Lemmy be like

1940 was 85 years ago, so unless said 👵 is over a 💯 years old, she was only a child back then.

I hate both of the people in this discussion.

One more than the other?
How about the Italian grandmother in the equation too?
Oh damn, I just made myself hated for asking that now too, didn't I?

There is this nice little book by Alberto Grandi that looks at the history of Italian cuisine and finds out that many of those "old food traditions" were invented after WW2. It's really a great read if you want to talk a look behind this italian food snobbery:

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20250227-is-there-no-such-thing-as-italian-cuisine

Me, on the lookout for fascist nonas, as I break my spaghetti

Uh... Lotta people in not Italy with Italian grandmothers are in not Italy because their Grandma fled fascism.

My Italian grandpa escaped a Nazi camp and brought his wife and my mom to America. Now I need to escape my family back to Italy. Funny how that worked out

You need to escape your family? What makes your family so terrible?
- Gonna guess fascists.
hello distant relation i would like to join you on your emigration please and thank you. i promise to buy a large enough pan i don't have to break my noodles
- Cook spaghetti in long cylinder instead, problem solved
- Or make your own spaghetti [ o_O or noodles ] fresh.

She was a child... But what does that have to do with spaghetti anyway?

And she was likely born in New York City.

Americans love to pull up this kind of bullshit, but it really falls even flatter after 2024. You can't do "nazi bar" rhetoric while you have an unmarked militia disappearing people off the streets and doing fuck all about it

Normalize scrolling past threads unrelated to US politics if that's all you want to post about.
Man, this meme sure was spot on...
What if she ain’t Amewican?
- Nah. Only Americans have Italian grandmothers.

Parading the body of Mussolini through Italy by his ankles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Benito_Mussolini

Shooting fascists and risking everything for liberty. We should all follow her example. That also means you don’t break the pasta.

Didn't we fight fascism for the freedom to not give a fuck about "conservative" and "traditional" "values"... most of which are based on nothing more than opinions and feefees?
- I'm pretty sure it wasn't because of any specifically fascist culinary habits.

Grandma was supporting fucking "gugu gaga" movement in the 1940, did you think she was born in fucking 1918?

People's average age is about 44 in Italy, while a generation in the second half of the 20th century lasted about 29 years there.
So for two generations:
44+2*29=102
So the grandma of the average Italian would have been 17 years old in 1940 and thus was not born in 1918, but in 1923.
No "gugu gaga", but still quite young.
On average.
- Mine was born in 1939, definitely in "gaga gugu" age at the time, and she's considered old as grandmas go. When talking to someone somewhere around my age (the likes of which I'm more likely to have a conversation, especially about cooking), I can expect their grandma to be less than a decade older than mine. So still very young at the time.

Broke spaghetti last night while cooking for dinner. I also threw it against the cabinet to make sure it was done cooking.

I have a toddler so cooking "rules" go out the window for laughter.

just because your have a toddler doesn't mean you have to cook like one
- Lmfao... Maybe I'm actually 3 toddlers in a trench coat.
- this is lemmy where the epitome of cooking is garlic and onions
I also threw it against the cabinet to make sure it was done cooking.
So you don't have a mouth?
- I don't. I absorb spaghetti via osmosis.

I personally don't break spaghetti, but a friend of mine once asked what difference it would make for taste and consistency, and i didn't have an answer.

I have answers for both, Pasta cooks according to thickness, not length. If breaking the Pasta allows it to be submerged entirely, it will only aid it in cooking evenly.
Next break a fucking donut in half and ask if that changes the flavor.
- Yeah, but it feels wrong.
- like pasta, i guess it depends on the donut. like, breaking an eclair in half the wrong way so all the bavarian custard falls out. that would make me sad and change the flavor (too much salt)

My Italian grandmother taught me to break the spaghetti. Also, my Italian grandfather fought for the Allies in WW1, coming to the US in 1923 the last year before the xenophobic, 1924 anti-immigration bill was passed essentially cutting off immigration. He came with his pregnant sister through many trials on a long boat cruise to re-unite her with her husband who was already living in the US. So by 1940 my Italian grandmother was supporting the US where she had lived for over a decade. Please do not make assumptions about people's Italian grandmothers.

BTW my grandfather was a bit of a bad-ass, he served in the Arditi, Italian shock-troops who specialized in explosives and close quarter combat with edged weapons. He taught me to shoot a rifle when I was 7!

The whole "Italians reacting to people doing food wrong" thing always seemed so performative.

My grandparent was hiding from the Nazis with their family, as a child?

They also were pushed to stay in the US because Italy wasn’t exactly great postwar, either. Unfortunately here is a more explicitly fascist hellhole now, too.

We also ate broken spaghetti growing up. It’s fine.

Hiding us allies in the same house the germans occupied (our house). Now please put down those spaghetti you burger freak.

Whenever someone says a person who isn’t eating the thing I’m making has an opinion I’m like ‘good thing I’m not feeding it to them’

Like cmon. if someone makes something they like and I’m not there to eat it/they aren’t making it for me, they shouldn’t give a hoot what I think. More power to them. Why and how even is this an argument ever anyways.

A lot of people get weirdly aggressive about other people "eating food wrong".
Try saying "actually, sometimes as a treat, when just cooking for myself, I quite like eating pasta with just a little salt and a little butter, or maybe a little grated cheese on it" in front of a group of people...
"YOU SHOULD PUT SAUCE ON IT"
"WHY AREN'T YOU HAVING A SAUCE"
"YOU CAN GET PRE-MADE SAUCES QUITE CHEAP, IT DOESN’T COST MUCH MORE JUST TO ADD A SAUCE"
- Butter and Parmesan on pasta is a great lighter pasta dish. (Though I prefer it on something like Rotini more than spaghetti)
- Had it! Love it!. You’d probably have to stab my hand from stealing some from you XD
- That's just pasta bianca, a valid and well known Italian dish.
- If they're salted just right, I often start a pasta meal with a few forks of nothing but pasta!

The 99% is always batshit. Sanity is only found in the niches.