Mamma Mia!

As a child, some of my most vivid memories are of the Friday night and Saturday morning treks to the farmers’ markets in our area of New Jersey. My mother would pile us in the car and head off to find the best vegetables and fruit she could manage. Our eggs were delivered weekly by a local organic egg farmer (although we didn’t use that term back then). My father brought home the finest cuts of meat (or so I’ve been told; I wasn’t much for meat-eating). Mamma baked all our bread and sweets, working outside the home as well as in it. She loved to cook and to nourish. My Italian family—with my mother in the lead—taught me to love cooking and to treat food with respect; to eat seasonally, locally where I could; and to cook simply.