A Virtual Feast

Being of the Italian persuasion, food has been and continues to be a crucial part of my lifestyle. From my earliest memories of Sunday “gravy” (that’s red sauce to you regular folks) at my great grandmother DiBiasi’s home while in grade school, to my one of my current specialties – linguine with white or red clam sauce, I’ve never been one to under-appreciate a good meal.

Holidays were a time when you routinely overate and then spent the next six weeks trying to work it off.

To that end, I never understood why some people’s interest in food is so minimal that they simply “eat to live.” They would have never survived a month in my extended family.

I clearly remember one Thanksgiving when my aunt rolled out an over-sized tray of lasagna accompanied by meatballs and sausage, that conservatively, could have satisfied the entire offensive line of the New York Giants. That, I learned, was the starter course.

The turkey and stuffing came later.

Easter too was a special time. The scope and quantity of the menus for the annual Paschal observance among various relatives would have had Henry VIII scrambling for Pepto-Bismol.

This year though was a bit different for us as I imagine it was for most everyone.

With most of the nation quarantined as a result of COVID-19 virus, observers had to get a bit creative including of course, hosting “virtual” Easter dinners. I can honestly say this was my first and hopefully last, Zoom Easter celebration.

In between courses of lamb, pork tenderloin, homemade gnocchi and a sinful carrot cake for dessert, we “Zoomed” with a number of relatives, comparing menus, exchanging stories of our isolation and for laughs and nostalgia, reviewed decades old photos of long ago birthdays and holidays.

Even my spry three-year-old grand-niece got into the act by remarking that “Uncle Bill I didn’t know you had hair.”

Lovely girl. Good thing she’s so adorable.

But though the holiday is over, the Zoom push is far from it. Since the quarantine mandate, I have had no less than six virtual meetings. in full disclosure, it takes a while to adjust to seeing people that you heretofore had only spoken with by phone.

As counter-intuitive as it sounds, I currently have two firms proceeding with merger talks. And hopefully when this crisis is happily in our rear-view mirror, they can make it an official union. In the meantime, we have a ton of leftovers from Easter and not to sound selfish, I’m not going to Zoom share them with anyone.