What Italian-American Families Actually Ate on Thanksgiving (Lasagna Came First)

Gina Barreca's Sicilian grandmother in Brooklyn made lasagna to eat and cooked a turkey to prove she was a naturalized citizen. Barreca meant it as a joke. Ask enough Italian American families, and it turns out to be the menu. This is the Italian American Thanksgiving course by course, built from families in Providence, Brooklyn, Greenwich Village, Philadelphia, Pasadena, Chicago, and Wheeling, West Virginia. The 1903 newspaper that already knew Italians would insist on spaghetti with the cranberry sauce. The Boston cooking school that closed when the Italians moved in. Antipasto, escarole and wedding soup, the lasagna or the ravioli, then finally the turkey with sausage stuffing, and chestnuts, fennel, anisette, and a pumpkin pie sitting between two platters of cannoli. And at the end, the real reason the pasta always went first. If this was your family's Thanksgiving, subscribe for more: https://www.youtube.com/@MulberryStreetMemo?sub_confirmation=1