Funny...I put raisins in my bracciole, but never the meatballs. My Mother was Sicilian and I make my meatballs the way she did. The bracciole recipe I just picked up along the way, and I like it. Kinda like the escarole soup. Most call it Italian Wedding soup, we never did...just escarole soup. And we never had any pasta in it...just the escarole, meatballs, a few scrambled eggs, and cheese.

LOL, I just made a big pot of the R.I. version of Italian Wedding soup which always includes pasta/pastine specifically acini di pepe. Sometimes folks here include chopped hard boiled eggs some not.

Oomph! Never heard of hard boiled eggs in Italian Wedding Soup. Do you like it that way?

Wow! It sounds like my wife and I have been missing out on true Italian food all of our life.

We have friends in Sun City Grand, AZ that cook Italian when we visit; we've been so busy with careers and such that Italian to us is (true Italian aficionados don't :yuck:) Ragu sautéed onion and garlic poured in with browned hamburger meat or frozen Italian meatballs from the local Price Chopper.

I don't use eggs in my soup, but if you get the soup in most R.I. Italian restaurants it will usually have eggs in it. They are chopped up so fine you hardly notice them. Also, some folks here put sliced hard boiled eggs in lasagna which I do not.

My husband and I are moving from Maryland to The Villages in September. It was nice to read this post and the enthusiasm of the writer. It makes me feel a little easier.

I usually read TOTV every day, but as you can see from my number of posts, I don't post frequently. In the years before I moved here I would read something about TV that I thought was useful and save it in a WORD file for future reference. Well, that file turned out to be over 80 pages long so you can see how much useful information came out of this site. I want to thank you for that. I like to see what everyone has to say but I don't like to get into conflict and so I pick and choose what I will respond to very carefully. I have made friends on this site and I have had the privilege of getting to know some people's character through repeated postings. I don't have any reason to complain about my home or the community. If I'm a Pollyanna, so be it. I'd rather insulate myself with "nice" than "reality" so that's probably why I don't post often. It's safer that way. I am very grateful for all I have gleaned from TOTV and I adore living in TV with it's beauty and wonderful people.

Good post, ltbd. And I know you to be an easygoing, kindhearted, friendly person who's also not a Pollyanna. My kinda friend!

I cook the sauce and my wife is the "cleanup person!" LOL
My brother has asked me for my "recipe" and I try to give him what I can. However, as many of us do, I do not measure anything! Some garlic here, some oregano there, etc. I have not yet been able to define "some!"
Of course the first question is How much? My answer:
FUHGEDABOUDIT! I don't know !!!! :pepper2:

I don't know how this thread migrated to this topic, but I'm game: My childhood friend's grandmother (Niagara Falls, NY) used to hide the garlic in her apron pocket. She would slip it into the pot when nobody was looking, let it stew in there for a while, and then fish it out and put it back in her pocket.

I'm going to throw in with the off-topic crowd and talk about Italian cooking.
I cook everyday and everything I cook is Italian, including my morning oatmeal. Yesterday, instead of oatmeal, I made a big salad for breakfast and it was Italian too.
Split pea soup for dinner - Italian! I couldn't make anything that's not Italian even if I tried.

I'm Vegan-Italian, thank you very much. :bigbow:

Nice post, happiness and positivity shine forth. :eclipsee_gold_cup:

yes...the pastine...hahaha...That's it! I just had company in from Philly/NJ so naturally I made some escarole soup, too. I do not use hard boiled but scramble a few eggs and slowly stir it into the boiling pot. I used to make it for lunch for my coworkers a lot, and was shocked when an Italian friend from NY told me if he wanted egg drop soup, he'd go to a Chinese restaurant!! hahaha, till then I thought that was how everybody did it. I guess we all have our family traditions and quirks on how we make stuff. All good, tho, I'm sure!

I find it interesting that currently there are 194 members on TOTV and 703 guests. Are the guests comprised of members that haven't logged on? :confused: