July 16 brings the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and my mother’s name day––her Onomastico, in Italian. I will have to pull her earlobes today, as this is tradition for your Onomastico, at least according to Mom, though she does not remember why. Perhaps she never knew. Sometimes we just do what we do and don’t know why it’s done.
Be that as it may, July 16 and the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is, in fact, the name day for anyone called Carmela or any of the variants of the name: So, Buon Onomastico to all the Carmelas (spelled with one L or two), and to all the Camillas and Camilles, to all the Cammies, perhaps to all the Camerons, and to all the Millies, which is the name Mom typically goes by, and the name for which you know her best: she is the Millie in Millie’s Tea Towels, the hand-embroidered tea towels she makes that we sell here at the shop and on our website. I always assume it’s a good day to enjoy caramels, too, only because I don’t know how many years it took me, as a young boy, to grasp the difference between the words Carmel and Caramel. And perhaps it is a good day to be in Carmel-by-the-Sea in California.
What Mom remembers most about her name day is the feast in her old Brooklyn neighborhood: a feast that went on for many days each mid-July in honor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and still does to this day. Sausage & pepper sandwiches, fried zeppole, elaborate towers carried on the shoulders of strong men… mostly Mom remembers admiring the cute boys in the bands who played the old Italian songs.
Other than that, she feels fine. A present arrived for her yesterday in the mail from a family friend, Joseph, in her old neighborhood. He sent her a scapular for Our Lady of Mount Carmel: a little devotional worn around the neck. And there Mom is, in the photo above, wearing her new scapular. She wore it all day when it arrived yesterday, and she wore it to bed, and she is wearing it now as I type this. Thank you, Joseph; your gift means a lot to her.
Each day brings a different Onomastico. Mine was just a few weeks ago, at Midsummer: St. John’s Day on June 24. No one wished my a buon Onomastico that day, but it’s ok. I’m not holding any grudges.
NEW SUMMER WORKSHOPS
We have two new workshops posted to our website at the WORKSHOPS page! The first is a new Convivio Cookery workshop: Ricotta Gnocchi, set for Saturday August 15, 2026. (That’s my Grandma Assunta’s birthday and she would love that we are teaching you how to make homemade pasta that day!) We’ll teach you how to make a lighter gnocchi; this recipe is from Grandma’s friend, Adeline, and it skips the heavy potatoes and instead uses fresh ricotta: a delicious and much lighter alternative.
The second workshop, in September, is a writing workshop that I am definitely participating in: True Stories Cleverly Told: Exploring Creative Nonfiction for Narrative, Essay, & Memoir with writer and literary agent Cricket Freeman, on Saturday September 19. Cricket is one of our favorite people in the literary world. You will learn a lot! The writing workshop is a full-day class that includes a delicious box lunch from one of our favorite local spots, Aioli in West Palm Beach. Class limit in each workshop is 8 people. Either workshop would make a fine onomastico present! Or a good day out for you and your friends or family.
