My Noni is not a stereotype. Yet, like many Italian-American grandmothers, she says “mangia” with great insistence all the cussing time.* Food and my Noni is a complicated topic. Others in my family might admit this, but there’s an unspoken rule that we not discuss family dysfunction outside of the family. But, you know, we’re not a stereotype.
Here is my Noni is as a young woman during World War II. Check out that V for Victory on her thigh, created with tape on a beach visit before the advent of sunscreen. Today she is 101, living in a nursing home about a mile from her birthplace.
A few months ago, I took home her recipe box and the most well-loved (read: dog-eared) of her cookbooks. As I work my way through them and find out what’s delicious, surprising, or no longer appealing, I plan to write about it here and share the recipes. Noni was my first teacher in the kitchen, and now I teach my daughter to make some of the same recipes…except they’re almost never exactly the same. I make different dietary choices than she did in the 1950s and beyond—-for example, less red meat and less Crisco. I’ve also found that some of Noni’s best recipes are barely recorded because she didn’t need to write them down.
*A side note: I say “cussing” here because after four and a half years of parenthood, my brain has been rewired this way. It seems oddly appropriate since my Noni only curses in the nearly-extinct Italian dialect she learned from her parents.
Thanks for joining me and my Noni.
mangia all the cussing time 