Posts categorized as Family

Doctors and self-professed health experts have touted the benefits of a Mediterranean diet. People living in Greece or Italy are suspected of living with more fresh fruits and vegetables, along with an abundance of extra virgin olive oil. This, along with siestas and lots of good red wine seem to contribute to their longevity — and admirable lifestyles. More than fifty years ago my Italian family lived this fabulous diet without even knowing how smart they were.  The genius behind the food eaten at my mother’s table was her father, [...]

The familiar is slowly returning to Rockaway. The dark cold days and nights seem in the distant past. Shoots of flowers are piercing the sand covered soil with the hope of spring.  While we watched this happen, there were flickers of optimism in our hearts.  But the true sign of normalcy and familiarity came last weekend with the sounds of Mister Softee.  An ice-cream truck singing down the street may seem like an ordinary thing, yet it is a constant in all of our lives. Having spent my entire life [...]

Everyone was raving about these southwestern turkey meatballs with cream sauce I made for Maureen’s Rockaway St. Paddy’s Day Party. I had several requests to post the recipe. I found it on skinnytaste.com. The name of the site implies this is a low-fat recipe and it is (!!) but for the party instead of baking the meatballs, I fried those suckers! Since then, I’ve made more creamy cilantro dipping sauce and used it on chicken cutlets. Total win – my Husband and JUMBO devoured  8 cutlets in one sitting. The [...]

This is one of those recipes that you read and say,”It doesn’t sound so good” but it is – and easy. In fact some people make this a meal by adding some wide noodles to the finished product. It’s very economical for those of you saving for a house, baby, or vacation!  It also goes well with corned beef. This recipe calls for bacon fat, how do you get it? Simple. When you cook bacon save the grease in a jar in the refrigerator.  Use it in place of oil.  [...]

Jambalaya it is for Rockaway St. Paddy’s Day!  It’s a great dish to make if you’re having a lot of big eaters over or if you want to set something up the day before and finish it off the day of.  Add some hearty bread and it’s a meal!  This is also good around the Super Bowl or the weekend before Lent starts since it’s very New Orleans/Mardi-gras-esque. This recipe is based on a cooking.com recipe I tried a while ago. They plug their own Capn Butt Kickin Blacken spice but you can use the store brand of cajun [...]

I learned how to make a mean alla vodka sauce from my sister Maria. It’s tasteful and rich – her special ingredients are sun-dried tomatoes and the DiGioia red sauce. Using a base red sauce isn’t common. Maria adopted this technique for mass production (for big parties). We usually have sauce frozen in the freezer, so it’s also convenient. Note: the taste of your base red will effect the alla vodka dramatically. Make sure it’s a tasty batch or you’ll be starting off on the wrong foot. One uber important tip [...]

I may get a lot of heat for this “recipe”. My mom makes amazing sausage and peppers. I asked her how she made it and she said, you dump a bottled sauce into the crock pot, put in the sausages and put on high for 8 hours. “Bottled sauce?” I thought, this would not get me my own food network show, Mom! So I didn’t listen to my mother and I tried my own way. I put some crushed tomatoes in with garlic and basil, some salt and pepper. I [...]

Time is passing here in Rockaway and we are moving forward. Our neighborhood is not where it was or where we hope it could be, but it is winter and spring will bring renewal. But we need the familiar, the normal, the comforts of before Sandy. In this spirit, after Thanksgiving had come and gone in the cold, I was reminded of what was always normal for me at this time of year — pumpkin bread. Every year I would bake all through November and create delicious, spicy, tasty pumpkin [...]

I never realized how important tortillas could be until we started traveling in Guatemala. More precisely until we visited San Pedro la Laguna. San Pedro is a pueblo (town) located next to Lake Atitlan in the mountains of Guatemala. It is populated by the descendants of several Mayan tribes who primarily speak the indigenous language of “Tzutujil” with Spanish coming in a close second. After spending a week in Antigua, a fairly colonial town near Guatemala City, we took a 3 + hour bus ride to San Pedro to spend [...]

“Just throw it in the basement. You never know when we could use it” We did that with things for over 30 years. It’s remarkable how, even in a large house, you find ways to fill it — and we found ways to fill our basement with food, extra clothes, things that belonged to relatives we couldn’t throw away, tools and knick knacks. We had things in there we didn’t even know we had, just happy to know they were there. And then came Sandy.  Our basement, Oct. 30 A [...]