Most of us would agree that food is a way into the traditions and history of a place—a way to experience something of the heart of faraway lands.

But I think what’s true about the heart of a country is also true about the heart of a person.

Food tells stories.

Our food stories reach into our hearts and show up in the visual landscape of our lives.

Sometimes they look like barren, commercialized spaces nestled in nondescript strip malls, proliferating across our collective landscape. Places stripped of warmth, where something in us quietly says, This is no way to eat.

And yet, sometimes we find culinary camaraderie in the most unlikely places.

I remember one day, on a rare trip to McDonald’s to satisfy a craving for French fries, noticing a group of elderly men sitting in a nearby booth. Their breakfasts were long gone, but they were still there, laughing and talking, clearly having a grand old time.

I was reminded that our ability to enjoy a gathering may have less to do with where we are than with what we bring to it and who we share it with.

Still, there’s another vision of eating in my personal landscape.

A summer table set in a field of wildflowers. A colorful French tablecloth. Platters of beautiful, fresh food made by loving hands for the people who will gather there.

The food satisfies my hunger, but something else happens, too. I feel nourished in a way that has little to do with calories or nutrients. Something opens in me. Gratitude. Pleasure. Belonging.

I could almost explode with gratitude for having chosen the peace that led me to that table.

Perhaps this is why our relationship with food is so interesting.

Food is never just food.

It can be pleasure or punishment. Comfort or control. Celebration or guilt. It can remind us of home, or of everything we believe we have to avoid.

Sometimes our food stories even show up in our bodies.

We’ve become increasingly afraid of what we eat. The list of foods we’re told to avoid grows longer and more confusing while our list of “safe” food options becomes shorter. We’ve even grown suspicious of our food. It seems ironic that in a country where food has become so accessible, so many of us have learned not to trust it.

Perhaps we no longer know how to trust ourselves?

That, to me, is where things get interesting.

Maybe what we believe about food is almost as important as what we eat?

What happens when every meal becomes a calculation–or when the pleasure of eating gets mixed up with guilt?

We’ve become quite knowledgeable about food while remaining strangely disconnected from our own experience of it. Eating has become something to control rather than enjoy, and our bodies become adversaries instead of the allies we need to survive. I don’t pretend that what we eat doesn’t matter. Of course it does. But our relationship with what we eat matters, too.

Maybe we don’t know enough about that?

Somewhere along the way, we may have lost the ability to hear the quieter messages coming directly from ourselves.

We try one diet after another, learn more and more about what we should and shouldn’t eat, but rarely stop to examine our attitudes about food or listen to our bodies, or question how deeply our minds have been conditioned.

How many times have you heard someone say, “Oh I can’t even look at cake without gaining weight.”

Say something often enough, with enough conviction, and eventually you may stop questioning whether it was ever true in the first place.

Perhaps the battle with our weight eventually brings us to a place of surrender—not surrender as in giving up, but surrender as a way of getting off the battlefield and finding a quiet place where we can finally question whether we need the battle at all.

Maybe we’ll be inspired to make peace with the body we have. To be grateful for what it does, and for what it doesn’t do.

For me, food has never really been the enemy.

My demons have tended to lurk in more obscure places, cleverly concealed in more acceptable wrapping.

Food, on the other hand, has mostly been a love affair.

Sometimes hot and smoldering. Sometimes slowly simmering on the back burner of my life, filling the room with the most intoxicating aromas.

I’ve always believed food was meant to be savored with joy rather than guilt. And maybe that’s why, most of the time, it seems to love me back.

Of course, getting older has required a few adjustments. My body has become a little more opinionated about what it can tolerate and what it can’t.

Fair enough.

Relationships evolve.

Still, I believe love is the thing that heals, regardless of how it shows up. For me, food has always been a call back to love.

Back to a feast I had merely forgotten.

It speaks in a language of flavors, aromas, textures, memories and symbols that I understand instinctively. It sets a beautiful table in a field of wildflowers, laden with everyone’s favorite dishes, and invites us to sit down.

And perhaps that is what I have really been doing all these years.

Not simply cooking.

Not simply feeding people.

Calling them to the table.

In this love story, I am the trumpeter for Spirit, calling us to dinner because I’ve sampled what is there and can tell you what it tastes like.

You don’t have to know exactly what you’re hungry for.

You don’t even have to know where the table is.

All you need is a little willingness to open your mind to what your instincts are saying, and the courage to follow where they’re leading you. Because somewhere there’s a table waiting for each of us.

In a meadow of wildflowers. A lush garden. A sandy beach.

Somewhere there’s a beautifully set table with a place setting just for you–with your name written in gorgeous calligraphy.

And a feast that reminds you that you were never really separate from the nourishment you were seeking.

Maybe the invitation was there all along.

Maybe you just forgot to sit down and enjoy it.

Baci,

Silvia

I write more about the moments that quietly shape how we see ourselves and respond to the world around us in my upcoming book,

13 Habits for a Peaceful Life I Learned in My Chaotic Kitchen.

Strawberry Coffee Cake

So you think you can’t eat cake? Think again.

I’ve been perfecting this cake for some time now This one’s a strawberry coffee cake but I’ve also made it with blueberries, peaches, and a combination of any of the two. This fall, no doubt I’ll make one with apples. Use whatever fruits are in seasons and make it to your liking. This cake perfectly suits me: Light, fruity, low in sugar, high in deliciousness and so easy to make. I call it a coffee cake because it goes so well with coffee and tea and best of all…it’s not too sweet.

Enjoy the fruits of the summer with this adaptable recipe originally inspired from this wonderful blueberry cake recipe from Simply Recipes.

Full recipe is here.

I was a newbie in the manifestation craze when New Age thought was touting the idea that we create our own reality.

Not that I thought it wasn’t true. I just didn’t think it could possibly be as simple as pinning something on a vision board and thinking about it a lot. If it were that easy, everybody would be getting what they want, right?

What if manifestation was less about controlling reality and more about participating in its creation?

Still, I was fascinated by the idea of manifestation—to think something into being. I wanted to do that. But intentional manifestation, I came to learn, was a multifaceted skill. Like a rare diamond, it had layers. It had clarity and depth. It forces you to dig deep into your knowing, or into your doubts and fears, and pull out a gem of clarity that has the potential to shift the trajectory of your life, bring visions or obstacles into focus, and sometimes bring you the very thing you wanted in the most serendipitous ways.

I knew it was deep work. I did the work for years, so I don’t say this lightly when I tell you that one of my best teachers in the art of manifestation was shopping.

Not just ordinary shopping, although ordinary shopping was certainly a worthy distraction when intense spiritual rabbit holes sucked me in and I needed something grounding. I suppose what I love about shopping is similar to some of the reasons I love cooking. Both are physical. Sensory. Immediate. Both bring me back into the world of things.So when I was introduced to the idea that we create our own reality, that thoughts become things, I decided to play a game and put it to the test.

I would think of something I really wanted or needed to find—this was long before online shopping—and see if, and how, it showed up.

It was a game.

But it didn’t take long before the game got really interesting.

One day, many years ago, early in my experiment, I was walking in my neighborhood on a mission to find candles—specifically short, stout ones that I needed for centerpieces for my sister’s bridal shower—when I turned the corner from Grand Street onto Essex Street in lower Manhattan.

Ahead of me was the Essex Street Market. Today, it’s filled with upscale specialty food shops. But in the 1980s, it was a glorious hodgepodge of simple stalls where you never knew what you were going to find. I approached the aluminum garage doors, now open, about to walk in when I looked up. There, facing me from inside the market, was a huge sign:

CANDLES.

I walked in.

Bought them.

They were perfect.

Okay, I thought. Maybe there was something real to this.

From then on, I had a lot of fun putting my manifesting skills to work. A particular dress. The right pair of shoes. A piece of wall art. A comfy chair. Whatever I happened to be looking for. And it never failed to delight me when the exact thing—or something even better—showed up.

My “powers” of course, got stronger with practice.

Before you decide I had simply discovered a spiritually sanctioned excuse to shop, I did see the deeper lessons in my little parlor game. Most of these were low-stakes desires that didn’t threaten my self-image or well-being. I was delighted when I got them, but not devastated if I didn’t.

I was especially wowed by the clever ways in which I found things to decorate the apartment I live in now. Maybe it was because it was the first space that was to be outfitted just for me, so I was especially excited and inspired by the task. My intention was to build a sanctuary, and it came together almost as quickly as a before-and-after segment on HGTV.

If Spirit’s intention behind its interior design assistance was to earn my trust, it succeeded. I couldn’t help but notice: Spirit delivered.

But one of the clearest demonstrations came with my car.

Now, I must say, I have never been a big car person. As long as it was a safe, reliable vehicle with enough room to haul my catering needs, I was good.

At the time, I was driving a Jeep Cherokee. One night, it was parked in my son’s driveway when a massive storm knocked down trees, and one landed on my car, doing many thousands of dollars in damage. Rather than get it repaired, I decided to shop around for a used car.

I had decided on some sort of compact SUV and, in the process, fell madly in love with the Mazda CX-3--but only in white. I loved it so much I was about to drive more than 150 miles to look at one from a dealer on Long Island when I decided to first check my local Mazda dealership.

The following Sunday, I went to the dealership, but it was closed.However, there were lots of Mazdas in the parking lot.

None were a white CX-3.

The next day, I went back to the dealership. As I turned into the lot, there it was, facing me: a white CX-3, exactly the car I wanted.

I went into the showroom and was told it had just come in that morning.

I bought it on the spot.

That was five years ago. I still drive and love my car.

And that raised a question I couldn’t ignore:

Why was manifesting the perfect car so easy, but not the perfect career?

Why could I find the exact lamp, chair, dress, bowl—or sofa I wanted, but not necessarily the house, relationship, bank account, or life I wanted?

That became the central question I was really interested in.

What is in our control?

And what isn’t?

The more I watched my shopping experiments, the more I noticed a pattern that was key to receiving.

Wanting without grasping. Knowing without demanding. Trusting what appeared.

My shopping successes, I realized, had merely opened the door to something far deeper.

The pliability of the fabric that makes up life.

I have long believed that we are far, far more powerful than we claim to be. Heck, we can’t even take in the possibility that we can alter that fabric.

We have been handed a story about ourselves that makes us small.. We learn to see ourselves as victims of circumstances, systems, other people, bad luck, bad timing, our past, our age, our limitations.

It’s a false story.

We don’t realize how our smallness allows others to control us. Before we ever get a chance to question their assessment, we find ourselves believing that we’re weak and powerless to change things, instead of powerful beyond measure.

Monks, shamans and sages, haven’t forgotten it. They’ve learned to use it consciously. Wizards, witches, and druids haven’t forgotten it. They’ve just gone underground after being threatened, burned and murdered.

And babies and young children haven’t forgotten it. They still live in that space between two worlds, where faeries and unicorns exist and limitations do not.

I find it strangely ironic that a culture designed to keep me shopping when it didn’t want me looking too closely at the way things are, ended up teaching me about my innate power to create.

But maybe manifestation was never about getting or controlling stuff. Maybe it’s about choosing to weave a new fabric of life that holds new stories, long forgotten ones where we remember our innate power to participate in creating reality.

I take my two-year-old grandson to the magic forest, a walking trail through lush woods down the street from where he lives. I point out the moss that grows on the rocks and on the broken trees that are scattered throughout. We touch the plush moss and wade through the soft ferns that grow through the dry leaves that carpet the ground. I see the wonder on his face as we stand on a high rock, so tall his little body gets an expansive view before we rest on a soft moss covered seat.

I will do all I can to help him hang onto that wonder—just as I did with his older sister—so he never doubts his power as a creative force. I want him to know that the magic goes far beyond the forest and into the very fabric of a life we can only imagine right now.

But imagining is enough.
It’s enough to begin.

Baci,

Silvia

I write more about the moments that quietly shape how we see ourselves and respond to the world around us in my upcoming book,

13 Habits for a Peaceful Life I Learned in My Chaotic Kitchen.

Coming Soon.

Banana Bread Cookies with Dark Chocolate Chunks

Sometimes magic is mysterious. Sometimes it’s a warm cookie, a cup of coffee, and a kitchen that smells like banana bread.

Link to the recipe

I have a theory about something big that just won’t go away.

I hesitated to write about it because I can’t prove it. Some may even label it a conspiracy theory. The evidence is everywhere, but it’s annoyingly circumstantial and prone to misinterpretation.

Still, with all the conspiracy theories floating around these days, this one is rather clever, and I doubt it will offend anyone...except maybe die-hard foodies.

So here goes.

What if the need to eat is just a ruse to get us to gather with one another?

What if it’s not food we really need to survive, but each other?

I can’t prove any of this, of course. But I noticed enough to make me curious. So I decided to investigate.

I made a list of the obvious places where people gather—not to eat, but for some entirely different reason.

People go to the beach to swim, relax, and listen to the waves. Yet under every umbrella sits a cooler filled with enough food to supply a lengthy expedition. Apparently we can no longer sit beside the sea for three hours without a sandwich.

