12.5%

My child is 12.5% Italian, thanks to my genes. I should say, thanks to my grandmother, whose parents hailed from Italy. Whatever the percentage, it won't change the fact that this child is in love with Parmesan cheese.

We are cheese people in this house - woe betide the lactose-intolerant guest looking for some nibbles. Babybels, mozzarella sticks, fresh mozzarella, cabot cheddar, gruyere, cream cheese, pecorino romano, and feta are all currently living in harmony in the deli drawer of our fridge. It's a veritable UN of Cheesedom. The once-enormous wedge of Parmesan simply won't fit in the drawer, and lives on the shelf above.

Peanut eats this Parmesan in huge hulking slabs. Spurning the once-coveted mozzarella sticks, she chows happily on thick slices of grana parmesan. Grateful as I am for the calcium in the cheese, I can't help but worry for her bowels, and am always shoving apples and prunes at her, while desperately repressing the Italian Mother's Mantra: Mangia, mangia, mangia! Not that my mother was a typical Italian Mother - I was lucky to ever get a decent meal when a casa sua. My mother could burn water.

Nanny, my Italian grandmother, made a decent red sauce, though. I remember standing on a chair next to her and squeezing the freshly-peeled plum tomatoes into flavorful shreds before they went into the saucepot. She hasn't made sauce in years, though, since she moved out of her own home and into my aunt's house 20 years ago. It's her sauce recipe I like to use when I have the time to cook sauce from scratch.

Peanut doesn't seem to care whose sauce it is, Nanny's or Prego, as long as there's a mountain of Parmesan next to her ravioli. I'm happy to have Nanny's recipe to pass down to Peanut, as a way to reinforce her Italian heritage.

Guess who's going to have her arms elbow-deep in plum tomatoes tomorrow? Time to buy another wedge of cheese...