ITALIAN SUNDAY DINNER – OCTOBER 2025

Shortly after we moved to Long Island, my grandsons asked their mother, “When’s grandpa going to have us over for pizza?” And as you probably know, I have made a few pizzas in my day. One Sunday, when his mom and dad were away, I invited Grandson Alex over to help me connect some Bluetooth devices I was having trouble pairing. Once Alex got everything working. We went into the kitchen to make some pizzas. I bought dough at Uncle Giuseppe’s, my favorite supermarket.

My tiny kitchen is half the size of the one I had in Santa Fe, and not much counter space. The way the oven works, the broiler is located near the floor, rather than inside the oven. I like to switch to broil for a couple of minutes at the end to crisp up the top of the pizza. In my opinion, the broiler’s location is dangerous for anyone my age because you must kneel to open and close the broiler door.

The other problem, unrelated to pizza making, is that using the oven usually triggers the smoke alarm. To prevent that annoying screech, we run the fan in the stove hood, as well as a stand-up fan in the kitchen. And that night, neither helped prevent the alarm from going off.

With unfamiliar dough and an unfamiliar oven, the pizza wasn't up to our usually high standards. Since then, we decided to retire our pizza pans and give up making homemade pizza. I know you are probably saying, “Aww!” But with so much good pizza in the metropolitan New York area, it’s much easier to buy it.

However, I still wanted to cook for the family. So, I suggested an old-fashioned Italian Sunday dinner. I did my shopping at Uncle G’s during the week, where I bought ground beef for meatballs, Italian sausage, and beef braciole. I usually make it, but this time it was more convenient to buy it already made and less expensive. If you are not familiar with braciole, it is made from thin pieces of flank steak, flattened and stuffed with Parmesan cheese, garlic, and parsley, then rolled and tied.

Cooking the pasta with Grandson Alex and Great-Grandson Caleb looking on,

Instead of scrambling to make the gravy on Sunday, I made it on Saturday. I won’t go into the details about making the gravy. You can read all about that in a blog I wrote in 2021. Here’s a link: THE SUNDAY GRAVY Blog – March 2021. In that blog, I mentioned a healthy alternative to the Sunday gravy, using chicken or turkey sausage and meatballs. However, after returning to this area, with all the high-quality Italian ingredients readily available, I went old-school and used pork sausage and ground beef instead.

On Sunday, my daughter, Deb, and son-in-law, David, arrived early to help assemble our guest bed, which had been stored against the wall in our guest bedroom/office since we moved here in May. We are almost ready to accommodate overnight guests. I will spend the next few weeks unpacking the remaining boxes in that room.

My grandsons, Alex and DJ, my granddaughter-in-law, Mallory, and our two-year-old great-grandson, Caleb, arrived shortly after. Deb brought antipasto, bread, and desserts. She said to everyone, “You would have had to spend a day traveling on two planes if they were still living in Santa Fe.” Everyone was grateful for that.

It was a momentous occasion, our first family dinner at our new place. We even took out the China and silverware. I bought a folding table on Saturday to give us some extra seating.

As you will see, two-year-old Caleb delivered the bread and consumed a lot of it himself. He’s going through a phase where he only eats chicken nuggets and bread, none of great-grandpa’s delicious food.

Caleb carrying the bread.

Everyone enjoyed dinner, and Caleb was the guest of honor. As you will see in the pictures, he ran around with a loaf of bread almost as big as him, and he commandeered the best seat at the table. We were all entertained by his antics.

Caleb got the best seat at the table.