Italians asscoiate cooking with love and family and good friends. Every occasion is an excuse to eat. Manga! Italian cooking varies from region to region and is based on the best fresh ingredients. They also use a great deal of olive oil in their cooking. Some doctors have stated that this is one reason why heart disease is so low in Italy.

Italy produces more than 40 varieties of pasta with the highest quality coming from southern Italy. Polenta is the national dish of Italy. It is a cornmeal porridge that was used to feed the Roman soldiers. It is boiled, baked, fried or eaten warm or cold.

There are twenty different regions of Italy. Southern Italians are the ones that cook almost exclusively with olive oil and northern Italians eat more rice and polenta. Sicilians use a great deal of fennel in their dishes because it grows wild on their island. Central Italians create dishes rich in tomatoe sauces and cheeses. Meat is not an important part of the Italian diet, instead fish, cheeses, grains, fruits and vegtebles make up most of the meals. There are a few meats though made up of fowl and game.

The Italians only eat two meals a day prefering instead to drink a cup of coffee filled with heavy cream for breakfast. They also eat later than Americans do. They usually do not start eating dinner until at least 7:00p.m.

Italians like to have a drink before dinner while they socialize. It is called an aperitif. Most of these drinks are alocoholic but they also have soda, water and juice drinks. Italians also carry bottled water with them every where they go.

At dinner, Italians like to drink wine. There are many vineyards all over Italy and many small Italian villages and cities have great homemade wine. Beer has become the most popular drink in Italy after wine and is now drunk with dinner as well. After dinner, Italians have a cup of coffee and then they have what is called ammazza-caffe or kill-coffee. It is supposed to help the digestion process. The most common is called Grappa. It is a distilled drink made from the grape’s skin.