The progression of dinner

One thing I have noticed is that today salad is the first course in most restaurants. In a traditional Italian dinner we would start with the pasta dish to be followed by (or with) the large spread of meat. It would be cuts of pork, meatballs, mabye the tenderest of braciole......writing about it makes my mouth water! The last component of the dinner was the salad. It consisted of a nice firm head of lettuce, cucumber, tomatoe, red onion, maybe pepperoncini to be gently tossed with a drizzle of olive oil, spashes of red wine vinegar, seasoned with salt, pepper and oregano. There was nothing out of a bottle!