11/02/2026
It was the 1980s. My grandparents on my mother’s side, Porfirio and Lucia Costagliola, would make their annual trip back to Monte di Procida, a small coastal town just outside Naples, Italy, where both sides of my family came from. Many of my family members, including my father still return there every year.
During their visits, they would gather vegetables from their garden and carefully separate the seeds to bring back to the U.S. for planting. As long as they could make it past airport security without getting caught (the statute of limitations has expired, so buzz off), they could enjoy the same quality vegetables here at home, many of which weren’t available in the States at the time.
Nowadays, you can go online and order just about any plant or seed imaginable, with a million different varieties at your fingertips. But things were much different back then.
We are forever grateful for everything the generations before us did to preserve a little piece of where we came from, and even more grateful for the memories and traditions they passed down along the way.
