Christmas dinner fruits, chocolate, raisins, and/or pine nuts, known as panettone, followed by "torrone" (enriched with cherries, chocolate, sweets and more), nougat and nuts. In Southern Italy instead of one cake they serve many kinds of marzipan, biscuits, zeppole, cannoli, candied fruits, and fresh fruits. In the last few decades, panettone has become popular as a Christmas sweet all over Italy. Pandoro is also a very popular cake at Christmas and New Year, accompanied by a good Champagne. One typical Dutch tradition is that of 'gourmet,' an evening-long event where small groups of people sit together around a gourmet-set and use their
Name of Italy Name of Italy The name of Italy is at least 3000 years old and has a history that goes back to pre-Roman Italy. It initially referred to the tip of the Italian peninsula, now called Calabria; during the Roman Empire, it was extended to refer to the whole Italian geographical region (including the islands of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica). "Italia", the ancient name of the Italian peninsula, which is also eponymous of the modern republic, originally applied only to a part of what is now Southern Italy. According to Antiochus of Syracuse, it included only the southern portion of the