Soups

Soup is zuppa, but there is another word for it in Italian, minestra, a word that resonates more deeply within the Italian soul than any other in the language. When Italy was a poor country, minestra, which existed long before pasta, signified more than a dish—it was, for most of its people, the whole meal. Minestra was synonymous with survival, with ones lot in life, and it became a word overlaid with immemorial travail.

One could say of ones job that one is working for la minestra. We would describe a person who is free to act as he wishes as someone who can have any minestra he likes. A warmed-over minestra is the attempt, without hope of success, to do what one has failed at before. When we have used up all our options we say, O mangiar questa minestra o saltar dalla finestra, “It’s either swallow the soup or jump out the window.”