![\"Linda](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Linda-with-her-kids.jpg\")
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Linda Perillo (in green) with her eight kids \u2014 Devin, Brynn, Valentina, Federica, Eva, Albert Mario, Camilla and Gianmarco.<\/p>\n
Photo courtesy of Linda Perillo.<\/p>\n
Buona Pasqua! Proudly, I am a first-generation Italian. My mom, with my grandparents and three siblings, emigrated from Vasto, Italy, settling in da Bronx, where Gaetano and Graziella \u2013 that\u2019s my Nonna \u2013 raised a garden-variety immigrant family.<\/p>\n
My dad, Mario Perillo, Mr. Italy, had a similar background, but his birth certificate said \u201cDa\u00a0Bronx,\u201d and my grandfather, Joseph Perillo, set up his first office, Joseph Perillo & Sons, right on Third Avenue at 4545, and raised his four boys along with Nanny, Dora there. <\/p>\n
The tomato never falls far from the plant, and you can never take Belmont out of anybody.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
This week we celebrate ooey, gooey \u201cAmerigan\u201d Easter baskets of joy. Italians celebrate too, with roasted lamb. Somehow, cannelloni made it in there, too.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the other 364 days of the year? My family, like many before us, had, well, a Jeffery Dahmer-style approach to livestock \u2014 and definitely to leftovers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So on this holiday, let\u2019s take a culinary walk down memory lane.\n<\/p>\n
I visited Nonna every Thursday after kindergarten at her apartment in the Dennis Lane Mitchell-lama building on Crotona Avenue. That place is iconic. The smells that emanated from the hallway surrounding my grandparents\u2019 apartment forced me to think constantly about food. A lifetime of cheese, meat, pizza, sauce, sausage. There wasn\u2019t a moment in time when we weren\u2019t eating or cooking.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nonna singlehandedly created my Venus Di Milo profile.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
After countless trips to Arthur Avenue or Little Italy of the Bronx, I fully understood the Italian diet. A necessary evil, animals were not laid to rest in peace like the Lord. In the new country, nobody slaughtered in vain, nobody wasted the literal hair of the animal. Unfortunately.<\/p>\n
You hadn\u2019t shopped until you shopped with Nonna. The lambs? Mary cannot help you now.\n<\/p>\n
This Easter dinner carnage doubled as a tasty add-on for a future meat sauce. And never doubt the power a tasty capozella \u2013 a stuffed lamb\u2019s head \u2013 to complete the Bovidae roster.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Feeling sorry for the dismembered rabbit skinned and hanging feet first in the butcher shop was not allowed. Thumper was supper, lunch the next day and in a soup on days three and four.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I spent most of my youth finding it all repulsive.\u00a0But I\u2019m now aware that, as a younger, less cognizant diner, I was fed many treasures.<\/p>\n
Take Tripe. A doppelg\u00e4nger for something normal. with a texture like Michael Jordan\u2019s last free-throw. But in sauce.\n<\/p>\n
This gorgeous plate of NBA rubber covered in Nonna\u2019s tomato sauce looked dive-in quality. Nonna said, \u201cU-ah try.\u00a0Its\u2019a very good.\u201d Once I chewed it enough to swallow it, I kind of liked it.\u00a0Of course, I had no idea what it was. Enter big brother, Steve \u2013 \u201cYou know you\u2019re eating pig stomach.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He then said, \u201cor maybe the cow\u2019s.\u201d\u00a0 Okay, so much better. Not.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cSanguinaccio.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cSangue\u201d = blood.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
Blood pudding. Why?\u00a0 Because the sausage, bacon, pancetta, chops, feet, ears of that poor, porker wasn\u2019t enough. So we also made him into\u2026 dessert.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The banner in the butcher, akin to selling the winning ticket in the $500 million Powerball, announced its availability. My mom got so excited, she had to take it home to my father. A martini and \u201cSanguinaccio.\u201d<\/p>\n
And now, one of my favorites. Sweetbreads.\n<\/p>\n
Duped again.\u00a0\u00a0The words \u201csweet\u201d and \u201cbread\u201d are just a misleading deviation tactic \u2013 aliases to get you to stick your fork in it and savor the delicacy of this mouth-watering, succulent nectar of the Gods. \u00a0Just don\u2019t call them what they are.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Innards.\u00a0Another useable slaughter leftover.\n<\/p>\n
My mother loved them.\u00a0She would order them if available. Their scarcity made them more desirable.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
My mother ordered calves\u2019 brains once at Villa Cesare. I went to the bathroom or whatever I was doing, not paying attention, and when I returned to find them on my plate, they looked good, good and fried. Once again, here comes brother Steve with the low-down \u2013 \u201cThose are chicken cutlets.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
My mother chuckled. They looked like really good cutlets.\u00a0I tried one.\n<\/p>\n
The texture was soft, slimy, and unrecognizable. They almost melted and certainly didn\u2019t taste like chicken. \u201cSteve, you lied.\u201d\u00a0He laughed the diabolic big brother laugh, \u201cYou ate calves\u2019 brains.\u201d\u00a0I hated him from that day forward. <\/p>\n
Still, fish was not my go-to as a kid, but post-leftover experience, I drooled over Nonna\u2019s whiting with the parsley and olive oil. I even preferred the bones over cow tongue. The \u201cevery-last-drop\u201d immigrant practice of no organ left behind had me begging for Baccal\u00e0.<\/p>\n
The gastronomic moral: Waste not, want not. All resources consumed to provide for their families and birth a new life. Sacrifices made so my children would never starve or want. Parenting at its best.<\/p>\n
Linda Perillo<\/a>\u00a0is a mother of eight and the daughter of Mario Perillo, founder of\u00a0Perillo Tours<\/a>, America\u2019s leader in Italy travel since 1945, carrying forward a multigenerational Italian-American legacy rooted in family and tradition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Linda Perillo (in green) with her eight kids \u2014 Devin, Brynn, Valentina, Federica, Eva, Albert Mario, Camilla and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184771,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[74309,29509,2465,128,34743,74310,74311,2575,74001,25527,873,74312,9,24,63,74313,58126,129,131,130],"class_list":{"0":"post-184770","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-bronx","8":"tag-arthur-ave","9":"tag-arthur-avenue","10":"tag-belmont","11":"tag-bronx","12":"tag-bronxs-little-italy","13":"tag-crotona-avenue","14":"tag-da-bronx","15":"tag-easter","16":"tag-easter-sunday","17":"tag-italian","18":"tag-italian-american","19":"tag-linda-perillo","20":"tag-new-york","21":"tag-new-york-city","22":"tag-nyc","23":"tag-perillo-tours","24":"tag-real-little-italy","25":"tag-the-bronx","26":"tag-the-bronx-headlines","27":"tag-the-bronx-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}