My mom's side of the family is from Italy.  I grew up with the mantra, "food is love!" (This did not well for me, the domestically inept.  I could not give love, but I could ingest it).  Cannolis were painstakingly filled with delicious cream.  Pasta was rolled out and sliced carefully, pinched together by loving hands.  Holiday meals were taken at a makeshift table that stretched so far, Nana appeared to be a small child.

When I moved to Florence last fall, I embraced the time taken to prepare food, and more significantly, to eat it.  If I was running through a piazza, late to class, someone (as if cued by the Italian gods) would stop me.  Piano, piano they would say, gesturing for me to slow my place.  Everything was beautifully glacial and deliberate.  They took time to smell a beautiful leather bag or choose which cheese to put on a panini.  These things matter.

One night my roommates and I were at a beautiful outdoor club on the Arno River with our new-found local friends.  Heels were worn down, feet were on the verge of collapse, and the only sustenance had been the strawberries in our champagne.  At 4 a.m. the place had no sign of slowing down.  Even the 70-year-old men were still shaking their soon-to-be-arthritic hips.  After complaints from us Americans, our entourage said they would bring us for food.  Expecting a nice slice of pizza and a seriously large botiglia di aqua, we followed ravenously.

Piling into cars, we zigged and zagged around Florence, passing one pizza place after another.  Finally we arrived.

"McDonald's!" they said as if they had discovered the Statue of Liberty holding an apple pie in the heart of the city.

It was at the wee hours of the morning in a country known for its cuisine, that I had my first Big Mac.  And let me tell you, that thing was damn good.  We walked out of the restaurant, to see a small cart roll up with the day's order of fresh vegetables.  And that is why I have never tried a Big Mac in the U.S.

I find it oddly refreshing to know that when I hit up the local late-night pizza joint on Thames St. in Newport, Rhode Island, that my Italian friends are getting a little American culture after their own night of debauchery.