Strega Nona’s Magic Lessons

Travel Guide

Calabria

Set somewhere in Calabria, the toe of the boot of Italy.

Strega Nona is a sweet grandmotherly witch who entrusts her magical pasta pot to her sweet, but bumbling helper, Big Anthony. While she is out, he turns on the magic pasta pot and then can’t turn it off. Pasta spills out of the pot, then out of the house and into the town.

She is a sort of female witch doctor noted throughout her home village for her numerous successful remedies for headaches and all kinds of ailments.

She’s getting old however and so one day employs a young man named  Big Anthony to help out. He secretly observes her singing a spell to a magic pasta pot to produce large amounts of cooked pasta; unfortunately, he fails to notice that she blows kisses to the pot three times to stop the pasta production. Since Big Anthony cannot stop the pot from cooking, the town is flooded with macaroni noodles.

Then the adventures, like the macaroni noodles just keep coming!

In the Italian language, the word “strega” means “witch” and the word “nonna” means “grandmother.”