Now that Christmas Eve has passed, I can come clean. As Italian as I like to think I am, there was no ​“Feast of the Seven Fishes” at our table. There never is. I don’t think there are seven fish (or, more generally, any creature from the sea) that I can get past my lips. I think my father is to blame for this, questioning the sanity of the first person to ever try an oyster and decide it was food…saying that calamari tasted like rubber bands, which he deemed cheaper and more flavorful…and being horrified at the idea of eating an eel. Like me, he was a terrible Italian on this front.

So Tim and I sat down to a timid baked haddock main course, with sauteed shrimp and roasted Brussels sprouts and our favorite — Trader’s Joe’s Coffee Bean Blast ice cream — for dessert.

Not a mussel to be seen, no octopus, not even a slab of baccalà for some stab at authenticity. That said, we did do better on New Year’s Day. Lentil soup laden with thin slices of sweet Italian sausage and crusty bread. Little coins, big coins…a culinary wish for prosperity in the New Year. May it be so for us all, however we define prosperity. Buon Capodanno a tutti!