Eggs

Eggs are not a breakfast food in Sicily, but they are considered a very important part of the diet. My mother took great pride in the fact that she, with the help of her father, always managed to get fresh eggs for my brother and myself during World War II. Our grandfather, Don Giovannino Sirugo, would often walk to farms outside of Ragusa to get eggs and milk for us, even braving the perils of bombardments. Since the eggs were super fresh, our mother would make a pinhole on the bottom of the egg, and a larger hole on the top, and we would suck it out. That habit didn’t continue after we moved to the Bronx, but our family consumption of eggs was substantial. We had a farmer friend from Hopewell Junction in New Jersey deliver five dozen eggs to our fourth floor walk-up apartment on Willis Avenue while he came to deliver to Vaccaro, the local Italian grocery store on 138^th Street.