Lightning Does Sometimes Strike Twice

Last month, I wrote a post about a birthday party I attended with my son that was a fantastic but highly atypical cross-cultural party experience, in addition to the source of some of the best food I've ever eaten.  Today, improbably, it happened again.

This time, it was friends of The Girl's who were celebrating their birthday.  Twin boys, of Italian heritage.  That much was evident from their names, but I didn't realize quite HOW Italian they are until this afternoon.  

The party was at their house.  This one did not have all the immediately visible cultural trappings of the last one (not sure what the Italian equivalent of a mariachi band and pinatas would be, anyway) but I absolutely could not believe the food.  They had the usual kid-friendly fare outside for the children, but there was a whopping spread laid out in the kitchen for the adults: an antipasto platter, eggplant parmigiana, marinated mushrooms, breads, pizzas.  All homemade and utterly amazing.  They told me that the mushrooms were grown in a sister-in-law's garden, as was the eggplant.  The tomato sauce for the eggplant and pizzas was prepared from tomatoes they grew themselves.  Not so unusual around here, but they had imported the tomato seeds from which the plants were grown from Italy.  These people take their food seriously.  I got a ten-minute lecture on the only correct way to prepare eggplant parm: the twins' father (Mario is his name) was quite adamant that the authentic dish should contain homemade soppressata salami, but he didn't have access to any and refused to even consider using the store-bought variety, so he left it out of the version they served today.

But that wasn't even the best part.  When I arrived, Mario immediately offered me a glass of wine.  Homemade red wine that he had pressed and aged himself in his basement, as it turned out.  A very typical suburban basement...how often do you see that??  It wasn't half bad wine, either.  It made me think of my Italian great-grandparents, who also made wine in their basement all those years ago, according to family lore.    

And this was another multigenerational extravaganza that looked like it was going to go on for a while, and once again we had to leave before the cake was cut!  This time, to pick up Thing One from another birthday party that he was attending ten miles or so away...his friend's mother was kind enough to give The Girl a piece of the leftover cake from his party when we got there. 

Lesson learned: when invited to birthday parties at someone's home, we will no longer be scheduling anything else for immediately afterward.  When lightning strikes a third time, we'll be ready!