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KIDS
AND SOCCER
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Cugini
Soccer, founded by Fabio Diletti, is the only soccer club in the
United States to be affiliated with a professional soccer club in
Italy, AC Perugia. Diletti, who is an Italian citizen and former
semipro soccer player in Italy, trains the traveling teams twice
a week in the distinct Italian style of soccer training. According
to staff members of Cugini Soccer, the club encourages the children
to play for life and play fore the love of the game, not love of
winning. The club works to ensure that American children learn soccer
properly and, most importantly, without pressure to win. Cugini
Soccer offers scholarships to talented soccer players who do not
have the financial means to pay for the program. Cugini Soccer also
offers kids the unique opportunity to participate in a tournament
in Italy each summer to experience first-hand the Italians’ pure
love of the game.
Source: the National Italian American Foundation
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'ITALIAN
SALAMI' FROM CALIFORNIA
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In
the late 1960’s a group of Bay Area sausage makers appealed to the
U.S.D.A. to use Italian methods to make salami and call it ‘Italian
salami’. According to the Bay Area sausage makers, true salami cannot
be achieved in a short hanging period or by cooking sausages. Authentic
‘Italian salami’ must be hung in drip rooms then in aging rooms for
weeks or months, depending on the size of the chub (the stick of salami).
The result of their pleas was the creation of the Dry Salami Institute
and the right to produce ‘Italian salami’ using the age-old methods,
which had been handed down to them by their ancestors from Milan,
Lucca, Parma, and Modena.
San Francisco’s first Italian salami company, P. G. Molinari, was
established in 1896 to provide this gourmet item to Californians.
The conditions in the Bay Area offer an optimum range of curing temperatures
for the meat to produce the complex array of flavors which can be
experiences only from the finest ‘Italian salami’. In more recent
years, charcuterie bars have become chic, introducing a new wave of
Americans to the tradition of ‘Italian salami’. Restaurants such as
A. O. C. in mid-city Los Angeles slice salami to order and serve it
with bread and butter.
The way that salami is sliced is just as important as the way in which
it is prepared. The Italian rule is to slice large chubs thinly and
to slice thin chubs thickly. Although the US ‘Italian salami’ is not
the same as salami from Italy which varies by region and includes
the spicy ‘salame calabrese’, it maintains its authenticity and has
become known for its more pungent flavor.
Source: the National Italian American Foundation |
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