My Inspiration
I started cooking when I was 13 years old. We were a family of five. I have two younger sisters. My mom wasn't really a "fancy cooker". She was more of a grilled cheese and potato chips or hot dog and hamburger with french fries kinda cook...lol
I always wanted to be "Fancy". I loved looking at cookbooks and writing down every recipe that I found interesting. I would come home from school and look at all my new recipes and start trying new things. My mother was amazed! She said I must take after my Madrina Sylvia because she is the best cook in the family. I remember asking my teachers if I could go to the library in place of gym class..lol...so I could find more and more recipes.
We didn't have computers and Google back then! We didn't have printers either! You had to physically find the book and write everything down! Can you imagine what I would have been able to do if I could easily go online and find any recipe in the world just by the click of a button? That didn't stop me, though, I wrote down every recipe my hand could possibly manage to write in a day and I didn't complain about it!
I watched my Godmother and my Nonni cook all the time. My most precious memories are from Christmas Eve when I was a kid. Papa Giacomo always had his record player playing "Ave Maria" and "Caro Jesu Bambino". He loved Bing Crosby and played his Christmas record every year!! We would pull up into Nonni's driveway and hear the music and we could smell the food cooking from outside! I followed my nose and found "U bene di Dio" on the table and on the stove. They had fried calamari, lobster tails, shrimp oreganata, stuffed clams, seafood salad, rice balls (my fave) just to name a few! It was our tradition to sleep over Nonni's house on Christmas Eve...at night I would wake up and run to the fridge and grab a rice ball and eat it...lol. I still do this today!
Nonni used to make home-made zeppoli too! It was hard work. She used to knead that dough for so long her arms hurt. She would put anchovies in the middle of half the batch the other half was plain with sugar. At the end of the night she put them all together and saved them in the fridge. Guess what used to happen when I snuck into the fridge to grab a zeppoli...of course I would get the one with the anchovy! Yuck! I hate anchovies...lol
I made it my tradition to have the family over my house for Christmas Eve every year and I make sure my kids have the same memories I have from when I was a kid. It melts my heart when they say, "Mommy, that food smells sooo good, I can't wait to eat it!" and I love when they come in the kitchen nonchalantly and steal something off the table and stick it in their mouth! I don't get mad because thats exactly what I used to do, and still do when I go over Madrina Sylvia's house..lol
Last year I started something new. Both of my children love to cook, they really help me a lot. My daughter, Alessia, especially loves to make the rice balls. That's her job on Christmas! Michael loves to cook and especially loves to bake! He is one of the few people in this world that can do both! It really makes Christmas extra special when everyone is in the kitchen together.
Cooking and holidays are a very big deal in my house. There is always music, there is always singing and dancing and there is always a table full of delicious food! One day I asked my kids,"What's your favorite food?" They said,"I dunno". I cried, I was so upset! I thought to myself, I go crazy cooking for them and they can't even name one thing they like??? I was talking to Nonni and I brought this up to her. I said, "Nonni my kids can't even tell me what is their favorite food! You know how I cook...I can't believe how much this hurts me!" Nonni's response was, "Cristina, everything you make is so delicious maybe they can't choose just one thing!" That made my day...lol