the average of every day in one form or another.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
And we had, you know, my husband's family Italian. My
husband was born in Florence, and his mother was born
in Trieste, and his father was born he was born
in Nice and they moved to Triesta. The whole family
was very Italian. We tell the story that one of
the cousins came to visit from Florence to London and
they put the food on the table and there wasn't
(11:59):
a pasta. Started to cry because it was just a
meal without pasta.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
It was not and pasta wasn't the meal, it was
part of the meal.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Yeah, yeah, it's a PREMI.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
When my friends this that where they'd have a exchange
student or something like that, it would be we tell
the story when they were having lunch and they said, well,
you know who's having peanut butter and jelly, who's having
this or that? What would you like? And the child said, well,
how about a little veal with lemons. Yeah, it came
from Tuscan exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
And so did you remember the pastas that you had?
Do you remember the food? Exact food? Oh?
Speaker 3 (12:38):
I know, all the standard stuff that you see now,
of course, but I loved it. I always liked it
a little thicker and a little more all Dante, whether
it was that chuccini, of course, Rigatoni would be hard.
I preferred cheese ravi only polenta, and was very amused
because my big brother. One day a very fancy restaurant
(12:58):
opened up in Maryland, not in Bolt, but in sort
of eastern shore of Maryland. It was very acclaimed and
it's hard to get into and this or that. And
my brothers went to the restaurant and he came back.
He said, Nancy, you'll never believe it. They had polenta,
as if it was from a former I said, no,
(13:19):
tell me, that's become.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
She no, exactly what year would that have been?
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Remember probably about twenty five years ago that became. It's
not like they're having your grandma. There's polenta they're having. Well, now,
let me just say, people say to me, what is
your In fact, my grandch son said to me for
our family tree project in our class, we have to
have a family favorite family recipe that's been in our
(13:50):
family for generations, and what would you suggest? And I said, well,
when I would suggest, it's probably chocolate supfle or chocolate moves.
And he said, no, I mean a traditional family thing.
My mother wasn't. She wouldn't like me saying this. She
wasn't a big cook. I mean she was capable of cooking,
but she always had a cook and her mother didn't
(14:10):
cook because her husband cooked. He was a chef. He
would I would see him, you know, break the neck
of an eel or whatever it is and cook these
fabulous Your grandfather, my grandfather and so my grandmother never
cooked and I was like, you better talk to your
father about a family recipe.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
So the Italian influence so stayed and stayed.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Well you think the deliciousness of it.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
So I think you know, it's funny that you say
about polenta, because polenta and a lot of the dishes
that come from very traditional family are I hate the word,
but what they call peasant food. I would never let
it be called peasant food. But rest of cooking, family cooking,
family dishes are now so as you say, so sophisticated.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Well, my husband's mother made tripe all the time, and
that was pretty standard. She made Oh she made tripe
with polentae, tripe with polent or polenta with almost anything.
So when it became chic, we thought, oh, my gosh,
Nana is really on the forefront.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Did your parents speak Italian?
Speaker 3 (15:26):
No, well, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
You.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
I didn't speak Italian. See, my father's mother was born
in Baltimore, so it wasn't the case of his He
didn't know Italian. My mother she spoke some, but I
don't know how good she was. And every time I
would go to see my grandfather, who was so beautiful
and wonderful, and I loved him so much. The chef
he was going to teach me how to speak Italian,
(15:54):
and every time i'd go, he'd get out a map
and we'd start. These are different die elects of Italian.
So I could give you the map of Italy and
the different dialects, but I don't know to speak Italian
because we'd start with that map every day.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
No, there are they're very you know. My again, my husband,
I was saying, was born in Florence, but when we
would go to Venice very often he couldn't understand some
of the fishermen, you know, what they were speaking. It's
interesting because in these podcasts I talked to many people
who recall their grandparents cooking almost more than their parents cooking,
and very often they come from families that emigrated from
(16:32):
another country. And I often think that perhaps the mother
was trying to adapt to the new environment where the
grandparents probably, you know, that was their identity and took
it with them. But I haven't ended you know, the
fact that your grandfather was actually a professional chef.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
My understanding of this is before I was aware of
what he was doing. He sold postive, He had one
of those shops that's sold products from Italy, pasta, dry
pasta and those kinds of things. So he was a foodie.
I mean, he was into food and a chef. And
my grandmother was treated like a queen. She never did
(17:13):
any housework or anything like that. And she didn't cook.
That's I mean, I never knew how to cook one thing.
