I was born in 1940 on Long Island, NY, to a first-generation immigrant Italian father, and a mother who immigrated to this country from Czechoslovakia, when she was 6 years old. Their parents had left Europe in the early 1900's to work in the northeast Pennsylvania coalmines. During the Depression, Mom and Dad moved to New York, where they could find work.
There wasn't much gourmet cooking in our house. Dad was a meat and potatoes guy, and Mom didn't really like to cook. The height of our gastonomic adventures was take-out Chicken Chow Mein or White Castle hamburgers.
When I left the nest, I moved to the canyons of Manhattan, where I lived and worked for 7 years. That's where I discovered four-star restaurants. I regularly ate at the restaurants that The New York Times reviewed every Friday, and I practiced gourmet cooking at home, with the encouragement of gourmand boyfriends.
I met DH in 1967 while we were both working for IBM, and I moved to his home near Baltimore, MD after we were married, a year later. DH was originally from south Alabama (he had gone north to attend Annapolis, and then into the Marine Corps), and after about a year, he decided that he wanted to return to his Alabama roots. He had introduced me to gracious southern living, and I lost no time in packing!
We had developed a hobby interest in grape growing and winemaking while living in Maryland. When we moved to Alabama, we visited a small winery in Pensacola, FL that wanted to purchase grapes to expand their production. So we bought a farm, planted 50 acres of Muscadine grapes (the native southern cluster grapes) and we made our home in the vineyard. I learned to be a farmer and I adored tending the vines.
We shipped fruit to the winery through 1978, when the owner died, and the winery shut down, never to operate again. Faced with the loss of our only market, we decided to learn to make wine commercially and to build our own winery to make a home for our crop. We became "Alabama's First Farm Winery" based on legislation that we convinced the Legislature to pass that allowed farmers who produced wine from their own fruit to give visitors a taste of their wine, and to sell them a bottle to take home with them. All wine sales up to this point were controlled by the state Package Store system.
All went well until 1985, when we lost everything in the farm crisis of the 1980's. We picked ourselves up and renewed our old careers to survive. Through a very odd set of circumstances, we had the opportunity to buy the vineyards back in 1989, and then the winery in 1992. This time I let DH have all the fun. I'd lost my taste for entrepreneurial adventures and I decided that I liked to eat too much.
DH still operates the winery today, and has branched out in to gourmet fruit and vegetable vinegars and non-alcoholic juice. I, on the other hand, have retired, and I really enjoy being a lady of leisure. We have no children, but always have a resident cat. Three years ago we build a little Italian villa (my pink palazzo) in the middle of a 40-acre pine plantation near the vineyard. Now I am learning to be a Woman Forest Landowner.
For the first time in my life I have a big kitchen and the time to cook all the wonderful dishes I read about in cookbooks and food magazines. Finding the FK Forum was the nicest surprise, because I found friends who I can chat with and learn from while I enjoy my culinary hobby. I am deeply indebted to you all for your help and support. DH loves sampling all the new dishes, and tolerates my daily morning visit to your site to catch up on the latest news.
My first passion is opera. Fortunately, we have two very fine opera companies within an hour's drive, so I get my opera fix attending four live performances each year. I've dabbled with piano and voice lessons, and, if I could be reincarnated, I would like to come back either as a diva or a lounge singer. My other passion is celebrating my European heritage in my home, in my cooking, and in my life.
BTW, a few years ago my uncle told me that the reason my Italian grandmother chose to marry my grandfather was because he was the best grapevine pruner in the village (Paterno, in Campania). Some things come full circle, don't they?
There wasn't much gourmet cooking in our house. Dad was a meat and potatoes guy, and Mom didn't really like to cook. The height of our gastonomic adventures was take-out Chicken Chow Mein or White Castle hamburgers.
When I left the nest, I moved to the canyons of Manhattan, where I lived and worked for 7 years. That's where I discovered four-star restaurants. I regularly ate at the restaurants that The New York Times reviewed every Friday, and I practiced gourmet cooking at home, with the encouragement of gourmand boyfriends.
I met DH in 1967 while we were both working for IBM, and I moved to his home near Baltimore, MD after we were married, a year later. DH was originally from south Alabama (he had gone north to attend Annapolis, and then into the Marine Corps), and after about a year, he decided that he wanted to return to his Alabama roots. He had introduced me to gracious southern living, and I lost no time in packing!
We had developed a hobby interest in grape growing and winemaking while living in Maryland. When we moved to Alabama, we visited a small winery in Pensacola, FL that wanted to purchase grapes to expand their production. So we bought a farm, planted 50 acres of Muscadine grapes (the native southern cluster grapes) and we made our home in the vineyard. I learned to be a farmer and I adored tending the vines.
We shipped fruit to the winery through 1978, when the owner died, and the winery shut down, never to operate again. Faced with the loss of our only market, we decided to learn to make wine commercially and to build our own winery to make a home for our crop. We became "Alabama's First Farm Winery" based on legislation that we convinced the Legislature to pass that allowed farmers who produced wine from their own fruit to give visitors a taste of their wine, and to sell them a bottle to take home with them. All wine sales up to this point were controlled by the state Package Store system.
All went well until 1985, when we lost everything in the farm crisis of the 1980's. We picked ourselves up and renewed our old careers to survive. Through a very odd set of circumstances, we had the opportunity to buy the vineyards back in 1989, and then the winery in 1992. This time I let DH have all the fun. I'd lost my taste for entrepreneurial adventures and I decided that I liked to eat too much.
DH still operates the winery today, and has branched out in to gourmet fruit and vegetable vinegars and non-alcoholic juice. I, on the other hand, have retired, and I really enjoy being a lady of leisure. We have no children, but always have a resident cat. Three years ago we build a little Italian villa (my pink palazzo) in the middle of a 40-acre pine plantation near the vineyard. Now I am learning to be a Woman Forest Landowner.
For the first time in my life I have a big kitchen and the time to cook all the wonderful dishes I read about in cookbooks and food magazines. Finding the FK Forum was the nicest surprise, because I found friends who I can chat with and learn from while I enjoy my culinary hobby. I am deeply indebted to you all for your help and support. DH loves sampling all the new dishes, and tolerates my daily morning visit to your site to catch up on the latest news.
My first passion is opera. Fortunately, we have two very fine opera companies within an hour's drive, so I get my opera fix attending four live performances each year. I've dabbled with piano and voice lessons, and, if I could be reincarnated, I would like to come back either as a diva or a lounge singer. My other passion is celebrating my European heritage in my home, in my cooking, and in my life.
BTW, a few years ago my uncle told me that the reason my Italian grandmother chose to marry my grandfather was because he was the best grapevine pruner in the village (Paterno, in Campania). Some things come full circle, don't they?