We lost our beautiful, funny, brave and resilient mother last month. Anna Sardella, who wasn’t expected to live more than a few days when she was born in March of 1927 in the small, southern Italian town of Pisticci, lived to mark her 98^th birthday. Her children, grandchildren and great-granddaughter celebrated with her only a few short weeks ago and we treasure that final, happy memory of Mom.

I’ve written here about Mom’s extraordinary life and how her bravery and resilience inspired her family and friends. Three years later, it is time to again reflect on Mom’s vibrant presence in our lives and to come to terms with losing her.

The third of four daughters of Antonio Sardella and Michelina Cirone, Anna loved to tell stories of growing up in Pisticci with her sisters Rosa, Camilla and Bianca. When her memory started to fade as she approached her mid-nineties, it was these stories of teasing her sisters, losing her mother at the tender age of 13, the characters that were her village neighbours and the difficulty of life on her Nonna’s farm during World War II that she recounted time after time.

Mom moved from Toronto, which had been her home for 57 years, to Waterloo after the death of our father to be closer to my sisters Mary Ann and Etta. For the first time in her life, she lived in her very own place and delighted in being able to do just as she wished every day. “I can get up when I want” she would say. “I can eat when I want to. I don’t have to account to anybody but myself!”

Mom loved taking walks through the gardens of her seniors’ residence and, during the summer months, visiting her vegetable garden plot to check out the tomatoes and zucchini planted and tended by my sisters. She kept active during the frightening and uncertain time that was the pandemic by knitting dishcloths that were sold to raise money for the local food bank and other community charities that were close to her heart. With Mary Ann and Etta’s loving and unflagging support, she was able to live in her own apartment until the end of her life.

As her memory and hearing started to flag in her later years, our big family gatherings became more difficult for Mom, so we visited with her in smaller groups. My routine was to take her to lunch at our favourite diner each time I spent a few days in Waterloo to be with her. Our last lunch date together was at the end of February. She had a little more trouble getting into the car and was a little slower making her way to our table. But she enjoyed (and finished!) her hearty fish and chips lunch while giving me instructions on how to make her favourite taralli crackers. That was the last full meal she ate.

I was in Italy for Mom’s last days in hospice and her death. It has been difficult to sort through grief for losing her and guilt for not being with her – but my sisters and brother agreed that Mom would be happy for me to be in the country she so loved and missed.

I see her in every Nonna I encounter on the streets. I think of how she’d love the spring bounty of artichokes, zucchini flowers and asparagus in the farmers’ market. When I found an antique mouse trap in the local flea market, I could hear her laugh as she told the story of the mouse traps set in our childhood home that would regularly snap on my father’s hand when he reached under a bed or dresser.

Grief is slowly being mixed with and eased by good memories of small moments with Mom. I know that, with time, those memories will be what we will hold dear. I will aways be grateful to my sisters for their loving care of Mom during her final days, for my last telephone conversation with her and for her final words to me – “take care of yourself.”

Our final goodbye to Mom, written by Etta and shared at Mom’s funeral, best describes how we’ll miss her. “I think I’ll miss mom’s sense of humour and stories the most. I loved how mischievous she was. Whether she was threatening her sons-in-law with the big wooden spoon or laughing her head off with her sister, Bianca, in a way that only the two of them could understand a single word they said.”

Rest well Mama. And thank you.

Conad, the closest market, is a five-minute walk across the Ponte Vecchio. As I trundle with my buggy in tow across the uneven cobble stones, making my way through the crowd of tourists, I can’t help but think about the hundreds of thousands of women who walked this road before me since the current version of this ancient crossing was built almost 700 years ago. Did they bargain with the butchers, whose shops once lined the bridge, for the best price for that evening’s meal? Did they marvel at the sight of the Duomo, as I do every time I cross the river back across the Arno?

As the world celebrates Women’s History Month, I find myself reflecting on the lives of the women who lived here over the centuries. The history of Florence is dominated by the Medici, who reigned over the city, the popes, kings and emperors who battled to control it and the artists and architects whose work defined the Renaissance. Lorenzo the Magnificent, Cosimo, Michelangelo, Galileo, Vasari, Machiavelli, Dante, Donatello, Masaccio. All men and all memorialized in sculptures, paintings and in the names of streets and piazzas. I learned a lot about these men, the spectacular art they created and how they shaped Florence, Tuscany and the world, in the art history course I took during my first month here. But the stories of women and the role they played in the rich history of the city were largely told as they related to strategic marriages that served to consolidate power.