County fairs already have, rides, games, concerts, and enough excitement to fill an afternoon. Yet they somehow manage to have more food trucks than prizes.

People go to baseball games to watch baseball. So do they really need hot dogs and beer?

Weddings celebrate the union of two people. Isn’t that reason enough to gather? Apparently not. We insist on a banquet afterwards.

Even funerals, when no one feels much like eating, somehow end up with enough casseroles to fill the freezer at the local Costco.

The more I looked, the stranger it became.

So I started looking for an exception.

Surely there had to be one important gathering that didn’t involve food.

I couldn’t think of one.

In fact, every time I thought I’d found an exception, someone served food.

Business deals? Lunch.

First dates? Dinner.

Birthday parties? Cake.

Family reunions? Barbecue.

Even world leaders sit down over a shared meal before they decide whether to sign a peace treaty...or drop bombs.

By this point I was becoming increasingly suspicious.

I had set out to discover why food accompanied so many gatherings.

Instead, I found myself wondering whether the gatherings were the point all along.

Maybe the need to eat and the need for one another has been intentionally intertwined by our Cosmic Creator?

Maybe without food, we simply wouldn’t gather nearly as often

…and that would be tragic.

And if that were true...

Having unknowingly participated in this elaborate cosmic scheme for thousands of years, we eventually did what humans do best.

We sabotaged it.

We made food convenient.

We did such a good job until, at last, we no longer needed to gather at all except for the most necessary ones–weddings and funerals. And even there, attendance was poor.

Drive-throughs replaced supermarkets. Vending machines replaced home cooking.

The ovens were still there because we liked how they looked. Most however had been repurposed as storage. Mine held shoes.

The pantries suffered a similar fate. Gone were the flour, sugar, potatoes, onions and other cooking staples. Instead they become storage closets for stuff we rarely used.

Food became so readily available we could eat whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted, wherever we wanted so why would we bother to cook?

We ate in our cars.

We ate standing over the kitchen sink.

We ate while scrolling our phones, carefully avoiding eye contact with anyone who might interrupt us with conversation.

Dining tables quietly disappeared, replaced by larger televisions, home gyms, or more storage for all our stuff.

At first, it seemed like a triumph. No more dirty dishes or messy kitchens.

But then we noticed

Calories still expanded our waistlines.

But our circle of friends shrank.

Children no longer needed to be excused from the table because there was no table. Along with it disappeared the lingering conversations, the laughter and even the debates that had once stretched long after dessert.

People forgot why anyone cooked in the first place. Why dirty a pan or dishes when dinner came in a cardboard container that could be tossed away five minutes later?

Kitchens became smaller.

Restaurants became takeout counters.

Celebrity chefs searched for new careers.

Williams Sonoma disappeared.

Le Creuset and All-Clad pieces found themselves displayed behind museum glass beside little plaques explaining that these curious objects were once used to prepare meals at home.

Dinner parties became folklore.

Vegetable gardens disappeared and food labs popped up everywhere.

Eventually we could nourish our body with a simple energy bar optimized for our exact body type, but then something strange began to happen.

We began to get sick.

Something had gone terribly wrong.

Not with the food.

With us.

Apparently our Cosmic Creator had anticipated our little rebellion.

The erosion from the table slowed just long enough for someone to ask the question no one had thought to ask before.

What if we misunderstood what eating was really for?

Food, of course, nourishes the body.

But what if that was only the cover story?

Surely our Creator could have designed us to live on sunlight like plants—or at least a few efficient gulps of air. Instead we were given grocery lists, dirty dishes, recipes, dinner tables, and an appetite that returned every single day.

No.

There had to be another reason.

The pull toward the table and gatherings was intentional.

Exhausted by our own cleverness, weakened by our lack of human contact, we succumbed to the orchestrated scheme of our Creator.

We started lingering with one another again.

We became curious about the Before Times and large groups gathered to hear firsthand accounts from our elders who lived them.

Curiosity led to conversation.

Conversation led to friendship.

Friendships led to love.

Word spread.

Gatherings happened more frequently.

Tables got longer.

Kitchens filled once again with many hands instead of one making platters and platters of a diverse variety of food that hadn’t been seen in many years.

And slowly the people of the land learned what had been true all along.

Food was the bounty.

But we were always the treasure.

No one ever again mistook food for the reason we had gathered.

Hunger had never been the problem.

It was the lure.

And it worked.

Baci,

Silvia

You’re entering a world where food, ideas, community, and possibility all sit at the same table…and your seat is free

I write more about the moments that quietly shape how we see ourselves and respond to the world around us in my upcoming book,

13 Habits for a Peaceful Life I Learned in My Chaotic Kitchen.

Coming Soon.

Caramelized Onion Potato Bisque

There are few things better than a big pot of soup to gather people around a table. If you’re looking for an alternative to New England clam chowder—which I love—I think you’ll love this bisque. It’s a little lighter, every bit as flavorful, and made for sharing.

Enjoy!

Here’s the Recipe

I know what it feels like when your life changes overnight.

I watched my house burn down, and as I did, I knew my life would never be the same. The thought rose up in awareness as clear and certain as if I had simply said,

“The sun will come up in the morning.”

The fire destroyed my house almost beyond repair. I had what remained torn down to the foundation and the debris carted away.

From that cleared space, the foundation was fortified and slightly expanded. Then I designed my dream home and had it built.

I didn’t try to recreate what had been there. That space no longer worked. I built a new home, designed for a new life.

I think about that experience often now as I watch what’s happening in my country. In my world.

I don’t know if we’re living through the collapse of something old or the birth of something new.

Maybe both.

But I do know something about what it feels like when the structures you thought were permanent come down. I know what it’s like to stand in the wreckage and wonder what, exactly, you’re supposed to do next.

And I know that sometimes the life you think is being destroyed is actually the life you have outgrown.

For decades, I have studied A Course in Miracles, a nonduality teaching that explores the ways our minds interpret—and often misinterpret—the world around us.

The Course has a rather provocative way of putting it:

The world is upside down and backwards.

I’ve read those words many times. I’ve contemplated them. I’ve wrestled with them.

But I never expected to hear them spoken on live television by a news host.

I remember thinking, Wait. Did she just say what I think she said?

Upside down and backwards.

Exactly those words. It had to be a sign.

I had to smile.

I understood that distortion of reality intimately.

The Course—as it was called by its students—taught that if you wanted to know the truth about things, you first had to question the way the world displayed them.

Fear is the ego’s operating system, and it is a master storyteller. It spins a compelling narrative, then convinces us that the story is the truth.

The story itself is an ancient one, so deeply ingrained in our psyche that we rarely think to question it. We simply keep retelling it with new scenery and different actors—just enough to keep us engaged.

It tells us we are victims of a harsh world that is out to get us. That we need protection from the dangers around every corner, from the things—and the people—we don’t understand, extorting our loyalty like a gangster making the rounds of local businesses.

Love tells a different story. It invites us to look beneath the ego’s fantasies and false sense of separation and recognize the threads that connect us all.

At first, I wasn’t convinced I could trust love’s guidance. Then, little by little, it showed me I could. Year after year, my life began to reflect a quieter, more peaceful rhythm. I laughed more often. I found joy in ordinary things.

What I didn’t foresee was a time when the ego’s distortions would flood our collective reality so completely that they would become almost impossible to ignore.

Like Alice in Wonderland, everything looked familiar, yet nothing made sense anymore.

We find ourselves on an uncharted course—one that we can’t seem to stop and doesn’t come with public service announcements.

I had been through my own dark night of the soul, the serious, disruptive kind that dismantles long-held ideas, beliefs, and the structures we build our lives on. The kind that leaves you hanging in midair, not knowing where you’ll land or what your life will look like when you get there.

Now I’m witnessing a collective dark night.

Fear has always produced unfairness, injustice, and suffering. But this feels different. Never before had I seen such distortions spread so widely so quickly, or reveal themselves so clearly. It’s painful to witness.

And yet, as I watch what’s happening, I keep coming back to something I learned on my own journey–because I see the same pattern unfolding in our collective one.

The ego does not need facts to be certain. Nor does it need to understand the whole story before deciding who is right and who is wrong. It doesn’t need to see the other side.

It simply needs to be right.

I know this because I’ve done it. I have been absolutely certain about something, only to discover later that I had been looking at it through the skewed lens of my own fear, my own hurt, my own carefully constructed story. This is why I don’t mind being wrong. It allows me to course correct.

And so I find myself wondering if this global chaos isn’t ultimately about what divides us, but about the stories we’ve mistaken for reality.

We become attached to our own version of the truth—a story we can’t let go of until it finally falls apart and we’re willing to admit we may have been mistaken. That’s never easy in the moment, but it’s how we learn.

We’re living in a time when two people can witness the same event and walk away with two entirely different interpretations, each certain of their account, each unable to imagine how the other could possibly see something different.

I’m not standing outside of this looking down from some enlightened perch. I have opinions. I have reactions. I have fears.

I have my own ego to deal with, thank you very much.

But again and again, life has shown me that the things I was once certain would destroy me somehow became the very things that set me free.

I’ve lived through the dismantling of a life and stood in the ashes of what I had built. And somehow, on the other side, I found a life I could never have imagined—a life that depends less on external events and more on an internal peace that understands and trusts the road ahead.

Could this be what we’re witnessing now—a great collective course correction?

Perhaps we’re watching the collapse of structures and stories that can no longer hold what is becoming. Perhaps the collapse itself is revealing what we’ve been unwilling to see and what can no longer support.

I know what is possible on the other side of a dark night because I’m living it. It brings us to a place where we can begin to see the world differently—not through the eyes of fear, but through what appears when that distortion begins to dissolve.

Knowing what is possible doesn’t make me blind to what is happening now.

I don’t want to minimize what is happening. The cruelty is real. The injustice is real. People are suffering in ways I cannot fully comprehend from the comfort of my own life.

I don’t believe we are meant to look at suffering and call it “meant to be” simply because we hope something better will come from it. Some things are simply cruel. Some things are simply unjust.

And yet.

And perhaps this is where I find myself now. Not optimistic that it will be easy, but hopeful that the work of building something new together may be exactly the purpose we need to unite and guide us through the changes and dark nights that are still to come.

Hope looks at the wreckage and says,

“Something else may still be possible—but first we have to clean up the mess.”

Maybe, from the wreckage, we’re actually standing at the edge of a collective Renaissance. Not the Renaissance of history books, with its paintings and sculptures and brilliant minds.

Something deeper.

A renaissance of consciousness. A remembering of truths buried so deeply within us that they feel entirely new. A time of great discovery. A time when we begin to question the stories we have inherited, passed down from family to family and culture to culture since the beginning of time. A time when we become willing to let go of the divisions we’ve been taught to accept. A time when we begin to loosen our grip on the identities we have built our lives around.

Perhaps the world had to become this loud before our collective scream became louder and said,

Enough.

And perhaps, finally, we can surrender. Not because we have given up, but because we are too exhausted to keep resisting the storms of change.

Perhaps letting go of our certainty isn’t defeat. Perhaps it’s the moment we begin to trust where this journey is taking us.

Perhaps the darkness is not the end of the story, but the place where we finally begin to see clearly.

What comes next may not be a recreation of what was, only better. It may be something entirely new, built on a fortified foundation—with structures designed for the people who will actually live in them, structures and communities that fit the needs of a transforming world.

Perhaps—just perhaps—we are not witnessing the end of the world as we know it.

Perhaps we are witnessing the beginning of a world we have not yet imagined.

Baci

Silvia

I’ve given you lots to chew on so if this resonated with you, I’d love your thoughts. Scroll to the bottom and leave a comment…but first…

I write more about the moments that quietly shape how we see ourselves and respond to the world around us in my upcoming book,

13 Habits for a Peaceful Life I Learned in My Chaotic Kitchen.

Coming Soon.

Peach Upside Down Cake

Perhaps an upside-down world calls for an upside-down cake.

Pull up a chair. Let’s celebrate the possibility that sometimes, when everything gets turned upside down, we finally begin to see things right side up.

I’m not a pastry chef so I don’t usually create my own desserts, but I’m really good at finding the ones worth making. Ones like this one, especially now that peaches are in season. But it can just as easily be made with apples or pears or the original inspiration..pineapples. I did however cut back on the amount of sugar in the batter a bit, especially because the caramelized peaches are so sweet.

Here’s the link to this wonderful recipe by MK

My friends in high school called me Mrs. Magoo.

They weren’t entirely wrong.

I was terrible with directions, names, and practical details. At the time, I took it as evidence that something was wrong with me. I searched for an explanation. Maybe it was because I grew up in an Italian household in suburban America where English was spoken only with my siblings. I didn’t even know what a colander was until the eleventh grade.

Even though I was in honors and AP classes, I never thought of myself as intelligent. I was too different from my peers. In those years, I would have been horrified to be thought of as flighty or ditzy or absentminded. Today, it’s part of my charm. I think of it as my Lucille Ball alter ego—a perfect counterbalance to the more serious, more intellectual, more practical side of me.

