Food has always been a celebration of happiness for me.\u00a0<\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The moments of joy in my life have always seen me with happy additional inches around my waist. Sadness or loss take away my appetite, and when I was younger, if I came home lean from a trip, my dad would always say, \u201ctell me what\u2019s wrong. Eat this first.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

It feels clich\u00e9 to say that this is because we\u2019re Italian, but certainly my people are joyful of the connection between food and emotion, and especially of the truth that food binds us. We gather around it, and it colors our memories so that years later, the smell of the cake your aunt used to bring to Christmas dinner every year will always land you back there, little arms wrapped around her waist, the Christmas tree lights reflected in the necklace she always wore.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

We mix our food with our traditions: you eat lentils in the wee hours of a new year to bring prosperity and luck, because you may be a rational human\u2014but it doesn\u2019t hurt to give fate a little nudge, does it?<\/p>\r\n\r\n

<\/figure>\r\n\r\n

Memories of a Home<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I recently sold my father\u2019s home. Years after losing him, I walked through the hallways of a house I was a little girl in, thinking about the winters we used to spend there together. I signed the papers so that someone else could move in, and it was alright, really, because a healthy life moves in one direction (forward). But as I stepped outside the gates, I held back tears (because it\u2019s okay to still love things you have to leave). Federica and her mom, Rossella, our neighbors since our families built the two homes facing each other, walked over, and Rossella put an arm around my shoulders. Remember when you were both little, she said to her daughter, and our families would always come together for Christmas?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

It\u2019s true. No matter where we all were in the world, we would gather in San Felice over the holiday season, in the house that lived next to the sea. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day my father would preside proudly over the extended living room table, which would invariably be laden with a feast.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

There is food, he would say, that completes a meal. Not just finishes it, but makes it.<\/em> He meant the desserts, of course, and when chided for having a second helping of panettone<\/em>, he would wink over at me and say, \u201cma la vita va vissuta!\u201d <\/em>But life is to be lived!<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n

\r\n