Good read from the NYT: A Grandchild of Italy Cracks the Spaghetti Code

I love stuff like this. By the way, if you need a login for the NYTimes, go to bugmenot.com

they have a bunch you can use.

 
Gosh - the author's mom's cooking style sounds just like my mom's.

She too cooks by feel, so extracting a recipe from her is almost impossible, even when I'm right there writing things down. Just the term "recipe" makes her feel constrained - lol. Mom is also very much a "make do with what I have on hand" kind of cook (whereas I need to make sure I have all the ingredients on hand before I even start). She is also somewhat of an alchemist and takes a certain pleasure in tinkering with each dish - adding her secret potions to get the taste just right.

And as for the author's grandmother's methods of preserving food - my grandmother too lived most of her life without the benefit of a refrigerator (no electricity on the farm!). So I too remember her preserving sausage and other cooked meats in crocks sealed with fat.

Thanks for a nostalgic read, Debbie!

 
Thiose are the exact ingredients my mother used for meatballs. The fresh breadcrumbs

( not those nasty dried powdery ones) are the difference between bullets and soft tender meatballs. The myth is that there is THE one sauce or meatball recipe. Sauce recipes are a creative journey using whatever is available and good. On the other hand, I would never use onions or carrots except in Bolgnes sauce and never ever green peppers, that's a diffence foodstuff altogether.

 
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