Italian Woman Carrying Fish, by Gerard Dillon.
It’s almost Easter. This will be the first year I don’t make Easter dinner. My mother is sick, and she can’t eat, so it seems a little pointless, or at least the pleasure has gone out of it. Being an atheist, I don’t need much to get my mind off of Easter. The food has always been the thing, so now that I’m free to let my mind wander, I find it moving toward women with fish, as it often does. I’m thinking about Italian women and the sea. This is me with a wooden bowl filled with freshly caught branzino. I can tell it’s me in the painting because I own that skirt (Agnes B., bought on eBay), and I often wear it when I go fishing near Bari (the cross is an Italian fashion statement). My plan is to give most of these fish away. I’ll keep one and grill it whole, stuffed with marjoram and lemon, and I’ll make a simple sauce with marjoram, capers, and olive oil to drizzle over the top. That will be my dinner, to eat alone, outside, sitting on a busted-up wooden chair, while everyone else in Bari is inside celebrating Easter in the usual Puglian way, with artichokes, lamb, fava beans. For a while I was a bit worried about Easter. It seemed odd not to be preparing something traditional like a pastiera. But now that I’ve got a plan, everything will be all right. It’s nice to mix it up a bit.
Happy Easter to you.
Erica De Mane 
A nice Chianti accompanying the fava beans?
Girl of Steel, I was thinking about a Puglian Rosato. Puglia makes dark, delicious rose wines. Almost like red wine, but orange red and bitter. The color destroys me. I just think of my father’s parents and their interesting food, so different from Naples; more greens, more heavy pasta, taralli, fatty sausage, and yes, fava beans, mashed into a mush. Nothing as refined as Neapolitan cooking. But so of my heart. Happy Easter to you, Girl of Steel, what ever you eat, who ever you are. I think I know who you are.
How sad you claim to be an Atheist and yet Wish everyone a Happy Easter. I see you love your mother, I have lost mine and so Look forward to the day we will meet
again in Heaven, How sad you do not have that promise. Just find it odd you would start your Easter artical proclaiming your Atheism.
Julie, Thanks for your concern, but I’m really okay with not seeing my mother in heaven. For me the symbolism of Easter concerns human rights and wrongful imprisonment on earth. I think about these injustices everyday. And in my spare time I cook.
Happy Easter to you and your family.
Erica