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I enjoyed reading your story of traditions from your Italian family. I have similar memories though my family were Dalmatian Croatians. However, the Dalmatians who live along the coast of Croatia have long cooked and baked very much like the Italians since Dalmatia was under the influence of Venice (Venezia) for a century or more - and the Croatian dialect along the coastal area contains about many Italian words. I am American-born in 1938 - and also have memories of the 1940s and 50s at my childhood home in Seattle, WA. First and foremost among the traditional foods was the Easter bread. My mother baked many large round shiny brown loaves of this sweet bread and she also made smaller braids with eggs cooked along with the bread. I still keep up this tradition and I have preserved the recipe for Uskrnica - meaning the Risen - in a cookbook I edited titled, "Slavic Home Cooking." At this very moment I am preparing the pans and ingredients to bake my bread tomorrow. I sat down at the computer to research other recipes and traditions and therefore I am responding to your fine written memoir. Thank you for bringing back my own fond memories of a lovely time in our lives when times were simpler and traditional foods played a huge role in the celebration of religious holidays.