Growing up in an Italian-American household was, for me, pretty special. My mother, Gina, an immigrant from Calabria (the "toe" of the Italian "boot"), held on to so many of her family's traditions that at times, regardless of the fact that I was living in the United States, our home felt like an annex of Italy.

To this day, my mother only speaks to me in Italian. She may sprinkle in English terms and expressions from time to time, but our conversations are, for the most part, in her mother tongue. And most of those conversations revolve around food.