‘Bread With Oil’ And ‘Rice With Bones’

Why have two typical expressions from Ancona, which are essentially set in Jesi and the surrounding area, been chosen as the title for a collection of short stories? I believe readers around my age would have readily grasped the irony behind these expressions, which are certainly linked to typical dishes from Ancona and Jesi, but also directly suggest the eternal rivalry between the two towns, used to tease each other in a playful and humorous manner. “Bread with oil” and “rice with bones”[in Italian: Pa’ cu’ l’ojo e Riso sa l’ossi] were typical dishes of the Marche region's poor cuisine, the former more common in the Ancona area, linked to olive oil production, the latter more common in the countryside around Jesi and Macerata ,linked to the pig farming industry.

Why have two typical expressions from Ancona, which are essentially set in Jesi and the surrounding area, been chosen as the title for a collection of short stories? I believe readers around my age would have readily grasped the irony behind these expressions, which are certainly linked to typical dishes from Ancona and Jesi, but also directly suggest the eternal rivalry between the two towns, used to tease each other in a playful and humorous manner. “Bread with oil” and “rice with bones”[in Italian: Pa’ cu’ l’ojo e Riso sa l’ossi] were typical dishes of the Marche region's poor cuisine, the former more common in the Ancona area, linked to olive oil production, the latter more common in the countryside around Jesi and Macerata ,linked to the pig farming industry. But when a Jesi native said to an Ancona native, “Bread with oil (Pà cu' l'ojo)”, he was referring to the typical dialectal inflection, which was most strikingly expressed in this short phrase. And of course, the man from Ancona didn't miss the chance to joke, replying: “Look who's talking! The one who eats the rice with bones!”. Here too, there was a reference to rice cooked in broth obtained from prolonged boiling of discarded pork bones, available mainly in winter, during the “pista” season, but in particular, it mocked the way we Jesi people pronounce the letter “s”, which we hiss almost between our teeth, producing a soft sound rather than a harsh one, as is the case in the rest of the region, sometimes giving the Jesi dialect an accent that closely resembles Tuscan.