In my mother's case, she had these seven children. Is
she were alive in another generation, who knows what she
would have been. She was a mom, She was a
political organizer for my father. She was a poet, she
(17:36):
was an inventor. She did all kinds of things. She
said to me once when I was a little girl,
I know that the telephone can be used for more things.
I just have to figure it out.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
And also you were her only daughter.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
We're very by the way, in all of this, very
devoutly Catholic. So lots of times the ritual of food
surrounded Mass, either after or midnight or Sunday branch or
A lot of it revolved around going to church.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Coming home and each afterwards.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
As I always say, we were born in the family.
It was devoutly Catholic, fiercely patriotic, proud of our Italian
American heritage, and staunchly democratic.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Yeah, staunchly democratic. Those principles came in very early.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
They related to our Catholicism in our view of taking
care of other people and food. People came to our
door when people were poor. My brother Tommy, my older brother,
he used to tell me that when he was a
little boy, people would come to the door and Mommy
would always be giving them food, giving them food, giving
them food. And even in her old age, she was
giving ice cream to children and they knew to come
(18:49):
to the door to get ice cream. So it was
all about nourishment one way or another.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
And when you left this incredibly close family and centered
around the table and food, food and church, when you
left this family and went to university to college, how
did you deal with food then? Do you remember?
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Yeah, I went away. The only place that I was
allowed to go would be a woman's Catholic college.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
That would be where was that? What college?
Speaker 3 (19:20):
It was called Trinity College in Washington, d c. The
oldest Catholic women's college in America. It was a strict
academic school, and it was within fifty miles of Baltimore, Maryland,
so and our college. It's not exactly a culinary July anyway,
(19:42):
but we used to We used to don't tell anybody
who told you this. We used to go at night.
They know now years later they know. But we used
to go, like in the middle of the night, down
to the dining room and break into the freezer to
get ice cream. Now they was locked, so you can
(20:04):
only lift it a little bit and put the scooper
in there and pull it out.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
We better not tell certain members of the house about
this exactly.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
It's hard to tell a flavor in the dark and
the dark and you could tell if it's chocolate or not,
but peach, strawberry and the rest it kind of comes together.
And sometimes we would order pizza so that the guard,
we'd say to the guard. Somebody would go talk to
the guard and said, I ordered pizza. I'm waiting here
(20:36):
for the pizza, while we would go down and steal
the ice creams steal the ice cream.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
And so your college days were spent stealing ice stealing
ice cream. Basically twenty minutes speaker Nancy Pelosi was never
going to be enough time to explore her movie and
memorable food story. So join us next week when we
(21:04):
will continue our conversation. River Cafe Table four Part two.
To visit the online shop of the River Cafe, go
to shop Therivercafe dot co dot UK.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
River Cafe Table four is a production of iHeartRadio and
Adami Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to River Cafe Table four, a production of iHeartRadio
and Adamized Studios.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
There is an infinite amount of subjects I'd like to
discuss with Speaker of the House Pelosi, but you know
the rules of River Cafe Table four. We only discuss food,
memories and how food fits into our lives, family, work,
and values. Nancy Pelosi and I share the same aspirations
(00:37):
and concerns inequality the environment. The difference is that I
wake up every day worrying about the world, and she
goes to work every day to change it. In an hour,
fifty guests will be arriving for dinner in our home
to celebrate this awesome woman. While we are talking agripher
(01:00):
cafe chefs are cooking risotto ammaroni, poaching Langestine, roasting pumpkin,
And because Speaker Pelosi loves chocolate, We're going to have
two chocolate desserts, a bit of chocolate sorbet and a
rich chocolate cake.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
I'm very happy to read the recipe for chocolate sorbet,
one of my favorite basic foods. In order to achieve
this work of art, you take seven hundred and fifty
milli liters of water, two hundred and fifty grams of
castor sugar, one hundred and fifty grams of cocoa powder,
(01:42):
one hundred milli liters of recchio romagna. Gently boil the
water and sugar together to this light syrup. Add the
cocoa powder, quit gently stirring for fifteen to twenty minutes
until the coco powder is completely He dissolved strain, cool
(02:03):
and add the brandy. Put the mixture into an ice
cream maker and churn until frozen or freeze and flat
freezer trays.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Thank you. Before we go into food and values, and
food and family and food and memories, tell me about
your love for chocolate.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
My earliest memories are about loving chocolate. I remember once
when I was a very little girl, my big brother,
who was a teenager. My parents said, you can have
the car if you bring Nancy home some ice cream. First,
he brought vanilla ice cream home. I put it under
the bed, never ate it because it wasn't chocolate. Why
(02:50):
would he bring me vanilla ice cream? But I've always
loved it, and as time has gone by, I've loved
it darker and darker and darker.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yeah, what about ice cream? Because I did read that
you have ice cream for breakfast or is that an
urban myth.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
No, it's not an urban myth. It's convenient, it's right there,
it has long shelf life. I don't have to worry
about it. It's right there, and but I have it
for breakfast. It's a great way to start the day.
