Lunch At Nonna's House

One Friday my friend, Gary, and I arrived at my house to start a much-anticipated weekend. We had just driven from Fairmont College and were famished, but a quick perusal of the our refrigerator uncovered no appealing food. I said, “No problem, lets go to my Grandmothers; She always has good food”. We both ran across the empty lot that separated our two houses and pulled open the screen door to find my Nonna standing over a large pot of boiling minestra. Now, this is a peasant dish as Marie, my wife, calls it, but it is great, I think. It is nothing but greens of some type, spinach, kale, or chard, with potatoes, always and bean sometimes. I introduced Gary to her and asked if we could have some minestra for lunch. She said, “You boysa sitta down and hava somea thisa minestra for a luncha”. She provided us with a couple of gigantic slices of hard Italian bread aside of two large bowls and immediately filled the bowls with heaping mounds of smoldering greens and potatoes. As she left the kitchen to tend to her other chores, shouted “munga, munga”. We both blew on the food to cool it off and dug in as if to save our bodies from starvation. After about five minutes, I had half of my dish emptied, but Gary had made nary a dent. He said, “John I don’t see how you can eat this stuff. It tastes awful”. I could understand this because the first 13 or 14 years of my life I too hated it. Something miraculous happened after that and I suddenly loved it. Anyway, I said, “ Don’t worry, just put it back in the pot. She will never know.” He then stood up and emptied his dish into the pot on the stove and sat back down at the table with the empty dish sitting in front of him. I kept eating. My grandmother returned to the kitchen, noticed his empty plate and said, “you likea”? Gary said, “Yes Maam, it was great”. In one large movement she grabbed his empty dish, filled it to the brim, sat it down in front of a startled Gary and said, “Hera hava somemora, youa growina boya”.