ebook: Pasta, pizza, and Pinocchio: Questions and Answers about the Church of the Nazarene in Italy (Part 6)
Missions in Italy
In this ebook, Pasta, pizza, and Pinocchio, Howard Culbertson answers questions he has been asked about missionary work in Italy. Originally published in the NMI mission book series by what is now The Foundry, this book carried ISBN 0-8341-0612-4. Some material has been updated for this ebook edition.
Unless otherwise noted, these answers describe life in Italy during our years of missionary service there.
Yes, they do. Pasta comes in many shapes and sizes, including spaghetti, tortellini, macaroni, lasagna, ravioli, and fettuccine. Pasta is a staple of Italian cooking and is often served as the first course at lunch or dinner. In a traditional multicourse meal, meat, vegetables, and salad follow.
Italian spaghetti is similar to Chinese noodles, and a familiar legend credits Marco Polo with bringing pasta to Italy from China in the 13th century. Stories about pasta's origins vary, however, and this legend should not be treated as established history. Whatever its beginnings, Italians transformed pasta into a culinary art form with an international reputation.
Books have been written on the many ways to prepare pasta. It may be served steaming hot with butter and garlic, with a tomato sauce that has simmered for hours, with a sauce containing small clams, or with a white sauce and peas. It may also be cooked in broth as a soup ... and it's all good.
Spaghetti is generally added unbroken to boiling water and cooked until al dente, or slightly firm to the bite. Cooking time varies with the type and thickness of the pasta.
Pizza is very much Italian. In fact, we've eaten pizza in a historic pizzeria in Naples, a city closely associated with its development.
During our years in Italy, the families we knew often purchased pastries from neighborhood bakeries. American-style pies were uncommon; a familiar alternative was a crostata, a pastry tart often filled with jam.
Rich food alone does not tell the whole story. Among the Italians we knew, breakfasts were often light, snacking between meals was less common than we were accustomed to, and rich desserts were not an everyday feature of meals. These were observations about the people we knew, rather than a statistical picture of weight problems in Italy.
Prices varied by location and by what we bought. An older Union Bank of Switzerland comparison cited in the original book suggested slightly higher costs for a basket of common food and beverage items in Milan than in Los Angeles. That historical comparison should not be taken as a guide to current prices.
During our years there, many people went home for lunch or brought food from home. Of course, some brought lunch in style. A stonemason doing work on the Florence church would spend the first part of his hour-and-a-half lunch break gathering twigs and pieces of wood and building a fire. Then he would put his little container of spaghetti or ravioli on the fire and eat it piping hot.
Many restaurant meals we encountered were lengthy, multicourse affairs. Among the families we knew, eating out was often reserved for special occasions because of the expense.
There were relatively few McDonald's restaurants in Italy during our missionary years. As of October 2026, McDonald's Italia reports more than 800 restaurants across the country.
During our years in Italy, convenience foods, frozen meals, and many American snack foods were less readily available, much to some missionaries' dismay. The families we knew prepared much of their food, including spaghetti sauce, from scratch.
Supermarkets were less common then. As I recall, there were only six supermarkets open in Florence at one point during our years there, just two more than we had had in Uvalde, Texas, a town of about 10,000 people. Florence was a much larger city.
Marshmallows, Jell-O, tacos, Kool-Aid, and Tang ... to name a few.
We found many of the same kinds of fruits and vegetables in Italian markets as in American food stores. Much of what we bought was fresh and seasonal, and we rarely purchased canned foods.
Two vegetables familiar to Americans that we had difficulty finding were iceberg lettuce and sweet corn. Field corn was grown for animal feed or ground into cornmeal.
On one of his trips to the General Assembly, our district superintendent, Salvatore Scognamiglio, fell in love with corn on the cob. He took a package of seeds back to Italy to raise his own sweet corn.
No. We use unfermented grape juice for Communion, in keeping with Nazarene practice.
During our years there, unfermented grape juice was sometimes hard to find in Italy, although it was sold in Germany. Our district superintendent kept a supply on hand for churches unable to purchase it locally.
Our statements of belief and practice are intended to apply throughout the denomination. Drinking was widely accepted among many American Christians before the temperance movements of the 1800s. In an article titled "America's Battle Against the Bottle" in the January 19, 1979, issue of Christianity Today, Mark Noll discusses the role of revival movements, including Methodism with its emphasis on Christian perfection, in turning evangelical opinion against drinking.
We long to see a sweeping holiness revival in Italy. [More on alcohol in Italy]
That was not our experience. Where we lived, we could drink the tap water. Many Italians we knew preferred bottled mineral water, and some diluted their wine with water at the table. Wine has long played an important role in Italian meals and culture; its use should not be explained simply as a response to unsafe water.
I would explain that I didn't care for wine and would prefer something else. It never became a real issue, although at times I had to insist that I wasn't just being polite: I really didn't want anything alcoholic. [Continue to the next chapter]
| Why do so many missionaries leave when the nationals take over the work? . . . Is the Church of the Nazarene really an international church or is it an American one imposed on other cultures? ... Do we have any "Alabaster" churches in Italy? . . . [ more ] |
— Howard Culbertson, hculbert@snu.edu
