the family home on the ground floor of this newish apartment building with underground parking also features a vast hidden orto

…took us to a family of three generations living in a newish housing development about 8 km south of central Rome – still within the Grande Raccordo Anulare, bordered by a few other housing developments, a few isolated farms, and to the east by the Parco Regionale dell’Appia Antica (the vast greenbelt flowing from the countryside into Rome and terminating at the Circo Massimo) – where they are lucky enough to have the space for a big orto (too bad we don’t have such a specific word in English for the homegrown kitchen/vegetable garden) tended by the definitive cook and oldest member of the family (who grew up Bagheria, Sicily – the picturesque coastal town where the 1988 film Cinema Paradiso was set – in the 1930’s and 40’s in a completely self-sufficient household where they even ate the bread made with wheat grown on their own land) where he is playing out his nostalgic memories of his childhood garden with mammoth Cucuzza Sicilian squash and Sicilian tomato varieties, and at his own family table he is adamant that all are seated together each night at the precise moment that his culinary creations are ready – which his 18 year old son tolerates less and less, as he is out most nights with his his friends (sometimes enjoying quick fast food, that he even convinved his father to try once when they were on a road trip) and his girlfriend of Veneto decent, though in a separate interview acknowledging his appreciation for that one occasion each day that the whole family is together and grudgingly admitting that he will likely require the same of his own family in the future.