It's not these noble women that I think about when I walk the narrow streets and back alleys on both sides of the Arno. It is the women who shopped in the Mercato Centrale in San Lorenzo, visiting the butchers, fishmongers and cheese sellers. Who chose from the abundance of fruit and vegetables in the stands of the Mercato di Sant’Ambrogio and the vendors in Piazza Santo Spirito. And I can almost hear their footsteps on the cobbles and the swishing of their skirts as I, too, shop in these markets, joining the community of women who have foraged for and gathered food for their families since the beginning of time.

Buying groceries in Florence, even in Conad, one of Italy’s largest supermarket chains, is a feast of colour, aroma and variety. I was excited to find zucchini flowers, ready to batter and fry in fragrant olive oil, in the supermarket.  Blood oranges from Sicily, zucchini, spinach and Swiss chard in the Sant’Ambrogio market stalls. Golden yellow chickens, great slabs of beef and even tripe, pig ears and bull testicles at the butcher counters and tripperia of the market in San Lorenzo. I’ve even found what I now consider to be my neighbourhood butcher shop, near Piazza Santo Spirito, where I can ask the butcher to slice the veal thinly to make piccata and learn about a local cheese that’s only available for a few weeks in the spring.

I’ve spent many happy hours in the tiny kitchen of my rental apartment, cooking meals both familiar and new to me that make great use of the groceries I’ve toted home in my trust red buggy. I do miss the expansive counter space and full range of pots and pans in my home kitchen – but revel in the incredibly fragrant olive oil, the fresh, crisp bunch of spinach that cost less than a Euro and the zucchini flowers that are such a challenge to find in any season in Ontario.

My goal in spending two months in Florence was to learn about Renaissance art, perfect my Italian, eat wonderful food and drink great wine. What a great bonus it has been to be delighted by shopping, like many generations of women before me, in the markets of this beautiful city and cooking for the friends and family that have joined me on this adventure!

When I decided to spend February and March in one of the busiest tourist cities In Italy, if not in all of Europe, I expected to see mostly locals in the streets with perhaps a sprinkling of Italian teenagers on high school tours. That has been mostly true on weekdays, but I have been shocked to see the streets jammed with people on the weekends. 

American university students are everywhere – more than 15,000 of them studying on the Florence campuses of 20 universities including Kent State, Syracuse University, NYU, Pepperdine and Tulane. I see them most often in the grocery store that I seem to visit every day. The line-ups to the cashier can stretch around the perimeter of the store during busy times and almost everyone in line is a young person speaking English.

Navigating the Ponte Vecchio to go to the grocery store or to my daily art history class in the Oltrarno is a challenge. The bridge is packed full of people stopping to check out the elaborate jewellery in the gold shops and to take selfies with the Arno as backdrop.

Our street, which leads directly to the Ponte Vecchio, is just as crowded and the Piazza della Signoria is a sea of tour groups, young families with kids in strollers and couples leading dogs (mostly dachshunds and boxers, as it turns out) through the throngs.  You’ll hear a smattering of English and French – but most people are speaking Italian. Clearly the past spectacularly warm and sunny weekend attracted non-Florentines to town.  And the locals aren’t very happy about it.

An artisan jewellery shop on one of the narrow side streets in our neighbourhood boasts a handmade sign that screams, in large red letters:  Firenze muore. Florence is dying! The message blames the mayor of the city as well as the senator that represents it in the federal government, for selling out to “hit and run tourism” and international chains. It’s hard to argue when the main shopping streets are dominated by familiar names like Zara, Lush, Doc Marten and Benneton.

Last weekend’s sunny and unseasonably warm weather drew thousands of people to Florence – but we decided to spend Saturday in the lovely little walled town of Lucca, a 90-minute train ride away. It was a glorious day to walk the narrow streets and to explore the Piazza dell'Anfiteatro, the public square built on the elliptical shape of the former second century Roman amphitheater.

After a long day of walking, we decided to taxi back to the apartment from the Santa Maria Novella train station. Our cab driver valiantly worked to navigate the streets filled with hundreds of people blithely walking in the middle of the road, ignoring sidewalks and the taxi nudging them to get through. She eloquently expressed her frustration.

“Solo noi abbiamo gelato!  Solo noi abbiamo bistecca!”

Only we have gelato!  Only we have steak!

And, as we passed the shop displaying a fully-stuffed pig in the window, “Solo noi abbiamo porchetta!”

But her greatest disdain was reserved for the man selling roasted chestnuts. 