I don't have it every day, but I have it often.
And when I was younger, I used to have it
(03:29):
before I went to sleep, a pint device chocolate ice cream.
But as time has gone by, the later the chocolate,
the less sleep I have.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
You find the caffeine and the chocolate. So as a child,
so you ate chocolate. Did your mother know that you
were having a pint of ice cream before you went
to sleep? And that was fine.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
It was not usual. We didn't have sodas or soft
drinks or anything in our home like that. Everything was fresh,
except we had chocolate ice cream.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
I love ice cream. When I go to the River Cafe,
my restaurant, or go to any restaurant, the dessert I
go for is always ice cream.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Well, people say to me, you're going to some of
the fanciest restaurants in the world and you're ordering chocolate
ice cream. For dessert. Don't you think you should have
something more sophisticated.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
I think it's delicious. I think it's the way to
end a meal. Should we go back then to your
mother and your older brother. How many of you were
there in your family?
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Well, I'm talking about my oldest brother. At the time,
there were seven children, six boys, one girl. I was
the youngest, and I'm talking about my brother who was
like eleven years older than I was. My oldest brother.
When we talked about if you want to have the car,
you have to get ice cream for Nancy first.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
So your parents had six boys and then they had you.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
One of them died when he was young, So I
was really raised with five boys.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Yeah, and the Della Sandra household of six children. How
is the food? Who cooked?
Speaker 3 (05:02):
The cook cooked? And my mother, may she rest in peace,
bless her heart. She had a cook and what was
what was it like?
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Well, it was very.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Italian, but it was also very fresh and delicious. Sin
of the rest, I mean the cook would come in
the morning and make breakfast in that What would that be?
It could be anything you want. It could have eggs
or you could have oat meal. There were some standard things.
Sometimes that would even drink coffee at an early age,
(05:35):
like eleven or twelve, And.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Would you all sit down to breakfast, So that would
be if six or seven children and two parents, was
breakfast and meal that you all shared.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Sort of dinner was what we shared. Now. My father,
my whole life, My father was the mayor of Baltimore
from when I was in first grade when I went
away to college my freshman year of college, he was
still the mayor of Baltimore. So our routine was he
would come home and in those days a long time ago,
he would go out to make all of his speeches
(06:06):
in the evening in black tie. Everything was very formal.
So he would come home from work, we would have
our family dinner together early. What time would that be
like five point thirty, Yeah, because he'd have to then
go on the campaign trail or just the civic engagements.
So that was the time that we were together. And
(06:28):
then of course Sunday brunch and those kinds of things.
But I'm just talking about every day and to this day,
my husband, Paul, who was born and raised in San Francisco,
I was born and raised in Baltimore. To this day,
he likes to dine at eight, and I like to
eat at five early, like a peasant.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Now well, actually I find that now in the restaurant,
more and more people are eating earlier. We used to.
Everybody used to make fun of Americans for wanting to
eat early, and now it's harder for us to sell
the later tables. Even young people. Everybody wants to eat early.
But going back to this day of your father coming
back from work and you're all sitting down, would it
(07:10):
would there be? Would it be raucous? Would it be talk?
Would everybody be? What was it like at the table?
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Would be a mixture, just depending what the mood was
at the time. But there were certain things that I
carried over to my own children, and I'm still that way.
In a restaurant I had, we always had to have
a tablecloth, you know. I mean that was a long
time ago, so it doesn't it isn't so unusual to
think tablecloth then. Now it's almost a luxury. And so
(07:41):
for my own children, we've never had a meal without
two things, some linens, whatever it might be, could be
place matt and salad and whatever else we happen to have.