My younger self saw my differences as limitations, as something lacking in me. I didn’t yet understand that there are many ways of moving through the world, many ways of seeing. My way wasn’t a character flaw.

It was simply my way.

Some people notice details.

Others notice patterns.

Possibilities.

Relationships.

Meaning.

I was one of those people.

I saw connections between seemingly unrelated things, but I kept them to myself. I never told anyone that the nooks and crannies of an English muffin reminded me of the most interesting people—the ones whose rough edges and imperfections made them unforgettable. I never told anyone that pizza made me think about democracy, that everyone could have a say in how theirs was topped and still gather around the same table. Or that the most misshapen tomatoes were the sweetest.

As a teenager, I wondered why children raised in the same loving household could grow up to be so different. Why did I always feel like the black sheep? Why did I notice the energy of a room but struggle to remember the name of someone I’d met many times?

Why do I remember the music but not the song?

I created things first in my imagination.

Was that so bad?

Was it wrong to see possibilities before practicalities?

How could I be both intensely present and completely absent at the same time?

How could I be so focused on what was in front of me and yet miss everything at the edges?

Whose mind worked like that!

Then I found myself on the sauté line.

Orders flew in faster than I could read them. Pans hissed. Flames leapt. Servers shouted. Tickets hanging from the metal rail above the stove stacked up until they threatened to tumble into the sauce.

It was controlled chaos.

And then something unexpected happened.

I realized that my ability to focus on just what was in front of me and be oblivious to the rest, was the very thing that got me through the night!

The world disappeared.

There was only the next pan, the next sauce, the next plate.

My former husband, Corwyn, used to joke that there could have been a fire around me and I wouldn’t have noticed. He wasn’t entirely wrong.

What frustrated him wasn’t my cooking. It was everything that happened beforehand.

I’d create an entire menu in my head for a wine dinner and somehow forget to tell the rest of the staff what I was planning.

He liked to test recipes for days.

I preferred to live with them in my imagination.

He would see each dish for the first time as it was being plated, moments before it went out to our guests. That drove him crazy. It also amazed him.

“I don’t know how you do that,” he’d say.

The truth is, neither did I.

Long before my hands began cooking, my imagination already had. By the time I picked up the sauté pan, I already knew how the dish would taste, how it would look on the plate, and whether it belonged on the menu.

Today, I still plan dinner parties in my head. It’s still how I figure out the logistics of a cooking class or a buffet for sixty that has to be executed on a thirty-inch stove and a single oven.

But it was those early days on the sauté line that first made me wonder:

What if the qualities I spent years apologizing for, hiding from, and feeling insecure about were the very qualities that distinguished me?

What if what looked like absentmindedness was actually a mind wired for imagination, pattern recognition, and deep insight?

As a child, I loved the cartoon Mr. Magoo. I laughed at the trouble his nearsightedness and absentmindedness got him into. Looking back, I wonder if we misunderstood him.

I thought the joke was that he couldn’t see.

Now I wonder if he was seeing something else.

I wasn’t blind to the world despite my continued nearsightedness.

I simply saw it differently.

With age, my vision has only become wider and clearer.

While others noticed facts, I noticed patterns.

While others remembered names, I remembered energy.

An English muffin became a meditation on humanity. Pizza became a lesson in democracy. A misshapen tomato became an invitation to look beyond appearances.

That’s how I’ve always experienced the world. Through metaphor. Through patterns. Through meaning.

Which reminds me of another character I’ve always felt a kinship with: Don Quixote.

Most people think he was delusional because he mistook windmills for giants.

I think they miss the point.

He refused to surrender wonder, idealism, and imagination.

He saw possibilities where others saw machinery.

Mr. Magoo may have been nearsighted, but he moved through the world with trust.

Don Quixote may have been impractical, but he moved through it with vision.

What if both responded to the world differently because they were tuned to another frequency?

That idea feels familiar to me.

I have a little Mr. Magoo in me and a little Don Quixote.

One misses what everyone else sees.

The other sees what everyone else misses.

I’ve spent most of my life somewhere between them. It took me decades to understand that my mind wasn’t broken.

It wasn’t failing to pay attention.

It was paying attention to something else.

Yes, this way of seeing has its costs. But the gifts have been far greater.

I still lose my phone.

I still miss exits.

I still forget names.

I probably always will.

But I’ve stopped measuring myself by what I miss.

I’m far more interested in what I’m able to see.

The connections.

The possibilities.

The meaning hiding in plain sight.

The very thing that once made me feel different has become the source of my creativity, my writing, my cooking, and perhaps most importantly, my spiritual life.

And so I find myself asking a question that never would have occurred to the younger me:

What if there was never anything wrong with me?

Baci,

Silvia

Pull up a chair.

You’re entering a world where food, ideas, community, and possibility all sit at the same table…and your seat is free

Subscribe now

I write more about the moments that quietly shape how we see ourselves and respond to the world around us in my upcoming book,

13 Habits for a Peaceful Life I Learned in My Chaotic Kitchen.

Coming Soon.

And now for a little sustenance for the body…

Cold Soba & Zucchini Noodle Salad

Seeing differently can be delicious.

Bring something refreshingly different to the BBQ

This delightful cold noodle salad joins west and east and tosses it all in a creamy honey, mustard, ginger dressing.

Recipe can be accessed here.

When I was in my 20s, working full time in the fashion industry and going to grad school at night for an MBA, I started a side gig as a fashion consultant, helping professional women assemble a successful wardrobe.

I also did my master’s thesis on the apparel shopping habits of professional women. My theory was that if you understood how women lived, you would understand how they wanted to dress.

So when I came across this quote from the famous French poet and sociologist, Anatole France, I was immediately intrigued.

“Show me the clothes of a country and I can write its history.”

He went on to say:

“If I were permitted to choose amidst the jumble of books that will be published 100 years after my death, do you know which one I would pick? I would simply pick, my friend, a fashion magazine in order to see how women will dress a century after my passing. And those rags will tell me more about humanity’s future than philosophers, novelists, preachers or scholars.”

Now, more than 40 years later, after feeding thousands of people and observing what and how people eat, I view our culture and our shared humanity within it through another lens. And I find myself wondering:

“Show me how a country eats, and I’ll tell you about its humanity, what it values, how it lives, and how its people spend their time.”

There’s the family that orders takeout every Tuesday and Thursday night because those are the nights they don’t get home until 7 p.m.—after soccer practice, piano lessons, or any number of after-school activities.

There’s the single mom who works full time and picks up her kids from daycare at 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. No way can she have a homemade meal on the table every night and still get the kids to bed at a reasonable hour.

For many people, cooking a meal from scratch and sitting at the table as a family for longer than 10 minutes is a luxury available only on weekends, if they’re lucky.

Clearly, we as a culture need flexibility in what and how we eat and have adopted a wide range of solutions to mealtime. Convenience has become more convenient—and tastier. Air fryers are a godsend. So are slow cookers that allow us to throw a bunch of ingredients in a pot and come home to stew.

The help is there for those of us who want it. Even I, who love to cook, would not want to return to a time when dinnertime was routine and on schedule. That alone would sap the joy out of cooking. And who wants to eat a meal prepared by an angry, resentful cook?

But maybe the pendulum had swung too far in the other direction.

Is there a point, I wonder, when our lives become so difficult to juggle that the ritual of eating together gets phased out, replaced by a steady consumption of takeout containers? I find that thought so sad.

Somewhere along the way, modern life has made something as simple as preparing and sharing a meal a luxury rather than a deeply needed and nurturing experience.

But I notice a shift, moving the pendulum of how we eat toward something far more balanced. Is this a sign of things to come, I wonder?

Covid was our collective wake-up call on so many levels. Even the way we ate was lit up like a neon sign saying:

Put on your apron. Things are shifting.

We began cooking again because we had to. In the process, we made sourdough and cookie dough, soups and stews, fresh pasta and homemade sauce that simmered on the stovetop for hours.

We filled our kitchens with intoxicating aromas. We gathered the kids and taught them how to whip pancake batter. They got to hear the sizzle as the batter hit the hot griddle. They noticed what the kitchen smelled like when bread was baking in the oven. They got to experience what it was like to slather a warm slice of the bread they helped bake with butter.

These tastes, these smells, these experiences will stay with them even when they’re 70. Even now, the aroma of lamb and meatballs browning on the stovetop brings me instantly back to my childhood kitchen, watching my father make Sunday sauce.

Like music, aromas have the power to transport us. They remind us that while some things change, shift, and evolve, their essence remains—so deeply embedded within us that neither Covid nor convenience can erase it.

After Covid, I returned to another side gig I’ve had for more than ten years: resident chef for various Williams Sonoma stores. People were so happy to taste samples of food again, linger over beautiful tableware, explore the explosion of new appliances designed to aid cooking, and discover the seemingly endless tools for pizza making and sourdough baking. There was an excitement in the air that was as palpable as the smell of onions and lemons that drew them in.

Any cookbook or video can teach us how to cook. The joy of making and sharing a meal can only be discovered by doing it.

The meal may have moved from the dining room to the kitchen island, but it hasn’t been lost. It has simply adapted to the needs of a new generation.

Maybe there’s a renewed appreciation for setting a table where we feel we belong—one that welcomes and celebrates our differences in a space that amplifies our similarities.

The table hasn’t disappeared.

It’s simply dressed differently.

Baci,

Silvia

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A quick note: I’ve finally turned on paid subscriptions for Worth Chewing On.

Nothing is changing for free subscribers. My essays, reflections, and recipes will continue to be available to everyone.

For those who’ve asked how they can support my writing, a paid subscription is now one way to do that.

Whether you subscribe, share an essay, leave a comment, or simply read along, I’m grateful you’re here.

Thank you for pulling up a chair at the table.

Oatmeal Almond Chocolate Chip Cookies

and they’re gluten free!

Since this essay is about gathering, nurturing, and the rituals that connect us, it seemed fitting to share a cookie recipe. I didn’t create this one, but I did what many home cooks do—I adapted it to my taste over time. Most recently, I baked a batch for a friend recovering from surgery.

Sometimes setting the table isn’t about preparing a feast. Sometimes it’s about showing up with a plate of cookies.

(Adapted from lemonsandzest.com) Link to recipe

Here’s what I tweaked: I lowered both sugars to 1/3 cup; added slivered almonds and for half the batch, I added golden raisins. Cranberries would work well too.

Have you ever taken a bite of a tomato in winter?

Or a peach shipped across the country in a refrigerated truck just in time to look pretty on a supermarket shelf but mealy at first bite?

Sometimes we can’t be fooled.

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.” Ecclesiastes 3.

“Or was it the Byrds?”

I have heard it said—from a source far less profound than the Bible or the lyrics to the Byrds song it inspired—that we can’t really know someone or something until we’ve been with them through each season of a year. Is it true? I wondered.

Certainly we can’t fully appreciate the symphony of nature’s seasons without seeing them all. But do we have to know Fall in order to know that we love Spring? I wondered some more.

In the culinary world, everything has its particular season; a time when each fruit, each vegetable, each plant is at the height of its full flavor. Each has its time in the spotlight. One bite of a hothouse tomato in winter is all it takes to know they taste infinitely better in summer.

Good cooks everywhere have learned to let what each season offers inspire them to make something delicious from what’s on hand. We’ve come to know that a certain amount of restriction often feeds creativity and results in some of our most beloved dishes.

We don’t expect to find an heirloom tomato in winter so we work with squash instead. It’s how I came to combine a classic spinach artichoke dip with spaghetti squash, baked and served inside its shell. Or how I decided to make gnocchi with sweet potatoes.

Cooks have learned to work with the seasons. We have nurtured a wonderful symbiotic relationship with nature. We’re energized by its offerings and what we can do with them in the kitchen. We’re playful, curious, present, meditative, joyful. Not always, but most of the time. The kitchen is our playroom.

Cooking for others fills us with joy. I believe it gets infused into the sauce we’re stirring, the vegetables we’re chopping, the stew simmering on the stovetop, and the cookies we’ve carefully shaped by hand.

What we produce gets ingested by those lucky enough to have a seat at our table. We know well our power to influence how our diners feel even if we can’t always control the ingredients we have on hand.

We don’t get to choose what’s in season. We only get to choose what we make of it.

Tomatoes don’t arrive when we want them.

Peaches don’t ripen on our schedule.

Harvests can’t be rushed. Neither can life. Life gives us what it gives us. Ideas arrive when they’re ready. The work at hand is not controlling the season. It’s about creating something meaningful from what is already here.

Sometimes we go forward full throttle. At others we halt, contemplate our mistakes, change the recipe, pause, unsure of the way. Eventually we move forward again.Some seasons are for creating. Others are for clearing away what no longer belongs.

We can’t cook a beautiful meal in a messy kitchen. We have to clean it up first.

Cooks have learned patience. Respect for what shows up, even if it’s not on our timetable and even if it doesn’t look like we intended. We have learned that progress doesn’t always look like movement. Sometimes it looks as if we’ve gone backwards, when in reality we’re simply digesting what came before.