“Castagne a febbraio!  Questa non è la stagione delle castagne!  Dove si trovano le castagne in questo periodo dell'anno?” 

Chestnuts in February!  This isn’t the season for chestnuts!  Where do you even get chestnuts at this time of year?

The streets have been quieter since the weekend wound down – but people still ignore the sidewalks and the Ponte Vecchio and grocery store are as busy as ever. As for me, my longer-term stay makes me feel less like a tourist and more like a local each day. I’m speaking Italian as much as possible, shopping for groceries almost daily and have discovered the local hardware store, the best place to get a sandwich made on schiacciata (Florence’s version of focaccia) and artisan rather than factory-made gelato.

I’m learning that Florence, like Venice, is struggling with tourism, both international and local, and that the independently-run shops I visited when I first started coming here have, one by one, been replaced by stores that can be found in any suburban shopping mall.  But that doesn’t take away from the sheer magic, beauty and history of the city and the lovely people I’m meeting every day in the shops and cafes I’m so lucky to visit.  And our cab driver was right.  Solo Firenze è Firenze!

“Perché sempre Firenze? Why do you always go to Florence?”, asked my cousin, Ninetta as she tried to understand the appeal of visiting a city where I have no extended networks of aunts, uncles and cousins as I do in my family’s home town of Pisticci.

There are so many answers to that question. The art. The food. The wine. The history. But, truly, what I love most about Florence is the joy I find in being a flâneuse – a wandering observer of the city and the people living and visiting here.

Florence has drawn me back again and again since my first visit here more than 20 years ago. I never cease to be awestruck by the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore and its spectacular Duomo. Each cobbled street and narrow alleyway offers its own set of treasures to be discovered - frescos, sculptures, historic buildings, little butcher shops, fish mongers and vegetable stalls, artisan jewellers, paper makers and leather workers. 

This trip is different. Instead cramming as much of Florence as possible in a few days, I have settled in for two months. The luxury of time means that I can be more of a resident than a tourist and wander to my heart’s content. Since arriving a little more than a week ago, jetlagged, excited and just a bit anxious, I have started to make the mental switch from tourist to temporary resident. From rushing to the next museum or finding yet another fabulous little trattoria to relaxing into a routine that allows for exploration and the delight that comes with it.

Florence is a very easy city to navigate. The Arno River, the Palazzo Vecchio, the Duomo and the churches of Santa Croce, Santa Maria Novella and Santo Spirito are the landmarks that I use to orient myself when my wanderings take me to an unfamiliar neighbourhood. The restriction on private cars in the historic centre means that the streets belong to walkers and that the only vehicles to be dodged are bicycles, slow moving taxis, the occasional police car and, from time to time, a horse and buggy taking an excited visitor on a tour through the Piazza della Republica or to the piazza in front of the Baptistry and the Duomo.

I spent many pleasant hours on my patio at home last summer conducting research on potential apartments for this trip. In the end, I chose to be steps from the Ponte Vecchio, where the view from the living room and bedroom is an historic building that sports gargoyles on its façade and a luxury watch shop and the city’s museum ticket office on the street level. Turning left on the street takes me to the Ponte Vecchio. Turning right to the Piazza della Repubblica’s merry-go-round, shops and cafes. Or I can take a sharp right at the first narrow street to go the Uffizi Galleries and the always crowded Piazza della Signoria.

The art and architecture of Florence are stunning. But the best and most magical moments of this past week have been the conversations with the people I’ve met while exploring. 

Like Salvatore and Frederico, who run the restaurant whose windowed dining room faces the main door to my building. I met them both on my first day in the city centre while enjoying pappardelle al ragù di cinghiale, the local dish of silky noodles in a tomato sauce rich with wild boar. My Italian, good enough to carry on a decent conversation, often leads to an extended exchange about where I’m from and what I’ll be doing in Florence. As soon as Salvatore and Frederico learned that I would be their neighbour for the next two months, they became my new local friends. Since that first day, every time I walk down the crowded street to head toward to the Ponte Vecchio or home from my latest outing, I hear one of them call out. “Adele!  Come va? Did you have a good day? When are you coming in for a glass of wine?”

