why cookies are totally an acceptable breakfast in Italy

what my grandparents taught me, plus a list of my favorite Italian biscuits!

Written while finishing my 3-cup moka pot entirely too fast and entirely by myself…

Biscotti for breakfast reminds me of my grandparents. My dad always came home with bags of miscellaneous biscotti, usually super plain biscuits that tasted like heaven with a little sip of coffee. 

My grandpa used to go out and buy tons of things in bulk. It was anything from notebooks to biscotti. They’d all sit in this little corner at my grandparents’ house. I’d always go check if my favorite biscotti were there - these large oval biscuits we would call cookies. They were so plain but so good, especially once I started drinking coffee. 

The thing is - biscotti nowadays translates to ‘cookies’ in English, although it more directly translates to ‘biscuits’, and for a reason. The biscotti you find in Italy are often much less sweet, hard, and dry - born for dunking (in either coffee or wine). It all evolves from a history of food repurposing that I annoyingly bring up all the time because repurposing is the true heart of Italian cuisine, not maintaining some totalitarian regime over the authenticity of ingredients.