It’s festa dei sette pesci – Feast of the Seven Fishes. It’s an Italian-American (and more Southern Italian and Sicilian than northern) tradition where the family serves seven different seafood dishes on Christmas Eve.

There’s a lot of speculation as to where the feast originated, but it’s definitely more America-Italian that Italy-Italian where the feast is not something celebrated natioanlly.

Once upon a time, Christmas Eve was a meatless day, so, in true Italian fashion, it became a meatless day with style! But regardless of origin, it’s a great tradition and one that I really enjoy. And our Seven Fish were right up there!

It started with Shrimp with both spicy and mild cocktail sauces and a Crab and Whitefish dip…

and went to Linguini with Clams…

to Fried Tilapia…

Baked Cod with Almonds, and…

Mussels with Marinara.

All of this was prepared by my brother-in-law, Tom, who really wasn’t feeling all that great. He did better on half-power than most of the planet could do at 110%.

We ate well. Very well.