Sicily

On World War II, yeah.

Uh, particularly the, uh, the going into Sicily and then on to the Italian campaign.

It's very moving at times.

He, he, he's talking to soldiers all the time.

Oh my gosh, yeah.

We were in Sicily, we were in Tuscany.

It was just-

Amazing

Rome is in the middle of a costly war with Carthage.

At the time, the Roman state was the peninsula of Italy, Sicily, and maybe like a couple of other territories.

Nowhere near what it would become.

Carthage is in modern-day Tunisia, and they came to blows in modern-day Spain.

This was in Sorrento.

I had to cancel a trip to Sicily because of Mount Etna.

It happens.

And anyway, I get there.

He was a well-traveled man and is a well-traveled man and very much influenced by global cuisines.

He had another chef working with him in the kitchen that was from Sicily, and he was a traditionalist.

So I get a very good mix of traditional Italian cooking.

This is how it's been done.

They brought the traditions with them.

This is how we make pasta.

This is how we cook fish, whatever, depending upon where they're from, mostly from like Naples or Sicily, and brought these traditions with them and melded them with Rhode Island traditions using Rhode Island ingredients.

And that's Italian American food now, right? It was Italian traditions brought from the immigrants using what's available to them at that time.

I generally travel around Western Europe.

I'm going to Malta and Sicily in the fall.

So I'm really looking forward to that.

Last year I was in France.

Another of his saying was that he thought a man ought oftener to provide himself with a reason than with a halter.

On one occasion, when he noticed Plato at a very costly entertainment tasting some olives, he said, Oh, you wise man, why, after having sailed to Sicily for the sake of such a feast, do you not enjoy what you have before you? And Plato replied, By the gods, Diogenes, while I was there I ate olives, and all such good things a great deal.

Diogenes rejoined, What then did you want to sail to Syracuse for? Did not Attica at that time produce any olives? But Favorinus, in his Universal History, tells the story of Aristippus.

At another time he was eating dried figs when Plato met him, and he said to him, You may have a share of these.

number four during the battle of stalingrad which did not go well for anybody involved but which the soviets ultimately won hitler reacted to germany's setbacks by having an attack of farts and also halitosis number five in 1943 when things started going south for germany and north africa wait real quick the axis powers that would ultimately be germany italy and japan but at the time it was just germany and italy they wanted control of north africa for a bunch of stuff including shipping lanes and oil and at first they were dominating down there but then the allies were like think again butt heads and in the summer of 1943 may i think they pushed back very hard and they took tunis and that's a place where i've been tunis i loved it um but when that happened when the allies took tunis hitler got constipated boo but wait this is truly so funny hitler's failure in tunis and also his constipation put him in a really bad mood And that day, Morell noted in his diary about Adolf Hitler, quote, after eating a vegetable platter, constipation and colossal flatulence occurred on a scale I have seldom encountered before, unquote.

Number six, in July of 1943, the Allies made it into Sicily, right? And they're like working their way up the boot of Italy.

And already Hitler has screwed up so badly in North Africa.

So now we're talking about two major setbacks and his stomach really hurt.

Another of his saying was that he thought a man ought oftener to provide himself with a reason than with a halter.

On one occasion, when he noticed Plato at a very costly entertainment tasting some olives, he said, Oh, you wise man, why, after having sailed to Sicily for the sake of such a feast, do you not enjoy what you have before you? And Plato replied, By the gods, Diogenes, while I was there I ate olives, and all such good things a great deal.

Diogenes rejoined, What then did you want to sail to Syracuse for? Did not Attica at that time produce any olives? But Favorinus, in his Universal History, tells the story of Aristippus.

At another time he was eating dried figs when Plato met him, and he said to him, You may have a share of these.