I'm a first-generation Italian-American. That slash says it all. It means that though I was born in the United States, walk American and, for the most part, talk American, my blood corpuscles are suffused with foreign tendencies for which science has yet to find an antidote. One of those predilections is this: if I invite guests to my home and discover that I didn’t make sufficient quantities of every food to feed them all, I’ll drop down dead of mortification, right then. I mean that. Since I don’t want to die yet, I’m always on my guard against this happening, wanting to make very sure I have “enough.”
The problem is my view and my second husband’s view of ‘enough’ are very different. My second husband is just “American.” No slashes. His family came over to the U.S. while not on The Mayflower, probably on the next boat after that one. My theory is that, at one point on that trip, the passengers forgot how to cook and even more importantly, how to measure portions. That’s’ why when I met him, he was malnourished, and now, at age 55, after eight years of living together, I’ve only managed to put ten pounds on him. He still wears a size 34 waist trousers. On those last two points alone I rest my argument that “real” Americans don’t know how to eat the way we “Something-slash Americans” do. That’s why I didn’t believe him when he told me we had “plenty” of mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving dinner last year.
You have to understand how important the mashed potatoes are at my house. I’ve only recently discovered they’re my stepsons’ favorite food. “Mashed potatoes with homemade gravy” is what they specifically requested when I asked them what they’d like me to make with Thanksgiving turkey. And though it surprised me that this was their primary choice, since it’s such a simple thing, I set out to make the best mashed potatoes and homemade gravy they’d ever tasted. I even bought two turkeys, so I could roast one turkey the night before, use the pan drippings from that turkey to make the gravy way ahead of the time it would be needed, just to be sure it came out right. The gravy turned out well, but it was the mashed potatoes that had me worried. I made those on the Wednesday before, too, then held up the bowl full and asked my husband, “Hon ─ does this look like enough?”
