An Italian Lunch

     Went to our little grocery store this morning to pick up some lunch. Was planning on just getting a big juicy hunk of mozzarella di bufala to have with some ripe tomatoes from a friend's garden sprinkled with olive oil and a few leaves off my basil plant.

     But the prepared food really piques my interest these days. It's such a new thing here.

     Traditionally, there was never any prepared food in Italian grocery stores. But now, our little grocery has everything from suppli -- breaded rice balls with a clump of mozzarella inside -- you can fry yourself to eggplant alla parmigiana that you just heat up in the oven. All delicious, and home-made by the local family who owns the store.

    It was the tomatoes stuffed with rice that caught my attention. 

    I used to love my mother's rice-stuffed tomatoes. She did them in the summer, like her cold, rice salad with capers and olives, because well, that's when you're supposed to eat those things.

    I loved watching her make them, the way she would fill them just to the right level and then put the tops back on, the way she would arrange them just so on the serving dish so they would look as pretty as a picture when she served them.

    I had my regular jobs at dinner, of course, one grating the fresh parmesan and putting it in its silver and glass container with the little spoon in it for serving. And setting the table, which had to be done just like my mother liked it with either pretty placemats or a tablecloth and the napkins always folded neatly in a triangle under the pre-positioned silverware.  

   Italians take the whole business of eating very seriously.  

   You eat certain foods at certain times of the day, of the year, and only -- and always -- with certain other things. Day in, day out, season after season, year after year. And that is the only way.  

   It's pure. Rigid. And delicious.

   I bought a big rice-stuffed tomato instead of the mozzarella, memories of my striking Italian mother in a belted polka-dotted summer dress swirling through my mind. All my male friends in high school had crushes on her.

   And one of my girlfriends from back then told me once she was always amazed when she opened the fridge at my house. Nobody had capers in their refrigerator, she said, she wasn't even sure what they were. But we always had them.

   Is home where lunch is?