Waterford ― Over the refrigerator inside Mary Lenzini’s kitchen hangs a large, lovingly worn rolling pin, not far from a framed recipe for her grandmother’s stuffed tortellini.

“I grew up in Illinois in a half-Italian family on my father’s side,” Lenzini, 77, said on Tuesday as a pot of handmade pasta pillows stuffed with veal and beef simmered gently in a saucepan of chicken broth. “And we always had tortellini made by my grandmother, mother and aunts. No matter what was going on, the tortellini had to get made.”

And that rolling pin hooked to Lenzini’s wall did its share of work over the decades.

“My grandmother used it to roll her pasta by hand ― she actually wore out one before she got that one,” said Lenzini, the retired CEO of the Visiting Nurse Association of Southeastern Connecticut. “But I use a pasta machine. It’s so much faster.”

Thanksgiving for Lenzini’s family means taking the traditional holiday meal and adding Italian twists, from the delicate tortellini to a massive antipasto plate filled with salami, capicola, fresh mozzarella, roasted peppers and other bite-sized appetizers on a bed of romaine.

“The rest of the meal ― the turkey, stuffing and vegetables ― is pretty traditional, but we do add some Italian seasoning, like garlic,” Lenzini said. “And, of course, there’s the wine, the bread, roasted chestnuts and pies.”

Louisiana transplant Sam Thomas, Lenzini’s husband of 29 years, said there’s a strategy to Thanksgiving at the couple’s Jordan Cove Circle home.

“I’ve learned over the years you need to pace yourself,” he said. “I’ve always been a wannabe Italian and fell in love with the food after first eating it at a friend’s house when I was growing up.”

Meal prep for the holidays starts weeks before on Veterans Day when family members spend hours rolling and shaping pasta dough ― about 700 were made this year, with some set to be eaten on Christmas ― before freezing the tortellini.

“I’d always have Veterans Day off from work and the kids were out of school, so it just became a convenient day to prepare,” Lenzini said. “Back when I was growing up in Illinois, I remember my aunts, who lived about an hour away, taking the train to our house with an actual suitcase filled with tortellini.”

The tortellini and antipasto dishes are dressed with sprinklings or shards from 30-month-old Parmesan cheese wedges the couple bring back from their annual trips to Italy.

“Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It’s so family oriented,” Lenzini said. “I don’t really care about Christmas, and everyone kind of splits up anyway.”

Keeping a tortellini tradition alive

Lenzini’s family, including her two children, Joe Bondi and Anna Lathrop, and four grand-kids, began arriving on Tuesday afternoon, and several were set to stay through the weekend.

“A lot of this is about nostalgia for me, the celebration of the food and family,” Lenzini said.

This year marked the first time Bondi’s two daughters, Catherine, 6, and Margaret, 3, took part in the annual tortellini folding.

“As expected, the younger one lasted about five minutes, but our oldest managed to stick with it for a while,” said Bondi, a Washington, D.C., resident. “This is a tradition that goes back generations, a hundred years, in our family, from my grandmother to hers. Traditions like this are anchoring ― they provide a grounding. And there’s comfort in that.”

Lathrop, who lives in Quaker Hill with her family, began molding tortellini as a young girl and, like her mother, can get a piece of pasta formed in about 10 seconds.

“The funny thing about growing up and having tortellini be such a traditional part of Thanksgiving meant no one really ate it other times of the year,” Lathrop said. “It wouldn’t be as special any other way.”

j.penney@theday.com