Pausing has purpose.
Digestion has purpose.
Waiting has purpose.

“You cannot hasten the harvest,” I once heard from a wise source.

Give thanks for what you’ve harvested. Rest a while, but remember to plant the seeds of your ideas. Nourish them. Be patient and watch for signs of growth. Not all will flourish...but some will.

And once again it will be time for a new harvest, a new season, new blessings to be grateful for. And new seeds to be planted.

To everything there is a season and a purpose under heaven.

Baci,

Silvia

Pull up a chair.

You’re entering a world where food, ideas, community, and possibility all sit at the same table…and your seat is free

I write more about the moments that quietly shape how we see ourselves and respond to the world around us in my upcoming book,

13 Simple Habits for a Peaceful Life I Learned in My Chaotic Kitchen.

Coming Soon.

Stuffed Spaghetti Squash with Spinach & Artichoke

We don’t expect to find heirloom tomatoes in winter, so we work with squash instead.

Over the years I’ve learned that some of my favorite dishes were born from exactly that kind of limitation. One winter, staring at a spaghetti squash on my counter, I wondered what would happen if I combined it with the flavors of a classic spinach-artichoke dip.

The result was this stuffed spaghetti squash baked right in its shell—a dish I never would have created if tomatoes had been in season.

It’s a delicious reminder that creativity often begins with what’s available rather than what’s missing.

Here’s the Recipe

What if ideas have a life of their own?

What if they go on a journey independent of us?

They latch onto some people, pass over others, tease us with possibilities only to fall apart the moment we seriously entertain them.

Is there any rhyme or reason to the way ideas move? Or are they as mysterious as the deepest questions we can ask?

Sometimes we’re simply a vehicle, carrying an idea from one point to another, allowing it to ride with us for a time. We don’t own it. We just host it while we both contemplate whether our journeys are meant to continue together.

Years ago, I read, and never forgot, Elizabeth Gilbert’s notion in Big Magic that ideas move through the world looking for people willing to bring them to life. If we don’t act on them, they move on.

Whether that’s literally true isn’t the point.

What interests me is how ideas come into being, where they linger, and how they continue on their way. I’ve watched ideas that once visited me show up later in the world through someone else. A business. A product. A project. A trend. I rarely felt as though I had missed an opportunity. I’d already spent time with the idea and decided not to pursue it. It wasn’t mine to do.

Again and again, I watched those ideas come to life in someone else’s hands, and I felt genuinely happy that they had found their expression. Looking back, those moments were early lessons in unattachment.

An idea didn’t need to be mine for me to champion it.

I imagined there were tons of ideas whose time had come and maybe, like a game of musical chairs, they would circle around and land on a lucky recipient and off they’d go–a marriage made in heaven.

I couldn’t help but wonder when my time would come. Did we choose the idea or did the idea choose us?

When a big idea finally landed on me, I was unprepared for it. It found me in a small dingy kitchen with me thinking it had made a big mistake. Had I made a bargain with the foodie gods in some sort of unconscious way? If so I wanted it to go tap someone else. I was sure this mission had been handed to the wrong person.

But ideas don’t miss their marks.

In my case, one particular idea kept me in the kitchen, locked into a ten-year lease while I tested a possibility:

Would my community welcome a different kind of Italian restaurant?

One that invited them to experience Italian food in a new way. Food that asked them to remain open and curious. Food that was both humble and elegant, and unlike what they had come to expect.

The space asked something of them too.

Rather than spending tens of thousands on décor, I found beauty in wild grapevines, cattails, moss, and spray-painted leaves gathered from nature. Would an affluent town embrace an Italian import such as this?

Would they scoff at lasagna rolled into delicate spirals instead of served as the thick, layered rectangle they were accustomed to ordering?

Would they reject Italian food that occasionally wandered into French or Asian territory?

Would they welcome my fusion fantasies?

The idea had arrived. The question was whether anyone else would join me in it.

Turns out many did. Over the years, my community welcomed many of my ideas—some quite odd—that first found expression in the dining room of the restaurant. For ten years that dining room was my laboratory for new ideas. Food, art, and community engagement were born there. Ideas tested, and refined within a space where my curiosity landed and that my community supported and had come to trust.

Those ideas rarely stayed put. They created ripple effects that carried them into homes, neighborhoods, and beyond, where they became something else in someone else’s hands.

Grilled pizza. Eggplant-stuffed meatballs. Adult mac and cheese.

In my hands, culinary traditions became something to play with and reshape. Familiar foods took on new forms, much to the delight—or possible dismay—of my diners and my own expanding sense of what was possible.

But ideas rarely remain where they’re born.

They move from person to person, like moths to a flame, gathering support along the way. Before long, they’re no longer ours at all.

Some ideas arrive before their time. They need to simmer on the back burner awhile longer, collecting new ingredients, deepening its potency, waiting for conditions that allow them to take hold.

Looking back, I wonder if my town was more ready than I gave it credit for.

Perhaps ideas are not waiting to be invented so much as recognized.

Perhaps some are already here, waiting patiently for enough people to see their potential before they can emerge into the light of our attention.

Or perhaps an idea arrives precisely when both the idea and the host are ready for each other.

Maybe ideas circle around us, hidden in plain sight because we aren’t quite ready to receive them yet. Not directly. Instead, they slip in through the side door disguised as something less threatening while we slowly warm to their presence.

They arrive as:

A fairy tale.

A novel.

A work of art.

A science fiction film.

A conversation.

A restaurant.

By the time we recognize the idea for what it is, we’ve already grown comfortable with its company.

Maybe ideas circle around us, waiting for us to evolve enough to recognize what wants to be born. Waiting for someone willing to host them for a while.

Perhaps this is what happens whenever a society prepares for change.

The atmosphere slowly shifts, making room for new possibilities long before we consciously recognize them. Only later, from the luxury of hindsight, do we see the signs that were there all along.

And maybe preparing humanity for new ideas is not so different from what happened in my kitchen.

I prepared a piece of lasagna no one knew was coming until it landed on their plate. Its unfamiliar appearance was forgotten on the first bite. Delicious can’t be fooled.

Perhaps ideas work the same way.

They arrive before we’re ready, wrapped in forms we can accept, patiently waiting for their moments to be recognized before they begin to change everything.

Because literally everything comes from an idea.

Baci,

Silvia

You’re entering a world where food, ideas, community, and possibility all sit at the same table.

And your seat is free.

I write more about the moments that quietly shape how we see ourselves and respond to the world around us in my upcoming book,

13 Simple Habits for a Peaceful Life I Learned in My Chaotic Kitchen.

Coming Soon.

The Lasagna That Started a Conversation

After all that talk about ideas arriving in forms we can accept, it seemed only fair to share the lasagna that inspired this essay.

When it first appeared on the menu, it looked nothing like the lasagna many diners expected. Gone was the familiar layered rectangle. In its place was this.

Here’s the link to the recipe on my website

I went for a walk tonight before the sun went down. I wasn’t planning to. I was cooking dinner when I decided the spring evening was too rare to miss. I shut off the burner, grabbed my keys and phone, walked down the six flights of stairs leading from my loft in an old silk mill, and stepped outside.

The evening was warm but crisp. Not summer. Not winter. Both of which we’ve had too much of here in New England, where all spring the weather couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. Tonight it got it right, and I was glad to be out walking, taking it in.

I didn’t take my usual route along the wide busy street running along the perimeter of the historic district where I live. Instead, I turned in the opposite direction, toward a working-class neighborhood laid out in a grid of sidewalks lined with modest single-family homes, two-family houses, and the occasional sprawling Victorian that had somehow survived a century of change.

I loved that the neighborhood wasn’t perfect.

Some homes were meticulously tended, with neat lawns and welcoming porches. Others could use a little work. Still others had been lovingly restored to their former glory. There were no oversized houses built to impress. No development trying to manufacture character. This was a real neighborhood where you could imagine neighbors knowing one another. Helping when someone needed a hand. Decorating for Halloween and Christmas. There was such life here.

I walked the sidewalks imagining what life might be like inside each home.

The homes told stories their owners might not even realize they were telling. A porch with wicker chairs and floral cushions, draped with soft throw blankets. Overflowing flower pots, scattered about. A carefully mowed lawn behind a white picket fence. Each one spoke of care.

Not wealth. Not status. Care.

I passed lilac bushes heavy with blooms, their scent lingering as I walked. Yet there was something else in the air, even stronger, following me.

I didn’t know what it was exactly. I’m not entirely sure I do now. It’s revealing itself as I write this.

There was a time in my twenties when a neighborhood like this would have unsettled me. Back then, I might have looked at these streets, these homes on a small plot of land, their owners thinking it their kingdom when I saw lives of desperation disguised as contentment, all nice and tidy, locked in by a pristine white picket fence.

Not cynical exactly, just not wanting anything that was going to “fence me in.”

Now, decades later, I saw something entirely different.

The fence didn’t change.

I did.

I found myself wondering what had shifted inside me. Something in the air was bringing me there just as surely as the scent of a bowl of freshly sliced tomatoes and basil even today brings me to my childhood kitchen in summer.

Was I being nostalgic for a time when I perceived life to be simpler? More innocent perhaps?

Was there ever such a time, I wondered? Or do we simply catch glimpses of it from time to time?

And yet, as I walked past front porches, trimmed bushes and neat gardens, the feeling remained. Wrapping me like an old sweater, softened by wear but made of sturdy stuff that had withstood the test of time, still wearable and in good shape.

I was experiencing what felt like a brief opening in which the world felt gentler than usual. A reminder that despite everything we know about human nature, people still plant flowers, sit on porches, ride bicycles, walk their dogs, and gather for dinner.

History suggests there never was a golden age. Every generation imagines the one before it as more innocent than it really was. Behind every nostalgic photograph are worries, losses, injustices, and private heartbreaks we don’t see.

But tonight I felt none of those.

And in that moment of clarity, I realized it wasn’t what I was seeing that mattered.

It was how I was seeing it.

My younger self felt constricted by the very commonness of it all. Is this what success in life meant? A plot of land with a small tidy home? I wanted to run as far as I could from that.

My older self saw things differently. I could walk through the same neighborhood and feel grateful that such places still exist. Grateful for the smell of freshly cut grass. Grateful for the lilacs. Grateful for the sight of a porch prepared for an evening spent outdoors.

What once looked like conformity now looked like care, even reverence.

Someone had planted the flowers, painted the fence, decorated the porch, mowed the lawn.

Someone had decided that their small corner of the world, the one my younger self had dismissed, was worth tending.

Perhaps that was the innocence I had been feeling all evening. Not the innocence of a perfect past. But the innocence that appears whenever we remember to recognize and value simple things.

The porch light left on, a garden in bloom, a neighbor who waves to you, a quiet street at dusk. These sights filled me up and comforted me in ways I didn’t expect when I set out for my walk. They were evidence that, despite everything, people are still caring for one another and for the places they call home.

And that caring, that attention to life expressed in the most ordinary ways, has great power behind it. It becomes contagious. It transforms the ordinary into something meaningful.

Neglect is contagious too.

I’d rather spread caring.

We notice it when we walk into a restaurant that cares, a home that feels welcoming, a school, a street, a neighborhood, a community.

It transformed me on my walk. I carried it home with me.

A shared meal on the porch reminds us how enjoyable it is to eat outdoors. A painted house encourages the house next door. A beautiful garden invites another to be planted. Together they transform a neighborhood.

And in this way, the simple act of tending to what is ours, caring for what is in our control, begins to spread and eventually transforms a world that needs our care.

Baci,

Silvia

I write more about the moments that quietly shape how we see ourselves and respond to the world around us—in my upcoming book, 13 Simple Habits for a Peaceful Life: I Learned in My Chaotic Kitchen.

Coming Soon.

Pasta Salad with Tahini Pesto

In the essay above, I write about the power of ordinary things. This pesto, however, is far from ordinary.

I first made a version of it a few days ago while teaching a class at Williams Sonoma. At first, I wasn’t particularly hopeful. The corporate recipe sounded fine on paper, but nothing about it suggested it would be memorable.

Then I made it.

After adjusting the balance and making it my own, I found it surprisingly fresh and vibrant.

For this version, I combined basil, parsley, cilantro, tahini, and lemon juice into a pesto that feels both familiar and unexpected. Bright, herbaceous, and deeply satisfying, it was every bit as refreshing as the spring evening walk that inspired this week’s essay.

Full recipe below.

For the Pesto

In a food processor add the following:

2 cups fresh herbs: combo of cilantro, parsley, and basil

1/2 cup tahini (more if needed)

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

Juice of one small lemon

2 - 3 green onions - cut in half inch pieces (rough upper section removed)

2 garlic cloves

Season with salt and pepper to taste

Pulse until smooth.

Adjust: add a bit of water if too thick. more herbs if too thin. More tahini, a bit at a time if you want its taste to be more pronounced. But be careful not to add too much. It might taste a bit too bitter.

Adjust the seasonings and set aside.

