Like the saying goes...COVID changed everything.


Easter was always our second-biggest food holiday, after Christmas of course.

Being raised Italian and Catholic, there were so many traditions and foods associated with the holiday growing up. Of course we went to Sunday Mass and did all the things. We used to have a great local candy shop where I grew up (Russo's of Saugus, RIP) where fancy Easter things and massive baskets kept generations of younglings and adults happy.

And then the food! My grandparents were snowbirds and didn't come north until Mother's Day, so the hosting duties always fell to my mother, although sometimes we went house-hopping for the day.

The centerpiece of Easter morning is a dish peculiar to our family tradition. The recipe is out there - most people call it a "Pizza Rustica", but we called it a "Pizza Gaynor". The crust is different, and the fillings varied from house to house, but as my late mother used to note - "It's all the things you're not supposed to eat during Lent."

I started making this dish some 30 years ago after we were first married. Like my Christmas Pizzeles, it was the one thing for the holiday. It wouldn't be Easter without it.

Every year of my life, without exception, this was Easter breakfast. Even those years when we were away in Florida, because of course grandma made one.

Fast-forward to that spring of 2020.

We were segregated, quarrantined, barricaded. Nobody could travel, visit, go anywhere, do anything.

I made a conscious decision not to make anything that year. My theory was - "Why bother?" We're not sharing anything with anyone, and it's too much for just us.

The following year, Javi didn't even come home for any breaks, because the campus was still quarantining before students were allowed into the general population.

Here we are, five years later. I still don't make anything big or special. We stopped going to church long ago. I don't even have a single jellybean in the house right now.

Sometimes that makes me sad.

But nevertheless - I am cooking a wee Easter dinner tomorrow. I may bake something, probably just a simple boxed cake. My ancient father and mother-in-law will be in attendance, and that will be that.

I guess it's another thing to hang on Donald Trump's wall of shame.