Happy Columbus Day!

Happy Columbus Day, kittens! I hope that you are enjoying this lovely fall day. I know I sure am--I've got the day off! Wahoo!

Seriously, though, I just made my surf through all the morning shows, and they've got Italian food cookin' today! Lidia Bastianich was on The Early Show cooking up something in honor of Signor Colombo. (Hope I've got the spelling right--and I'm half Sicilian myself!) There was something cookin' over at GMA as well, and the Fox 5 morning show, Good Day New York, had a specialty from a local Italian cafe. Hell, the parade's coming up today!

So I just had a thought about all of this. I live in Middletown, Connecticut, a city of about 45,000, where much of its population can trace its heritage back to a little village on the island of Sicily, Melilli. Middletown is proud enough of its heritage to acknowledge it in posters near Melilli Plaza, but not so proud of it that we don't have any Melilli heritage days, or anything to acknowledge the history of our town.

WHY?!?! This is what makes our city so unique!

On another note, we do have an Italian market on Main Street, but there's no place for me to grab a cannoli should I have the craving! (And it's got to be the one filled with ricotta cheese and lightly sweetened with almond extract and mixed with mini dark chocolate chips. Americans got it wrong with the cream cheese filling).

Maybe I should head on over to the Middletown Eye blog and pose my queries.

In the meantime, how should I, Ms. Kitten, honor my Sicilian heritage today?

Well, pasta for dinner sounds too easy, and I have no pastry in the house for breakfast.

But I do have bocconcini--little balls of fresh mozzarella.

And I have coffee.

Yeah, it's a stretch.

I think I'll just listen to Dean Martin's Volare on my iPod instead.

Yep, that'll do.