For the Pasta Salad

1 lb. of your favorite pasta

1 cup sliced grape tomatoes

1 cup diced fresh mozzarella or feta cheese

Season with salt and pepper

Assembly

Cook your favorite pasta according to package directions.

Add the pesto and mix.

Add the tomatoes and cheese

Adjust the seasonings and serve

Author’s Note: After reading thoughtful article, “While Everyone Panics About AI, Midlife Women Are Having the Last Laugh,” I found myself wanting to write a response. I expected to write about AI, identity, and reinvention. Instead, I ended up writing about peanut butter, salad greens, and the strange ways human beings adapt to change.

I’m one of the lucky ones. AI probably won’t be taking my job anytime soon unless robots learn to cook like a professional chef.

Still, I understand why people are worried.

AI will change things. Big things.

But the older I get, the more I think the real question isn’t whether we’ll survive massive change. We will. We always do. And women are especially good at reinvention because we’ve had to be.

The bigger question is how we survive the small daily disruptions that quietly dismantle us.

I’m a creature of habit, like most people. I like to sit on the same section of my couch. I like to have my coffee a certain way, sleep on the same side of the bed, take the same route to work…and there are a thousand other things I don’t want anyone or anything to mess with. I don’t even like it when Apple updates my phone.

Maybe this is why it becomes difficult to live with someone after being used to living alone. Living with someone reveals a lot about who we are.

Years ago I had a roommate for a few months. She was a lovely, kind, and considerate woman, yet so many little things she did bothered me. None of them were rude or inconsiderate. It’s just that having someone else in my space forced me to change my habits, and I didn’t like it.

I didn’t want to change where I put my salad greens because now there was a huge container of yogurt in my usual spot in the refrigerator. I didn’t want to think about blaring rock music at midnight because there was someone else sleeping in the house. I didn’t want to hear the microwave door opening and closing all day as she reheated cup after cup of tea.

My pettiness took me by surprise. I had always considered myself quite tolerant.

By then, I had already experienced enormous changes that had disrupted my life in ways that altered almost everything about how, where, and with whom I shared it. Which is why it was such a rude awakening to discover that it wasn’t the big things bringing me to my knees. It was the accumulation of tiny irritations quietly dismantling my sense of self.

Was my identity so fragile that something this small could challenge who I believed myself to be?

I met death when I was eleven and lost my little brother.

I buried a husband at thirty-seven and became a single mother to two children under five.

I stood outside stoically watching my home burn and didn’t panic even when I couldn’t remember if I had paid my insurance on time.

I rebuilt my home and my life only to lose that house again three years later during the housing crisis of 2008.

Those experiences made me resilient in ways that continue to serve me well. They taught me that human beings can survive far more change than they imagine.

Which is why it shocked me to discover that what unsettled me most wasn’t catastrophe.

It was someone moving my salad greens.

The big changes fortified me against the major upheavals life hurled in my direction — sudden, violent, unpredictable storms that tore through everything I had come to count on.

So I have no qualms about dealing with whatever whirlwind AI might cook up. Instead, I found myself worried about being done in by the small stuff.

Maybe that’s the real challenge of change.

The big catastrophes announce themselves loudly. Adrenaline carries us through them. Community surrounds us and pitches in. Together we share a sense of purpose. That’s often the silver lining in disasters.

But the small disruptions happen quietly. Repeatedly. They ask us to loosen our grip on the tiny rituals that make us feel safe, comfortable, and in control. They ask us to examine our triggers because they hold powerful information for self-reflection.

The real danger isn’t only technological disruption. It’s the slow erosion of our capacity for patience, grace, and shared humanity.

Ignore those tiny daily irritations long enough and they harden us slowly — into rude, impatient, self-protective, selfish people who no longer know how to live generously with one another.

I remember watching my father — a man who left his family behind in Italy while he emigrated to America to work. A man who raised six children on a laborer’s salary. A man who survived the loss of a child and a wife who was never quite the same afterward.

And yet I watched him lose his mind when the nail he was hammering refused to go in straight. I listened as he hurled every Italian swear word imaginable at the fig tree that refused to bend into its winter bed.

Maybe I inherited my weakness from him.

But I knew better than to blame my DNA.

Instead, I began to wonder if resilience isn’t about becoming fearless in the face of enormous change.

Maybe it’s about learning to stay gracious when someone moves your peanut butter.

Baci,

Silvia

Thai Peanut Dressing

This essay wouldn’t be complete without a recipe using peanut butter. A salad dressing is easy to whip up, and it can transform an ordinary salad into something layered with flavor in every bite.

But don’t think of this as dressing for salad alone. Use it in wraps, with vegetable crudité, or tossed with cold noodles — which I just made and promptly devoured.

Ingredients (can be doubled or tripled)

2 tablespoons creamy peanut butter

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon sesame oil

1 teaspoon honey

1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger

1 clove garlic–finely chopped

Fresh cilantro–chopped

¼ cup warm water (or enough to reach desired consistency)

Instructions

Place all ingredients (except water) in a small bowl and whip until smooth.

Slowly add the water until you reach the desired consistency,

Sauté pans clanked against cast-iron burners, silverware crashed into overflowing bins, and dishes rattled as they were loaded into the dishwasher. Steam rose from pots of boiling broth and spread across the small kitchen, turning it into something out of a horror film. Crowded prep tables and crammed cutting boards consumed every available inch of space. Knives chopped in fast rhythmic motions, food processors roared, and people yelled “behind you” as bodies moved past one another in practiced choreography.

To an outsider, it would have looked chaotic.
To us, it was rhythm.

The cooks in that kitchen don’t see chaos, they see production. Every day they must join in a shared purpose, for they know that each one’s function affects the other—so they strive for harmony, not discord; they look past the frenzy and stay present with whatever they’re doing; they don’t think beyond the next few hours (or minutes)…because they can’t.

For years this was my training in how to stay focused within what appeared chaotic. Day after day, I experienced how the “impossible” happened—how on most days everything that needed to get done, got done…just in time.

Night after night the tempo quickened in peaks and I witnessed my body forgetting its pains, its exhaustion, and watched it rise to meet the challenge with an energy it didn’t have moments before. I no longer heard the noise—the servers calling in orders, the burners roaring, pans clanking, the cooks shouting directives across the line.

And through it all, as if by magic, movement happened and each night a hundred people or so got their dinner.

At the time, I thought I was simply learning how to work under pressure. I didn’t realize I was being trained for life itself.

When it comes to dealing with chaos, do you crumble or dance with it?
Can you remain calm and peaceful or does the pressure pull you apart?

Being peaceful while on vacation or relaxing at the end of the day after everyone else has gone to bed is nice, but it doesn’t build “peace muscles.” It can’t always be counted on to get you through the rough patches when life throws a series of curve balls that knock you off balance. Or when life moves so fast you can barely catch your breath.

My restaurant years were my training ground, but that was thirty years ago. Since then, my peace muscles have been called into action more times than I can possibly recall.

They got me through the trauma of watching my house burn down.

They allowed me to remain calm when I found myself at an outdoor concert and a fight broke out, sending screams throughout the crowd.

They allowed me to focus and keep from losing my temper during the hundreds of moments when everyone needed something from me all at once and I thought I would break beneath the pressure.

I developed resilience.
I learned to dance with the chaos.

It’s a special kind of dance where each step has a purpose, each word gives clarity or direction, and every movement is in sync with the whole. It’s an awe inspiring thing to be a part of. It can’t be taught; it has to be experienced and practiced, like all choreographed movements.

The dance is carried into modern life as an antidote to its pressures. It becomes refined into a rhythm that stays with you, lingering long after the moment has passed. It becomes richer the longer it stays, like a sauce reducing on the back burner until its aroma fills the room.

After enough practice, the rhythm no longer feels separate from who you are. It becomes you.

It inspired a poem I wrote at the time, when I was still captivated by how chaos itself could be so functional, so seamless, that I could only capture it in a song or poem.

Dancing with Chaos

I am not the dancer but the dance
and the laws of chaos, the ways of the world fade away
And I am once again in harmony with the rhythm of creation.

Baci,

Silvia

I write more about the moments that quietly shape how we see ourselves and respond to the world around us—in my upcoming book, 13 Simple Habits for a Peaceful Life: I Learned in My Chaotic Kitchen.

Coming Soon.

Basic Biscotti Recipe

I’m mostly a savory chef, which means I’m used to recipes that leave room for interpretation. A little more of this. A little less of that. Taste as you go. Adjust. Improvise.

But baking is different. Baking asks you to surrender to the process. To follow directions. To trust the structure.

And honestly, there’s something comforting about that sometimes.

No overthinking. No chaos. Just a simple set of instructions with room to make it your own through nuts, fruit, or chocolate.

Sometimes it’s calming when something asks so little of us except to follow the steps and enjoy the result.

Here’s the link to the recipe

I have come to rely on my creativity to see me through all kinds of rough or challenging patches—some personal, some as a response to the world around me.

The creative process has a way of pulling us aside from the noise of the day. It interrupts the narratives we play on repeat in our heads and quiets the stories we tell ourselves that gradually replace reality.

And it’s often in that quiet—the pause, the stillness, the blank space—that inspiration appears and creativity follows.

It’s in the very act of creating—however it’s expressed—that we reconnect with something essential that’s bigger than us. Something that radiates from us, gives our lives purpose, brings us joy, and can often buffer us from the most harmful effects of chaos.

In essence, creativity becomes the peace within the storm.

We’re all creative beings. I’m always surprised when people say they aren’t creative. Maybe creativity simply requires certain conditions before it reveals itself.

Which brings to mind the familiar phrase:

Necessity is the mother of invention.

The saying is much older—and much deeper—than most people realize.

The idea is commonly attributed to the Greek philosopher Plato, who wrote a version of it in The Republic around 375 BCE. The original concept had less to do with clever gadgets and more to do with human evolution and creativity itself: when people face limitations, hardship, or unmet needs, imagination awakens.

That is the kind of invention I’m talking about here. But necessity is only one doorway into creativity.

Many historians, artists, and innovators would argue that the opposite is equally true:

Wonder is the father of invention.

I think, like most things in our world of duality, both are true. There’s a kind of yin and yang between necessity and wonder, and I’ve lived both sides of that equation. I think most of us have.

Some of my most popular dishes were created because I didn’t have what I needed to make what I originally intended, so I had to improvise.

At a dinner party recently, I had planned to make fresh fettuccine, but I forgot my pasta machine on my kitchen counter about 30 miles away. What I did have was flour and potatoes, so I made gnocchi instead. My guests were delighted by the last-minute change, gathering around me to watch as I rolled and shaped them by hand.

My favorite pesto was born in winter, when fresh basil was scarce and pine nuts weren’t in the budget. So I improvised with sun-dried tomatoes, walnuts, and parsley instead. What began as limitation became invention.

And then there were the moments when wonder led the way.

I remember standing at the stove, looking at an empty sauté pan I had just cooked shrimp in—the garlic and oil still clinging to the bottom—and wondering what would happen if I added a splash of wine, a bit of butter, maybe some flour, and slowly whisked in broth to create a sauce.

Was this a legitimate sauce? I wondered.

One taste told me I was onto something.

I saw this same dynamic play out years later when I renovated my home kitchen. Normally, my instinct during renovations was to take walls down. This time, I did the opposite. I added a few walls, creating a pantry and a small office out of an unused alcove.

The result was surprisingly magical.

Inside the pantry, a pocket door opened to reveal a built-in nook that held my first desktop computer—an Apple Macintosh, my purple capsule into the vast new online world that was just beginning to emerge. To the right of my seat was a small window overlooking the woods around my home.

I can still see it clearly. It carried a kind of intimacy and magic that restriction itself had created, and the feeling stayed with me.

That little space carved into the pantry, felt like a secret room, the way I imagine children feel when they build a fort or find a secret hideaway. The photo for this piece was taken yesterday when, rather synchronistically, I walked into my grandchildren’s playroom and found this little fort—built with Nugget furniture by my eight-year-old granddaughter for her twenty-two-month-old brother.

Years later, after that same house was destroyed in a fire, I rebuilt it from the foundation up. Suddenly, the possibilities for what I could create felt almost endless, limited only by budget and imagination.

Oddly, it was much harder.

Too many choices became their own kind of stress.

And though the new house was beautiful, I don’t think it ever held quite the same magic as that earlier kitchen with its open pantry and hidden room.

There’s a reason marketers often say that too many choices lose the sale. When people become overwhelmed by options, they often walk away altogether. It’s said that three choices are the sweet spot—enough to create possibility, but not so much that the mind shuts down.

I sometimes wonder if the same thing is happening to us creatively.

Children today have access to almost everything imaginable. With a phone or computer, they can scroll endlessly through images, stories, opinions, entertainment, and information from all over the world. Yet with so much constantly available, there is often very little depth of engagement.I wonder what happens to imagination when nothing needs to be invented internally anymore?