And when they were growing up, the five of them
five and six years in one week to the day
a pack. I had different things I would try. I
(08:05):
would try when they came home from school. I'd say,
let's have dessert now for three thirty four o'clock, we
have dessert and then we'll have dinner later. Then I
decided wouldn't be a good idea because they came home
that they were hungry to have dinner at four o'clock,
So that they would have their dinner and then we'd
(08:25):
have dessert later. We've tried all kinds of things to
satisfy their appetites.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
I loved that you said that your families were basically
a map of Italy of those very and so tell
me about the Italian influence on the food.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Well, my father's mother was born in Baltimore, Maryland, but
her parents, which would be my great grandparents, one was
born in Venice and one was born in Genoa, so
there was a lot of that influence in the in
the food Northern and northern Italian. My mother's family was
from Compobasso, which is in the center of Italy, but
(09:15):
we lived in an Italian neighborhood, so there was every
food you can imagine in the neighborhood and every dialect
that you could imagine in the neighborhood. But there was
one thing in common, the smell of very fresh bread
early in the morning, fresh Italian bread. To this day,
it's one of the my happiest memories, the smell of
(09:36):
fresh bake bread smells.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Yeah, that's a good smell. But I think we always
talk about Italy, you know, which was became a country
very late. So you have the very strong regional dishes,
don't you. So in Venice you have the polenta, and
in southern Italy you have smartest, and then in Florence
it's very in Tuscan it's very bread oriented. And then everybody,
(10:00):
I guess came to Baltimore and there was there was
everything in every area.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Thing. You had the Tuscana, the Siciliana, the Marca John
or bruts As, the what do they call the Genovase
Gena Basically they were the other different names from the Ligorian. Yeah,
the Venezzi that goes from Venice, by the name of
(10:25):
where they came from, because they were all sort of
like city states. Whny of the northern Italians came early,
you know, As I say, my father's mother she was
born in Baltimore, probably like in the eighteen eighties or
something like that. Yeah, they came earlier than the others.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
And then the southern Italians came later. You think the more.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
Later, the middle and later. And then San Francisco is
a very Italian American city. The Bank of America was
originally the Bank of Italy. Yeah, as the Bank of Italy,
and the influence there is very Italian in terms of food.
So it was a comfortable move for me.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
And what did you so, what would a meal be liked?
Would they make? Did you have a lot of spaghetti
or pasta?
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Well, we laugh because we used to say in those
days you had macaroni and gravy and ice cream, and
then it became pasta and sauce and gilato.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Did you have pasta every day?
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Regularly? It may may not be actually every day, but
on the average of every day in one form or another.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
And we had, you know, my husband's family Italian. My
husband was born in Florence, and his mother was born
in Trieste, and his father was born he was born
in Nice and they moved to Triesta. The whole family
was very Italian. We tell the story that one of
the cousins came to visit from Florence to London and
they put the food on the table and there wasn't
(11:59):
a pasta. Started to cry because it was just a
meal without pasta.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
It was not and pasta wasn't the meal, it was
part of the meal.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Yeah, yeah, it's a PREMI.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
When my friends this that where they'd have a exchange
student or something like that, it would be we tell
the story when they were having lunch and they said, well,
you know who's having peanut butter and jelly, who's having
this or that? What would you like? And the child said, well,
how about a little veal with lemons. Yeah, it came
from Tuscan exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
And so did you remember the pastas that you had?
Do you remember the food? Exact food? Oh?
Speaker 3 (12:38):
I know, all the standard stuff that you see now,
of course, but I loved it. I always liked it
a little thicker and a little more all Dante, whether
it was that chuccini, of course, Rigatoni would be hard.
I preferred cheese ravi only polenta, and was very amused
because my big brother. One day a very fancy restaurant
(12:58):
opened up in Maryland, not in Bolt, but in sort
of eastern shore of Maryland. It was very acclaimed and
it's hard to get into and this or that. And
my brothers went to the restaurant and he came back.
He said, Nancy, you'll never believe it. They had polenta,
as if it was from a former I said, no,
(13:19):
tell me, that's become.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
She no, exactly what year would that have been?
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Remember probably about twenty five years ago that became. It's
not like they're having your grandma. There's polenta they're having. Well, now,
let me just say, people say to me, what is
your In fact, my grandch son said to me for
our family tree project in our class, we have to
have a family favorite family recipe that's been in our
(13:50):
family for generations, and what would you suggest? And I said, well,
when I would suggest, it's probably chocolate supfle or chocolate moves.
And he said, no, I mean a traditional family thing.
My mother wasn't. She wouldn't like me saying this. She
wasn't a big cook. I mean she was capable of cooking,
but she always had a cook and her mother didn't
(14:10):
cook because her husband cooked. He was a chef. He
would I would see him, you know, break the neck
of an eel or whatever it is and cook these
fabulous Your grandfather, my grandfather and so my grandmother never
cooked and I was like, you better talk to your
father about a family recipe.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
So the Italian influence so stayed and stayed.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Well you think the deliciousness of it.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
So I think you know, it's funny that you say
about polenta, because polenta and a lot of the dishes
that come from very traditional family are I hate the word,
but what they call peasant food. I would never let
it be called peasant food. But rest of cooking, family cooking,
family dishes are now so as you say, so sophisticated.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Well, my husband's mother made tripe all the time, and
that was pretty standard. She made Oh she made tripe
with polentae, tripe with polent or polenta with almost anything.
