The Italian family meal experience is like no other.  It means fresh ingredients, often literally grown right in our own backyard. It means making everything from scratch, by hand. It means heaping servings, and course after course.  It means good company with good, and loud, conversation. 

Whether it is tending to the huge backyard vegetable garden, nurturing beloved fruit trees, crushing grapes for home made wine, turning dozens of bushels of tomatoes into tomato sauce, or curing their own hand-made sausages, food is not just a part of an Italian family's life, it is everything.