[senior citizen]

Originally Posted by Blessed2BNTV

From one 2B to another - love hearing about macaroni and gravy. We are from Brooklyn and grandparents are from the old country!

DITTO. Guess you've missed the controversy re the "gravy" vs. the "sauce" as no matter how explicitly I explained that :

When I was a kid, my dad and my mom, plus my grandmother and all her daughters, etc. and the uncles as well........called it "gravy". They made a huge pot on Sunday and it lasted all week.

I've been informed that gravy only means the brown kind that is served with roast beef. I get that. But, these were peasant types from Laurenzana Potenza Basilicata in the "boot" of Italia.....plus a faction was also from Sicily.....the island close to southern Italy that was also populated by the Greeks (as was Laurenzana back in the 11th century.) thus there is a Greek influence on the cooking style.

As I mentioned, these were peasants from southern Italy (plus their immediate descendants raised in "Little Italy N.Y.C. and Brooklyn".......and they called it gravy as in "Sunday Gravy" with all the meats in it......like :

Bracciole, pork spareribs, meatballs, sweet and hot Italian sausage......it all went into the pot of "GRAVY", even chicken at times.

They also called the pasta "macaroni" as did we in the "sticks" of New Jersey.

This is all circa 1940's and 1950's when I was a kid.

My grandparents came in 1890.......

By the time 1960 arrived and we were married in 1965 at age 20, I began calling it "sauce" or "pasta sauce" in the 1970's and 80s and thereafter to this day, do I call it SAUCE.

But my Italian family in New York City and in Brooklyn and on Staten Island and Long Island called it "gravy" as did the Sopranos in northern New Jersey (just added that on a lark).

We were raised in New Jersey in a mixed neighborhood of Germans, Irish and Italians.........and all of our Italian friends mother's called it "gravy"...........

I do believe it was GENERATIONAL.

But, welcome to the "gravy and macaroni" bunch.

For the life of me, I still cannot understand why some do not believe what others experienced growing up. We are 69 years old and it was a different generation from the pasta and sauce.
Back then , it was macaroni and gravy.

There were even non Italians telling me that their "neighbor" called it sauce so that had to be correct. Go figure.

Very nostalgic just to think back to those huge family gatherings which are no more as everyone is GONE.