Why might your Italian friends think you have ham over your eyes? Why shouldn't you give back bread? Author Michele Segalerba explains these and other culinary expressions.

Stare stretti come sardine | To be packed like sardines. You do know this idiom because you have borrowed this one into English. It means to be squeezed in a small place with more people than the place would actually allow, as canned sardines. What you might not know is the origin of the word sardina: it derives from the name of the Italian island Sardinia because of the abundance of this fish in its waters, already known during the time of ancient Romans.