My eight-year-old granddaughter surprisingly answered that question, while on a walk with the whole family on Mother’s Day. She declared quite suddenly, that when robots become so smart and they do everything for us, there’ll be nothing left for us to do. She felt sad about that. Don’t remember what inspired that statement, but it got my attention.

When I was growing up in a family of eight, with only my father working as a stonemason to support us, we always had enough food, but very little in the way of toys or entertainment. We played with each other and outdoors with the neighborhood kids. That was our entertainment.

And so was imagination.

For me, it became a constant companion.

I disappeared into books, living the lives of characters from distant places and times long gone that I would never know otherwise. Those stories invited me into intimate worlds far beyond my own small one. I can still remember the feeling of being completely transported, snuggled in a comfy chair holding a book.

I became a lifelong reader.

And like many children of my generation, we created things from whatever was around us. Old wood, fallen branches, tarps borrowed from the garage, blankets draped over tables—we built forts, hideaways, entire imaginary worlds, indoors and outdoors.

Looking back, I sometimes think the limitations themselves were part of the gift.

The cultural assumption is that freedom, abundance, and endless options automatically produce creativity. In reality, it’s often the opposite. Limited resources—money, time, space, energy, connections—frequently force us to become inventive.

Restrictions demand improvisation.

They ask us to find another way.

Maybe that is also true in periods of uncertainty like the one we are living through now. Challenges often force innovation in ways comfort never does. Shortages, limitations, and changing conditions can push us to rethink how we live, what we value, and what new possibilities might emerge that we would never have considered otherwise.

And perhaps that is worth remembering during times of uncertainty.

Some of humanity’s greatest achievements, discoveries, and acts of creativity have emerged not from abundance, but from limitation.

Maybe that is the hidden gift inside limitation.

It asks more of our imagination. It demands authenticity. It invites us to wonder:

What if?

This is how a new world unfolds.

I keep coming back to these small shifts—the ordinary, seen a little differently—and how they can make even uncertain, chaotic times feel steadier and more joyful.

What’s one small shift you’ve noticed lately? I’d love to know.

Baci,

Silvia

I write more about the moments that quietly shape how we see ourselves and respond to the world around us—in my upcoming book, 13 Simple Habits for a Peaceful Life: I Learned in My Chaotic Kitchen.

Coming Soon.

Here’s a variation of my potato gnocchi that began with a simple moment of curiosity: what would happen if I added a bit of ricotta to the dough? The result was a cloud-like dumpling—lighter, softer, and more flavorful than traditional gnocchi—requiring little more than a simple sauce.

Here’s the recipe

Our most powerful lessons don’t always arrive the way we expect.

Mine came from my four-burner stove.

When I opened my restaurant—which was also when I began my culinary career—I built a menu entirely around sautéed, made-to-order dishes. Not because it was practical, but because I had fallen in love with sauté—the speed of it, the way everything came together in the pan to form some of the most flavorful creations I could imagine. That—and the flipping of the pans—made me an instant fan.

The stove didn’t factor into the decision.
It probably should have.

Because the stove only had four burners.
And only three were actually available.

The fourth was taken up by a massive pot of constantly boiling water for pasta—our specialty.

Any sensible chef would have told me it couldn’t be done.
But no one did. And I didn’t know enough to question it.

For almost a year, I cooked made-to-order dishes from that stove for 100 or more people most nights—sometimes pushing past that on busy Friday and Saturday nights. But I did it. I got every order out.

Not always gracefully.

Not always efficiently.

And not always with the best attitude.

Some nights it was hard to keep from losing it. The problem was, there was nothing I could do about the stove. It had its limitations, and I had no choice but to work within them. I had 32 inches of space and no room for a sous chef, so I went it alone—three burners, a full dining room, tickets coming in faster than I could keep up with. Nights when I couldn’t, and my then-husband and business partner had to buy me time by sending complimentary wine or appetizers.

There was a cold station. A dishwasher.
But everything that touched heat came through me.

Eventually, we were able to expand the kitchen by a few feet and upgrade our appliances. We brought in a six-burner stove and added a deep fryer that we converted into consistently boiling water instead of oil for cooking pasta.

Six whole burners.
It felt downright luxurious.

It changed things.
Not everything—but enough.

The pressure eased. The pace didn’t. But now there was room at the stove for a sous chef.Help had arrived. Progress.

But by then, something else had already begun to shift in me.

There were moments I thought I was in over my head, when I could feel things starting to slip and wondered, briefly, if this was the point where it all fell apart.

But I didn’t stop. And it didn’t fall apart.

And it wasn’t until one particularly busy night—when I burst into tears after the last ticket went out—that my former husband, an experienced restaurateur, finally said what no one else had.

That I had done what most professionals would consider impossible. But I had done it—was doing it.

“That’s quite the accomplishment,” he said, as he gave me a hug, a seat, and a glass of wine.

I didn’t stop to think about it then. But soon after, I couldn’t help but notice that I had discovered something I might not have found any other way:

What else could I do if I didn’t know I couldn’t?
What else was I capable of—before I learned to doubt myself?

I had acted before doubt had a voice.

What if I had listened to the professionals who understood the limitations?
What if I had chosen practicality over instinct?

Would I have missed the lesson?
Would I have made my life smaller?
Would I have let fear of failure win out?

This was the question before me thirty years ago.

And my stove brought me to a clear answer—one that changed the way I moved through the world and made decisions.

I even gave my stove its own special acknowledgement in my cookbook, Simply Saute—an oldie but goodie still available on Amazon.

I didn’t accomplish anything extraordinary, like breaking the world record for running a four-minute mile, paving the way for others to do what was once thought impossible.

But I had done the impossible in my own life.

I never had to wonder again what might happen if I stepped into something I didn’t fully understand.

I had already done that. It wasn’t hypothetical. It was a “did it” moment.

And that went a long way in teaching me to trust myself and my instincts.
To see that there was power in not knowing our limitations.

Toddlers know this. They’ll jump without thinking twice if they trust you’ll catch them. They’re too young to tell themselves a story where doubt has a say.

Somewhere along the way, we learn to hesitate. To measure. To decide ahead of time what’s possible—and what isn’t.

I feel like I’m one of the lucky ones. Life put me right where I needed to be to question the thousands of ways we’re conditioned to live small.

That lesson—what’s possible before we’re discouraged from even trying—showed up again and again throughout my life.

Especially in those restaurant years. I came to recognize it as something deeper—a wiser part of me that already knew.

The part that doesn’t overthink.
The part that just begins.

I started writing my cookbook in a small office between shifts, with constant interruptions—without any real reason to believe it would go anywhere. It ended up being bid on by two major publishers and was published the same month my restaurant, Biscotti, closed.

Years earlier, after I got my new stove and a sous chef, I took a weekend workshop with the Landmark Forum.

The facilitator drew a circle divided into three parts. Two small sections, and one enormous one that took up most of the circle: what we know we know, what we know we don’t know, and what we don’t know we don’t know.

The large part stayed with me because I had already been there.

That was the space I stepped into at the stove.
Not because I was brave.
But because I didn’t yet believe in the limits before me.

Years later—long after I had closed the restaurant—I found myself there again.

On vacation, of all places, I decided to stop smoking after fifty years.
No plan. No guarantees that I wouldn’t start up again as soon as I returned home.

But I never smoked again.

Different circumstances. Same place.
But this time, I did what I myself thought was impossible.

Another step into that space of “you don’t know what you don’t know.”

That space where you don’t quite know what you’re doing.
Where there’s no guarantee it will work.
But something in you says begin anyway.

And over time, I learned to go back there.

Not perfectly. Not every time.
But more willingly.

I didn’t know any of this when I opened my restaurant.

I just turned on the burners and began cooking.

And I’ve been going back to that space ever since.

Even now.
Sitting here, writing to you.

I keep coming back to these small shifts—the ordinary, seen a little differently—and how they can make even uncertain, chaotic times feel steadier and more joyful.

What’s one small shift you’ve noticed lately? I’d love to know.

Baci,

Silvia

I write more about these moments—the ones that quietly shape how we see ourselves—in my upcoming book, 13 Simple Habits for a Peaceful Life: I Learned in My Chaotic Kitchen.

Coming Soon.

For this week’s recipe, I thought I’d share an oldie but still goodie from the early days of Biscotti. Something I created from that four-burner-stove.

This Sun-dried Tomato Sauce is the bomb! It’s is so filled with creamy flavor that it even got me…a notoriously slow eater…gobbling this up!! Seriously, the sauce is amazing not only with pasta and shrimp as I make here… but with chicken, scallops, or any white fish. No doubt once you make this, you’ll have your own ideas for possibilities. In fact, I made extra sauce and kept it in the fridge ready to go! It should be fine for several days.

Here’s the recipe

Having grown up in a large Italian family of great cooks—with parents who attracted a steady stream of visitors at dinnertime—I learned early that a seat at the table fed more than hunger. It fed my thirst for storytelling and warmed my heart in ways that would last a lifetime.

I loved being put to work helping in the kitchen because it gave me a front-row seat to some of the best storytelling in the neighborhood. So it came as no surprise to my family and friends that I eventually left my corporate job to open a restaurant.

Each morning, for ten years, my staff and I baked loaves of fresh, crusty, rustic bread in our tiny kitchen.Every dinner service began the same way: warm, thick slices set down at a guest’s table along with a small dish of olive oil infused with kalamata olives, capers, herbs, and toasted garlic. Guests couldn’t resist it. Neither could the staff, who grazed on it all night at the service station, where they stopped for a chat and a bite or two between trips to the dining room.

Without saying a word, bread and oil—a simple offering—had a powerful pull to bring people together.

Breaking and baking bread is an ancient practice, dating back roughly 14,000 years to the Middle East and Mediterranean—not, as I once believed, something unique to large, boisterous Italian families.

From the beginning, bread was more than food—it was life. As grain cultivation made it possible for people to settle and form communities, bread became a daily staple. Loaves were simple and flat, baked in communal ovens, then torn by hand and shared.

That act carried meaning. It signaled trust—you were eating from the same source. It created community—you depended on the same harvest. And it demonstrated equality—you ate from the same loaf. In many cultures, refusing to share bread wasn’t neutral. It was a quiet act of separation—sometimes even hostility.

By the time of Jesus, the table had become more than a place to eat. It was where people gathered, listened, and connected—often the only time they could.

Sometimes I wonder if that was by design. If what we need to survive was also meant to bring us together.

Because eating requires us to stop what we’re doing. To sit. To share space. And when we do, something in us softens. We talk. We listen. We laugh. We cry. We begin to recognize ourselves in one another.

Bread has evolved—becoming more abundant, shaped and flavored in endless ways—but it still carries a faint imprint of those early, humble beginnings. It’s now experiencing a resurgence. Making bread, especially sourdough, a trend that began during the pandemic—with recipes shared around the world—continues to grow and has been elevated into an art form.

I heard about bread’s importance in my parents’ stories of southern Italy after the war, when communal ovens were still in use and bread helped feed the community during scarce times. I saw its significance again decades later in Rwanda, where I taught at a small school in Kigali. There, students baked bread in outdoor ovens to supply a local bakery that helped fund their school.

In my own life, the scale for baking and breaking bread has changed, but the ritual hasn’t. As a child, bread was made weekly in our basement kitchen and shared by my family of eight, along with countless neighbors who dropped by just in time to have a slice while it was still warm from the oven. At the restaurant, we baked a dozen or more loaves a day and shared them with a growing community of fans, some lucky enough to purchase the two or three we sold at the end of the day after sharing slices with every table that sat down for dinner.

Now, I make two loaves of sourdough each week and share them with friends and a family of five—who savor each slice—especially my 20-month-old grandson, who welcomes me at the door with his little hands out, asking for bread.

Bread may have changed from its humble beginnings, but one constant remains—there’s nothing quite like the smell of bread baking in the oven to warm the heart and calm a weary spirit, and few things more satisfying than tearing into a warm loaf and spreading it with butter.

It feels simple. But it’s doing something more.

It draws us in. It invites us to slow down. It brings us to the table—again and again—where, almost without noticing, we find ourselves doing what people have done for generations—coming together through a timeless ritual–breaking bread.

I keep coming back to these small shifts—the ordinary, seen a little differently—and how they can make even uncertain, chaotic times feel steadier and more joyful.

What’s one small shift you’ve noticed lately? I’d love to know.

Baci,

Silvia

My Dipping Oil

This oil is irresistible. So I take no responsibility if you can’t stop eating it.

Ingredients

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

3 - 4 pitted kalamata olives - coarsely chopped

1 clove garlic - finely chopped

1 teaspoon cappers

2 - 3 sprigs fresh flat leaf parsley - stems removed, coarsely chopped

Salt and pepper to taste

Add all ingredients into a small mixing bowl. Stir and serve

Note: make it at least an hour before serving allowing the flavors to blend.

Sometimes the difference isn’t in what we do, but in how we do it.

Anyone who loves a toasted English muffin knows it tastes better when you split it with a fork instead of slicing it with a knife.

A knife gives you a smooth surface. Clean. Even. Predictable.
But a fork—when you work it around the edge, prying it open slowly—creates all those nooks and crannies. The uneven edges. The little pockets that catch and hold the melted butter as it disappears into the bread.

