I am a mother of 3 and I am currently attending school in Italy. I grew up in Dallas,Texas and was greatly influenced by southern cooking. I love to cook Desserts and things that I have never eaten before. I love to make southwestern dishes and absolutlely my favorite thing to cook is Italian food. One of my family traditions is chili! Growing up in Texas allowed me the oppurtunity to be very open minded about the different variations this dish can have.One thing you must have with the chili is corn bread! Well this was my first year away from the U.S.A and my 1st Thanksgiving in Italy! I served a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner to 22 Italians and they ate everything!!! I was afraid because they had never had a turkey like we have in the states! It took forever to find the bird,but I was lucky and a farmer had a 32lb bird he got ready for me, There was none left after 40 minutes into the dinner! I tried to make a chocolate cream pie here in Italy and instead of evaporated milk that I couldn't find I used sweet condensed milk. It did not set right and was sticky and like concrete! But I put that pie in the fridge,let it set up and the taste was just fine but definately not the texture. Good thing they never had it before to question it. They ate it up! I was still not happy with the end product though!