So when it became chic, we thought, oh, my gosh,
Nana is really on the forefront.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Did your parents speak Italian?
Speaker 3 (15:26):
No, well, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
You.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
I didn't speak Italian. See, my father's mother was born
in Baltimore, so it wasn't the case of his He
didn't know Italian. My mother she spoke some, but I
don't know how good she was. And every time I
would go to see my grandfather, who was so beautiful
and wonderful, and I loved him so much. The chef
he was going to teach me how to speak Italian,
(15:54):
and every time i'd go, he'd get out a map
and we'd start. These are different die elects of Italian.
So I could give you the map of Italy and
the different dialects, but I don't know to speak Italian
because we'd start with that map every day.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
No, there are they're very you know. My again, my husband,
I was saying, was born in Florence, but when we
would go to Venice very often he couldn't understand some
of the fishermen, you know, what they were speaking. It's
interesting because in these podcasts I talked to many people
who recall their grandparents cooking almost more than their parents cooking,
and very often they come from families that emigrated from
(16:32):
another country. And I often think that perhaps the mother
was trying to adapt to the new environment where the
grandparents probably, you know, that was their identity and took
it with them. But I haven't ended you know, the
fact that your grandfather was actually a professional chef.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
My understanding of this is before I was aware of
what he was doing. He sold postive, He had one
of those shops that's sold products from Italy, pasta, dry
pasta and those kinds of things. So he was a foodie.
I mean, he was into food and a chef. And
my grandmother was treated like a queen. She never did
(17:13):
any housework or anything like that. And she didn't cook.
That's I mean, I never knew how to cook one thing.
In my mother's case, she had these seven children. Is
she were alive in another generation, who knows what she
would have been. She was a mom, She was a
political organizer for my father. She was a poet, she
(17:36):
was an inventor. She did all kinds of things. She
said to me once when I was a little girl,
I know that the telephone can be used for more things.
I just have to figure it out.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
And also you were her only daughter.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
We're very by the way, in all of this, very
devoutly Catholic. So lots of times the ritual of food
surrounded Mass, either after or midnight or Sunday branch or
A lot of it revolved around going to church.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Coming home and each afterwards.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
As I always say, we were born in the family.
It was devoutly Catholic, fiercely patriotic, proud of our Italian
American heritage, and staunchly democratic.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Yeah, staunchly democratic. Those principles came in very early.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
They related to our Catholicism in our view of taking
care of other people and food. People came to our
door when people were poor. My brother Tommy, my older brother,
he used to tell me that when he was a
little boy, people would come to the door and Mommy
would always be giving them food, giving them food, giving
them food. And even in her old age, she was
giving ice cream to children and they knew to come
(18:49):
to the door to get ice cream. So it was
all about nourishment one way or another.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
And when you left this incredibly close family and centered
around the table and food, food and church, when you
left this family and went to university to college, how
did you deal with food then? Do you remember?
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Yeah, I went away. The only place that I was
allowed to go would be a woman's Catholic college.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
That would be where was that? What college?
Speaker 3 (19:20):
It was called Trinity College in Washington, d c. The
oldest Catholic women's college in America. It was a strict
academic school, and it was within fifty miles of Baltimore, Maryland,
so and our college. It's not exactly a culinary July anyway,
(19:42):
but we used to We used to don't tell anybody
who told you this. We used to go at night.
They know now years later they know. But we used
to go, like in the middle of the night, down
to the dining room and break into the freezer to
get ice cream. Now they was locked, so you can
(20:04):
only lift it a little bit and put the scooper
in there and pull it out.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
We better not tell certain members of the house about
this exactly.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
It's hard to tell a flavor in the dark and
the dark and you could tell if it's chocolate or not,
but peach, strawberry and the rest it kind of comes together.
And sometimes we would order pizza so that the guard,
we'd say to the guard. Somebody would go talk to
the guard and said, I ordered pizza. I'm waiting here
(20:36):
for the pizza, while we would go down and steal
the ice creams steal the ice cream.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
And so your college days were spent stealing ice stealing
ice cream. Basically twenty minutes speaker Nancy Pelosi was never
going to be enough time to explore her movie and
memorable food story. So join us next week when we
(21:04):
will continue our conversation. River Cafe Table four Part two.
To visit the online shop of the River Cafe, go
to shop Therivercafe dot co dot UK.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
River Cafe Table four is a production of iHeartRadio and
Adami Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Ruth Rogers
Popular Podcasts
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!