I couldn’t help but notice how much more I liked it this way. Crunchy, golden peaks. Soft, airy craters. Butter in all the right places.

It’s the irregularities that make it better.

I’ve come to think people are a lot like that.

No two of us are the same, and it’s often the rough edges—the parts we’re most tempted to smooth over or fix—that give us depth, character, and, ultimately, something real to offer.

In the kitchen, I rarely had perfect conditions. Ingredients were missing more often than not. Timing could be off by just enough to matter—suddenly the pasta is overcooked and you have to start again. The dishwasher doesn’t show up, and everything shifts.

We had no choice but to deal with it and move on.

You learn quickly that a recipe—for a dish or an operation—is just a guide. A starting point. What matters is how you work with what you have, what’s in front of you—what you reach for, what you adjust, what you’re willing to let go of.

You improvise. You pivot. You make something good out of what you have.

You don’t stand there wishing the chicken were beef or the broccoli was spinach. There’s no time for that. You work with what you’ve got–or you go to the store. .

Recently I was cooking for a small dinner party of 10 people—most of them foodies. One of the courses was fresh fettuccine. Only problem—I left my pasta machine on my kitchen table forty-three miles away. I was mortified.

But in my usual fashion, I quickly came up with another idea. I would make potato gnocchi. No pasta machine needed—only my two hands.

The gnocchi turned out to be a bigger hit than the fettuccine would have been.

Disaster averted. The plan changed. I adapted—and it worked.

Somehow, that lesson doesn’t always follow us outside the kitchen.

We tend to approach ourselves differently—with more judgment, less patience. As if improvement only comes from fixing what’s wrong, instead of understanding and appreciating what’s already there.

We tend to project our insecurities outward. We pull away from what looks different. We dismiss it. We misunderstand it. We become intolerant and prefer to stay with what and who feels familiar.

But nothing meaningful ever seems to grow from that kind of separation.

In fact, we end up walling off what’s best in us—holding back our quirks, our instincts, the very things that might delight and connect us to others.

In my experience, things shift more naturally when we leave room for acceptance—when we stop trying to refine everything into something cleaner, and start paying attention to how those edges shape us.

Vanilla has its place in ice cream—just not in a life.

Sometimes we need to get out of our own way and let our preconceived ideas go.

Sometimes the adjustment is small, but the lesson lands big.

The other day, I was heading out to work, preoccupied with a problem I couldn’t quite solve, when I was literally stopped from moving forward. My road was completely blocked by a big truck and a tall crane.

Two men were carefully lowering the upper part of a huge tree with heavy ropes, inch by inch, its heavy trunk swinging in the air.

For a moment, I thought I’d be stuck there for a while.

But within minutes, everything began to shift. The crane lowered. The branch settled into the truck. The men stepped back and gave the driver (and me) a nod. The truck pulled over and just like that, the road opened just enough to let me pass.

It struck me how often forward movement doesn’t come from force, or from pushing harder, but from a small adjustment that makes all the difference .

A fork instead of a knife. Hands instead of a machine. And a blocked road that gives you pause and demonstrates how quickly things can open up.

Have fun tweaking what needs it—and embracing your edges.

I keep coming back to these small shifts—the ordinary, seen a little differently—and how they can make even uncertain, chaotic times feel steadier and more joyful.

If you’d like more reflections like this, I invite you to subscribe.

Baci,

Silvia

Subscribe now

Vegetable lo Mein

I love noodles of all kinds. Short long. Fresh. Frozen. Italian or Asian. This is one where I upgraded the typical take-out to something special to grace your family table.

Here’s the recipe

Some of the most meaningful forms of togetherness don’t require agreement.

There’s something about pizza—the way it gathers people without asking them to agree—that feels inherently democratic.

A few years ago, I spent a month in a charming coastal town in southern Italy, Vico Equense—the gateway to the Amalfi Coast and the birthplace of pizza by the meter.

It wasn’t just a novelty.

It was designed to feed a whole table at once—to let a group share a single pizza while still honoring everyone’s preferences.

Instead of multiple separate orders, or negotiating one “compromise” pizza,
it became something shared that made room for differences. Everyone gets a say in how their section is topped.

Some versions are so long they’re baked in extended wood-fired ovens, built specifically to accommodate them. There’s something quietly beautiful in that—the infrastructure expanding to hold more variation.

I couldn’t wait to experience it for myself. But it didn’t feel like something to do alone, or even with just a few people. It called for a larger group.

When a group of fellow Americans arrived in town, we made plans to meet for dinner at the restaurant where this now famous pizza originated, Pizza a Metro da Gigino - L’Università della Pizza, located just a block from the town’s main square.

We sat at a long table and after ordering what we liked, bowls of lightly dressed peppery arugula–some of the best I’ve ever had–were placed between us.

But before we could dig in, the pizza arrived on a long wooden board, set on a side table by an experienced server who portioned it out with practiced confidence, placing slices before each of us with a touch of ceremony.

The experience, sharing a simple meal at a communal table, with a group of friends, each one of us different, each happy with our piece exactly as it was, with plenty more waiting nearby for seconds and thirds has remained vivid.

Maybe it’s the chef in me, but what stayed with me most was what sat just a few inches away.

Ricotta with pistachio. How intriguing.
I’ve only had pizza with mozzarella—how is it?
Would you like to try some?

And just like that, a trade is made. Something new is discovered.

There’s room for everyone at the table. The traditionalist and the experimentalist can sit side by side, each committed to their own slice, and no one feels the need to argue about it. It’s understood. Everyone’s taste is different. And that’s okay.

Pizza is built for variation. A simple crust becomes a canvas—classic or unconventional, minimal or piled high. Veggies, meat or fish or how about potatoes? There’s no single right way, only preference.

And maybe that’s part of its unexpected brilliance.

Because while we don’t often think of pizza as profound, it does something we seem to struggle with elsewhere: it makes space for difference without turning it into conflict.

It brings people in and invites them to the same table.
And more often than not, it keeps them there a little longer.

Somewhere along the way, we forgot how to let differences remain simple. Opinions hardened into identities. Identities demanded allegiance. And what could have been as easy as “you like olives but I don’t” became something unmovable—something harder to sit across from. But does it have to be this way?

Maybe we don’t need to agree on everything—just sit at the same table.

I keep coming back to these small shifts—the ordinary, seen a little differently—and how they can make even uncertain, chaotic times feel steadier and more joyful.

If you’d like more reflections like this, I invite you to subscribe.

Baci,
Silvia

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This week’s recipe, is a treat from the past, before pizza ovens became readily accessible, and pizza was made on a sheet pan in a regular oven. Make two or three of these and you can feed a crowd. This one is a summer pizza topped with sautéed fresh zucchini, tomatoes and caramelized onions. But top it with whatever you like. Pizza loves variety.

Here’s the recipe

We are always manifesting.

Not just when we’re visualizing or meditating or saying mantras.
Not just when things go right.
But always.

Which means the real question isn’t how do I manifest what I want?
It’s why am I not seeing what I think I want?

For a long time, I believed manifestation was about learning how to do it right—thinking the right thoughts, letting go of the wrong ones, questioning limiting beliefs and replacing them with more expansive ones.

“Thoughts become things” was a popular teaching in New Age thought. It made it seem as if understanding that simple connection was the key to getting what we want.

But that was never the whole story.

Because if it were, we’d be living in a reality shaped by every passing thought—a chaotic mix of everything we’ve ever imagined, all competing for form at once.

And yet, the idea that thoughts take on physical form has been around for centuries. Today, manifestation has moved beyond spiritual circles and into the mainstream.

For years, I wrestled with it. I wanted to understand it—more than that, I wanted to master it. But something in me sensed it wasn’t as simple as placing my desires on a vision board and waiting for them to appear.

In fact, part of me believed doing so might push them even further away.

I had a clear image of my dream home. A wide wraparound porch. A front door opening into rooms that flowed into one another. High ceilings. Big multi-paned windows. Wide moldings. Character. Perched on a hill, overlooking the sea below.

It was vivid.

And yet, every time I saw it, another voice followed:

But I can’t have that.
People like me don’t live in houses like that.
It’s just a dream. It’s not real.

The vision may have been clear, but it was rooted in lack.

I never got that dream home.

Instead, I lived in several homes over the years—each one, in its own way, exactly right for that time in my life. And that led me to question the process itself. I wondered if trying to manifest something specific was actually interference—if focusing so intently on what I wanted was, in some way, pushing it away because I was confirming that I didn’t have it.

So I did what we often do when something feels uncertain.

I pulled back.

Completely.

I stopped trying to manifest anything at all, afraid I was getting in my own way. The problem, of course, is that many of our beliefs are unconscious, quietly shaping our lives whether we’re aware of them or not.

Most of my life was guided by a simple principle.

And it was this:

If it was happening in my outer life, it was a reflection of something happening in my inner one.

So I reversed the process of manifestation. I looked at my life and began to work backward, letting my reality reveal the beliefs behind it.

Financial struggles showed me where I believed in lack. Health issues pointed to what I had accepted as “normal” aging. Relationship challenges reflected what I was unwilling to see in myself.

But this, too, wasn’t the whole story.

Yes, our experiences can offer powerful insight into our inner landscape. We can examine them, understand them, even reshape them into something more aligned with how we want to live.

And though I believe we cannot heal what we’re unwilling to look at, we can also fall into the trap of turning inward as a kind of endless excavation—spending our days analyzing, fixing, uncovering, correcting.

Trying to locate the flaw.
Trying to take responsibility for everything.
Trying to control the outcome.

And that, too, comes from a place of lack. Of distrust. Of fear. Of a misunderstanding of our true nature.

Life is constantly responding—not to a single thought, but to the deeper pattern beneath it. To what we believe is true. To what we feel is possible. To what we feel worthy of receiving.

Manifestation isn’t something we turn on and off. It’s something we are already participating in. And when I began to see that, something shifted.

Over time, I noticed that some of the most significant things in my life didn’t come from effort or intention. They didn’t come from trying.

They simply arrived.

My dream home came after a fire destroyed the one I was living in. A meaningful career emerged only after I let go of what I thought I wanted. I stopped smoking effortlessly only when I stopped struggling to do so.

And yet, smaller things always seemed effortless. I would no sooner think of them than they would appear—the perfect coat on the very next shopping trip, an article that popped up on my phone answering a question I had just asked, a fleeting thought of an old friend followed by a sudden text.

That’s when I began to see what I hadn’t understood before.

It wasn’t that I was sometimes manifesting and sometimes not.
It was that I was always manifesting—but usually interfering.

The difference wasn’t in the desire.
It was in the resistance around it.

The coat came easily because there was no story attached to it. No belief that I couldn’t have it. No quiet voice saying, this isn’t for you.

But the bigger desires were different. They were tangled in identity—in worthiness, in doubt.

“I want this… but I don’t think I can have it.”
“I trust… but only if it happens my way.”
“I’m open… but I’m bracing for disappointment.”

That tension isn’t failure. It isn’t a lack of ability.

It’s interference.

Manifestation, in its truest sense, isn’t something we force into being. It’s what naturally unfolds when we stop standing in the way—when desire is no longer in conflict with who we believe we are, when we stop gripping the outcome, when we allow something deeper to materialize.

You could call it alignment. You could call it trust. You could call it returning to the truth of who we really are—where we can imagine without limitation, without needing to strive or prove or earn, because each of us already is worthy.

And from there, things don’t feel forced. They feel timely. They unfold naturally. They carry the energy of purpose.

Those realizations left me feeling that I could finally relax, knowing I was in good hands.

With new clarity, I realized that the circumstances of my life didn’t come from what I put on my vision board or from what I thought I could have. They came from the same place that manifested the perfect coat—a simple desire with no resistance, no sense of lack or unworthiness, no desperate attachment.

And once I truly understood that manifesting a simple desire is no different than manifesting a big one, something significant shifted.

It doesn’t necessarily change what we want—
but how we hold it.

Passionately. Dedicatedly. But without attachment.
Lightly. Playfully. Filled with joy and purpose.
Hands open. Ready to receive what’s ours.
Knowing we matter.

We begin to see how powerful we’ve always been—not because we’ve learned how to control life, but because we’ve stopped interfering with it and started trusting it.

I keep coming back to these small shifts—the ordinary, seen a little differently—and how they can make even uncertain, chaotic times feel steadier and more joyful.

If you’d like more reflections like this, I invite you to subscribe.

With love,
Silvia

Subscribe now

For this week’s recipe, I thought I’d share this elegant and tasty salad that came about from wanting to make something festive and special enough to stand alone, but light enough for a multi course meal.

It’s not only beautiful, it’s a magical layering of flavors: sweet, wine-infused pear with peppery arugula and rich burrata, drizzled with a light, gently tart champagne vinaigrette.

Full recipe on my website

About nine years ago, while vacationing in Costa Rica with two of my closest friends, something big shifted—so subtly I didn’t recognize it at the time.

