Thanksgiving Dinner at the Bedeschi's home

We were fortunate to celebrate Thanksgiving twice this year—first with the students and then with some of the faculty.

Davide and Diane picked us up at the end of the Via Giulia on the Lungotevere because the traffic is so congested in centro that drivers need to have a special pass just to enter areas such as the one we live in. Traffic was heavy and was moving at a snail’s pace as we headed out to Francesco and Ilaria's but we were entertained by Davide’s somewhat eclectic music and the intermittent “Tom Tom”—a GPS—that interrupted the music with instructions to turn a sinestra or a destro. To me it seemed like a long trip, especially since Francesco makes the trip into the Center on his bicycle but part of that impression was the result of the very heavy traffic that evening. After Davide managed to get through the gridlock, his next challenge was to park his rather large German car in a labyrinthine vicola where there were no available parking spaces. Getting out was an even greater feat as he had to backtrack to the gate in reverse. Fortunately, when it looked as if there was no way to extricate the car from the driveway without scraping it, Davide found a Smart car whose foreshortened body enabled him to work his car back around from reverse to forward.

The Bedeschis have a cheery home with pale yellow walls and white woodwork. They share their home with their two daughters, Emma and Margherita. The round dinner table was dressed in a mint green tablecloth and was set with china bearing various flowers. After an aperitif, we had seafood risotto, the best mushroom fettuccini I think I’ve ever tasted, breast of turkey stuffed with prunes, delicious roasted potatoes, my grandmother’s turkey dressing, salad, tiramisu, coffee, and mandarin oranges that had been freshly picked. There was a bit of a language problem, however, regarding the dressing. Francesco and Ilaria thought that I was bringing salad dressing. An explanation of dressing led to a discussion of distinguishing it from stuffing and then from identifying southern vs. Yankee dressing. I prefer the latter because it's my grandmother's recipe and she was from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, or as the locals call it, the U.P. From there we went on to a discussion of America as a melting pot and whether or not there was any prejudice of one ethnic group over another. My mother, 100% Irish, 2nd generation, was somewhat pleased (not 100%) that I had married someone with at least an Irish surname. Diane's grandfather, on the other hand, would have preferred a German to an Italian. It only proves that families are never 100% happy over the men their daughters marry and that families on opposite sides of the ocean really aren't so different after all. We visited in English, Italian, and French, and at the end of a most delicious dinner we might as well have been in New Jersey, Ohio, or Arkansas—everyone was totally stuffed and a little sleepy from the turkey as you can see in the last photo of Ilaria, Francesco, and a grinning Diane.

My pictures this time aren't super clear. I thought it would have ruined the moment to turn on the flash. However, you can see from the pictures that we had a most memorable Thanksgiving and left very happy and very full.