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| Family outing Old California circa early 1930's - Nonna bottom right |
Marion Nestle doesn't believe in breakfast. At 89, this nutrition expert who's spent decades exposing the food industry says most of the research claiming breakfast is the most important meal was sponsored by cereal companies. Kellogg's and General Mills needed to move boxes. They manufactured urgency. We bought it.
But nobody marketed the meals that actually mattered. My grandfather's brick bar-be-cue in old California. Every Sunday under the grape arbor. Probably the first place wine touched my lips. Those traditions—gathering, sharing a meal, an anonymous bottle or two of wine—they're gone now.
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| Family dinner al fresco - Palermo circa mid 1950's |
We have better everything now. Custom grills, exotic charcoal, grass-fed steaks, wines we can trace to specific hillsides. But something essential slipped away in all this improvement.
I walked into a new restaurant recently. Noise hit first—music, then voices bouncing off hard surfaces designed for Instagram. By evening they'd dimmed the lights and cranked the volume higher. Maybe I'm just over it. But I watched people half-shouting across small tables, trying to connect.
So people stay home. Not from antisocial impulse, but because they need to hear each other again. To see a face when it tells a story. To not be constantly barraged by questions ("How is everything tasting?").
At home you pour what makes sense. Wine's just there, part of it. It's there while you're talking about the world or work or nothing much. You taste it because you're paying attention—wine rewards that. You can't taste it properly while distracted, while your phone lights up with the next crisis.
With meals at home one can breathe with the wine. Conversation happens without someone constantly interrupting you. No one's eyeing your table, trying to upsell you every five minutes.
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| There was nothing like our Mamma's cooking |
Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. Pollan's mantra, Nestle's practice. Simple. Real. Not ultra-processed. Not manufactured. Not at 85dB. With music you can hear, maybe even enjoy, rather than some that seek to help the establishment turn the tables quickly.
In Italy, lunch is still an important meal. Businesses close. People sit. Wine flows, moderately. Then back to work. My grandfather's Sunday gatherings had that same understanding. Different place, different wine, same knowledge: an ordinary day can be made to matter. Why can't Tuesday have that attention?
We're in upheaval—political, social, economic. Wine consumption trending down. But maybe wine isn't the problem. Maybe we forgot how to weave it into the fabric of a meal instead of making it the excuse for one.
Holidays approach with their promise of important meals. Thanksgiving. Christmas. New Year's. But what if we didn't wait? What if Thursday lunch mattered? What if we stopped relegating lunch to desk salads grabbed standing up?
The most important meal isn't breakfast or dinner or Thanksgiving at two. It's whichever one you show up for. The one you make matter through presence.
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| Southern California - Nonno's bar-be-cue circa 1950's |
My grandfather's backyard. That arbor. Those Sundays. The wine wasn't great, compared to the stuff we pour down our gullets today. But the moments were. Not because everything was perfect—people showed up. They sat. They stayed. They made memories we inherited.
We cannot go back to that California. It fell off the map some time ago, vanished into whatever country the past becomes. But the practice hasn't. Setting a table. Paying attention to what you're eating, who you're with, what's in the glass. Not for Instagram. Not to escape. Just presence.
Food, perhaps wine, certainly time, gratitude not as sentiment but as the act of noticing what stands before you, and in uncertain times not because it repairs the outer chaos but because it reminds us we are still here, still human, still capable of that most ancient and essential act of sitting down and being in each other's presence.
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| Old California circa 1930's- our dad on the right |