Each day, I told myself I’d step away for a smoke.

But I didn’t.

My friends didn’t smoke, and I didn’t want to leave them. After long walks or climbing the nearly 100 steps back to our cabins, I didn’t feel like it then either.

So I told myself I’d smoke tomorrow.

But tomorrow never came.

It didn’t come when I got off the plane.
It didn’t come when I got home and sat in my usual spot—the corner of the couch, morning coffee in hand.
It didn’t even come after a big meal, when I used to enjoy a smoke the most.

It never came.

I never imagined stopping could be effortless—not after 50 years of smoking half a pack a day. Not after being so addicted I would drive through a snowstorm to buy cigarettes rather than face running out.

I didn’t believe change could happen without struggle, without willpower, without something external forcing it.

But it did.

And it left me with a question I couldn’t ignore:

What else might be possible that I’ve already decided isn’t?

That question is what I’ve come to recognize as imagination.

Not the kind we associate with childhood, but something quieter, more powerful—

the space between what is
and what could be.

Chefs live in that space.

A lump of dough becomes bread.
An assortment of vegetables becomes soup.
A simple batter becomes a cake.

We work with what’s in front of us—but we’re not limited by it.

Because the ingredients are only part of the story.

The rest is imagination.

Last week, I wrote about creating space—clearing and organizing the environments we live in.

But what happens after that?
What does that space make possible?

I’m sensitive to the spaces I’m in.

Clutter makes me feel scattered.
Darkness drains my energy.
Cold, sterile spaces don’t invite much at all.

But when a space feels calm, intentional—even beautiful—something shifts.

It becomes more than just a place where I live.

It becomes a place where ideas begin to take shape.

Sometimes it’s small things.

An old bench becomes a side table.
A forgotten trunk becomes something useful again.
An object finds a new purpose I hadn’t planned.

These ideas don’t come from effort. They arrive when there’s room for them.

And slowly, almost without noticing, a quieter belief begins to form:

What I need comes to me.

That’s what space makes possible.

Not just clarity—but openness.

Because when the mind softens and the grip loosens, something else can move in.

Imagination.

The kind that doesn’t just create meals or rearrange rooms—
but reshapes a life. Because maybe that’s the truth of it.

We’re always working with what’s in front of us.

But we’re not limited by it.

And sometimes, all it takes
is a little space
to begin seeing what isn’t there yet.

Keep imagining,

I keep coming back to these small shifts—the ordinary, seen a little differently—and how they can make even uncertain, chaotic times feel steadier and more joyful.

If you’d like more reflections like this, I invite you to subscribe.

Baci,

Silvia

Subscribe now

Creamy Red Lentil/Sun-dried Tomato Soup

This recipe is testament to what you can create with a little imagination. Sometimes what you think might turn out well exceeds all expectations.

This creamy red lentil sun-dried tomato soup was one of those moments.

I made it with what I had in the pantry—no time to run to the store, no real plan. Just working with what was there.

The result was so good it surprised me!

I could hardly wait to take this photo before digging in, with a slice of bread just out of the oven.

Here’s what you’ll need:

Ingredients

2 cups red lentil – rinsed

6 cups chicken (or vegetable broth)

2 cups milk

2 tablespoon olive oil

2 tablespoons butter

1 small sweet onion – diced

2 large cloves fresh garlic – diced

Pinch of red pepper flakes – optional for heat

1/4 cup sun-dried tomatoes – diced

2 tablespoons tomato paste

4 tablespoons flour

Splash of cream – optional

Here's the full recipe.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. There’s lots of ways to leave a response to this recipe.

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Chefs have a system—simple, disciplined, and essential to surviving the turbocharged pace of a busy service. It’s called mise en place: everything in its place.

It’s a practice born in the kitchen, but its wisdom reaches far beyond it.

In a busy service, we can’t control what comes at us—how many orders, in what order, or how fast. But we can control how prepared we are to respond.

That’s where mise en place comes in.

Everything prepped. Everything within reach. Not to control the chaos—but to move through it with steadiness and confidence.

And it makes all the difference.

I began to wonder how this simple practice might apply elsewhere.

We can apply it to our inner world—our thoughts, our beliefs, the quiet narratives we carry with us. That’s a deeper conversation, and one worth having.

But for now, I want to begin somewhere more tangible.

Our homes.

The drawers, the cabinets, the closets we open and close each day without much thought. These are small spaces, but they are ours—places where we still have a measure of control.

And there is something quietly powerful about that.

When these spaces are in order—when they’re not crowded with what we no longer need—it does something subtle to the nervous system. It steadies us. Grounds us. Reminds us that not everything is unraveling.

Because while we may not be able to control the world outside, we can choose how we shape the space we live in.

Beyond the drawers and closets, there is something more.

Over time, our spaces begin to reflect not just order, but something deeper—a sense of beauty, harmony, and light. Not in a curated or performative way, but in a way that feels lived-in and authentic.

Because the spaces we create are not separate from us. They are an extension of what’s happening within.

The objects we choose to keep, the ones we let go of, the things we place where we can see them—they shift as we do. What once felt important fades. What once went unnoticed becomes meaningful.

And slowly, almost without realizing it, that inner evolution begins to take shape around us.

In a living room. A kitchen. A quiet corner where we sit with a cup of coffee.

Our spaces change because we do.

I have a special love for interior design. I’m drawn to the way color, texture, and placement can transform a space—how a room, much like a plate of food, can be composed with intention.

I love how a space can invite me to soften, to settle, to drift into a quieter stream of thought—where ideas that once sat on the back burner rise to the surface.

But more than anything, I love the process of creating that space.

Because it is a process.

Things rarely end up where they started. The sofa once pushed against the wall finds its way to the center of the room. The bed is turned to face a new direction. A chair from the spare room is moved beside a window, where morning light pours in and birds gather along the edge of the roof.

At first, these changes feel like small adjustments.

But they do something more.

They shift the experience of being in that space.

Or maybe, more truthfully, they reflect a shift that has already taken place within us.

I began to notice that I wasn’t just rearranging a room—I was responding to something quieter. Something internal. What once felt right suddenly felt off. What I had overlooked began to call for attention.

And so I moved things.

Again and again.

Not out of restlessness, but out of alignment.

Some may think I have an obsession with things—collecting them, placing them just so—but that’s not it at all.

I discovered something I had long suspected when I moved into my new apartment in a former silk mill built in the 1800s. It had twenty-five-foot ceilings, brick walls, and massive, multi-paned windows.

For the first time, I was designing a space just for me. No husband. No kids. Just me.

The process felt almost magical.

No sooner would I envision something I needed than it would appear. Sometimes it was simple—a quick search online. Other times, it felt like something more. I’d walk through an antique or thrift store and there it would be: the perfect screen to tuck my coats behind, the right frame for an oversized piece of art—small, unexpected treasures that made the space feel entirely my own.

A reflection of who I was—and who I was becoming.

Over time, I began to notice something.

A quiet pattern.

When I was in that space of creating—open, clear, and intentional—what I needed seemed to find its way to me, often in ways I couldn’t have planned.

I’ve come to see this as a kind of flow—a subtle but unmistakable feeling of being supported.

As if something larger is gently saying,
You’re on the right track. Keep going.

And it leaves me with a question.

If the small things can arrive so effortlessly…
why do I believe the big things can’t?

Maybe there is no difference.

Maybe what we’re really learning—slowly, through practice—is how to make space for things to arrive.

To clear.
To place.
To trust.

The same way we set up a kitchen before service.

Everything in its place.

Ready to receive what comes next.

Start small.

One drawer. One shelf. One corner of your home.

Clear it. Place things with intention.

And notice what begins to shift.

Because when we learn to create space—not just in our homes, but in ourselves—
life has a way of meeting us there.

I keep coming back to these small shifts—the ordinary, seen a little differently—and how they can make even uncertain, chaotic times feel steadier and more joyful.

If you’d like more reflections like this, I invite you to subscribe.

Baci,
Silvia

Subscribe now

And now, a recipe.

A simple way to practice having everything prepped and in its place—so that when it’s time to cook, you’re ready to move with ease.

And at the end of it, something good to enjoy.

Stuffed Baby Eggplant

Recently I found the cutest baby eggplant at the supermarket. I couldn’t bear to simply cut them up and sauté them like I usually do…so I decided to stuff them. Now if you google recipes for stuffed eggplant you’ll notice that many have you carve up the pulp of the eggplant, cook it. Mix it with other ingredients. Stuff it back into the eggplant then bake it.

I find this far more difficult than it needs to be. I instead cut the eggplant in half. Bake, scoop, stuff, and bake again. Scooping the pulp is easy once they’re baked and of course you can mix the eggplant with any number of ingredients, but since I had some chopped beef on hand, I used it along with some onions, tomatoes, garlic and cheese. It was so good I ate them cold right out of the fridge.

A step by step recipe can be found here:

https://chefsilvia.com/stuffed-baby-eggplant/

.

I never intended to be a chef or to own a restaurant—especially not at forty, with two young children and a new marriage. At 34, I had no such plans. Yet there I was, led by an unlikely series of events that could only have been orchestrated by a force far more powerful than my own will.

At the time, I had an MBA that I worked hard to earn over seven years of night classes while holding a full-time job in the apparel industry. I had dreamed that my master’s thesis—based on firsthand research into the apparel shopping habits of professional women—would impress the industry and open doors.

It didn’t.

After one particularly revealing experience with a top women’s manufacturer, I finally accepted the clear signs that I was trying to be a square peg in a round hole. It was time to let that dream go.

Soon after, I landed a job as a sales rep for a major telecommunications firm—a player in the new frontier of the long-distance industry in the mid-1980s, after the breakup of the AT&T monopoly.

The industry had the energy of a gold rush: new products, new markets, and competition where once there had been monopoly.

For a while, I loved it. I was a top producer in one of the hottest markets in the country, New York City. I loved the challenge of hitting my numbers each month and being part of a team of young, ambitious, smart people.

It was exciting. It was fun.

But it wasn’t enough.

The problem was—I didn’t know what was.

And then life showed me.

At 36, I was a widow with a five and a two-year-old. My husband Rob’s sudden death left me devastated, but determined to stay strong for my children. Somehow I was able to accept what I could not control, drawing from a deep well of resilience built from earlier life experiences that had already shown me when things happen that we have no control over, the only choice is between relying on that strength—or falling apart.

Over the years I had built a stockpile of reserves that served me well, as did the flexibility of my sales job, which allowed me to work mostly from home—something rare in the mid-1980s and essential for me.

Even in the depths of grief, gratitude was still there.

Rob’s death was another stark reminder that tomorrow is promised to no one. The first time I learned that lesson was when my little brother died when I was eleven. The world didn’t make sense after that, and I’ve spent much of my life trying to explain it to myself.

After Rob’s death, I knew one thing for certain: I didn’t want to waste my days doing work that didn’t capture my heart, my talents, or give purpose to my life.

And then I got a message on my answering machine.

It was from a long-ago love.

At 40, I found myself newly married and standing in the kitchen of a restaurant I now owned with my husband.

Wondering how on earth I had gotten there.

What followed was a ten-year adventure that launched a career now spanning more than thirty years that did capture my heart.

Sometimes the path that finds us is the one we were meant to follow all along.

At the time, I didn’t stop to reflect on my restaurant experience. I was too busy living it. Only years later could I see how that experience shaped my choices in the years that followed; the way I understand and respond to the ups and downs of life, how creativity heals—and how to remain at peace within an uncertain world - a useful skill given the chaos of modern life.

Food has always been a doorway for reflection. Something that some of you may be familiar with from the many years of receiving my former newsletter,

A Note from the Chef

But it’s not the only one.

Curiosity, spiritual inquiry, creativity, and wonder drew me into a lively conversation with life that continues to evolve as I do—much like any good recipe.

These are my stories, shaped by the paths I’ve walked, the recipes I’ve created and gathered, the entrenched ideas I questioned, and the reflections that come from living consciously and joyfully and are so worth chewing on.

I keep coming back to these small shifts—the ordinary, seen a little differently—and how they can make even uncertain, chaotic times feel steadier and more joyful.

If you’d like more reflections like this, I invite you to subscribe.

Baci,

Silvia

Subscribe now

Below is a recipe that I introduced in the early days of Biscotti. The eggplant stuffed meatballs were a customer favorite since day one and something I still make today.

Just one of the perks of being here. Enjoy!!

Spaghetti with Eggplant Meatballs

1 lb. chopped meat - a combo of beef/pork/veal or beef/pork/turkey

1 medium eggplant – cut into 1/4″ circles (skin on)

1 lb. spagetti (or your favorite pasta)

1 32 oz can crushed tomatoes (can be doubled or tripled)

1 jalapeno pepper – seeds removed and diced small

1/4 cup olive oil for frying the pepper (optional)

Top with parmesan and chopped basil

Here’s the link to the full recipe. Feel free to leave a comment or ask a question and feel free to share!

https://chefsilvia.com/spaghetti-with-eggplant-stuffed-meatballs/