Or Ronaldo, the waiter at one of my favourite restaurants. I was excited to introduce my friends, Mary Anne and Ken, to the wonderful food and atmosphere at Trattoria Ponte Vecchio. Mary Anne and I have been friends since the tenth grade and I’m thrilled that she and Ken, who she met while we were all students at the University of Waterloo almost 50 years ago, are sharing my Florentine adventure for two weeks. Dinner was wonderful, as I knew it would be. Our conversation was in English but both Mary Anne, whose family origins are in Sicily, and I valiantly tried to speak to Ronaldo in Italian. As we prepared to settle our bill, we discovered that his English was much more polished than our Italian and we asked him where he had studied it.  “At home – in Albania”, he answered. After a lovely conversation about his experience living in Italy, I asked how to say “thank you” in Albanian. “Nobody has ever asked me that”, he said, tears in his eyes. “May I hug you?” An unexpected and heartfelt bond that reminded us of the value of personal connection – even with someone we have only just met.

We have loved that every trattoria experience is much more than the fabulous food and wine that Florence has to offer. At Trattoria 4 Leoni, I enjoyed their signature fritto misto and a rollicking conversation with the wait staff in the southern Italian dialect I learned as a child. Once we established that my family is from Basilicata and they were originally from neighbouring Puglia, we started speaking in dialect, much to the confusion of the local Tuscan patrons. “Cra, piscra, piscreed!”, cried out one of our waiters, laughing and delighted to join in the conversation. Only those of us with roots in those southern Italian regions would recognize those words as “tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and the day after the day after tomorrow”. 

I have seven more weeks in Florence to be a flâneuse, both on my own and with the friends and family that will join me.  Can’t wait to see what new discoveries I’ll make and people I’ll meet as I explore this wondrous city!

Family, Friends and Food

“We never used Parmesan cheese – only Pecorino” Mary Anne tells me as we to gather ingredients to make her father’s breaded cauliflower recipe, his signature dish served only on special occasions like Christmas, birthdays and baptism or confirmation celebrations.

We first met more than 50 years ago, in Mrs. Chan’s grade 10 math class, when cooking was the last thing on our minds. Nor could we imagine ourselves as future 60-somethings sharing recipes when we joined the Drama Club (Mary Anne) and ran for Vice-President of Student Council (me) or were out on Saturday evenings to see The Godfather, The Sting, and The Way We Were.  We shopped for dresses for our graduation formal, went on well-chaperoned senior class trips to Europe and looked forward to ditching our green-kilted Catholic school uniforms to head off to university – all while the drama of Watergate dominated the news of the day.

Mary Anne would pull into our driveway in her parents’ long sedan, the heavy Toronto phone book on the driver’s seat to ensure she could see over the steering wheel.  I would drive a few miles north to her house for a dinner featuring Mrs. Bondi’s meatballs or to dress together for our graduation formal. Five decades later, we were still talking about those fabulous meatballs as we gathered in Mary Anne’s kitchen with her sisters, Nataline and Josephine, for an afternoon of cooking and reminiscing.

As we caught up over lunch before starting to cook, Nataline presented a handwritten list of favourite meals from their family table. Many of the items reflected the Bondi family Sicilian heritage. Caponata, the agridolce (sweet and sour) version of ratatouille that features eggplant, sundried tomatoes, capers, celery, green olives and onions dressed with vinegar, sugar and salt. And other dishes that brought back memories of our family’s dinners. Chicken and potatoes roasted with lemon, olive oil and oregano.  Fried smelts for Friday nights.  Meatballs, spareribs and braciole in long-simmered tomato sauce for Sunday lunch. Pasta al forno for large family gatherings.

Josephine and Cosmo Bondi, Mary Anne’s parents, worked long hours in the family fruit store business alongside Josephine’s parents and her brother, Anthony (Uncle Tony) and his wife, Providence (Aunt Provi). Josephine Scolaro Bondi was born in Sicily and immigrated to Canada with her parents, Josephine and Jim, as a young child.  She served as a role model for the modern woman as she did it all – raising three daughters while working in the family business in customer service and as accountant, sign maker, greeter, buyer/receiver and payroll and HR manager. When both parents were busy in the store, it was usually Mary Anne’s grandmother who prepared the daily family dinner for the extended family of parents, aunts, uncles and cousins.

The sisters reminisced about cooking with their parents as we worked together to prepare a few of their family recipes. “We fried the cauliflower in a large pot of oil on the barbeque, to keep the kitchen clean”, explained Mary Anne. “And I still do!”.  As with so many Italian-Canadian families, the backyard patio was also the site for the annual September ritual of preparing tomato sauce. “The basement kitchen opened out to the patio, where we set up burners to cook the tomatoes”, recalls Josephine.

As Nataline and I chopped onions, garlic and parsley, I confided that she was the inspiration for my long career in technology.  It was a visit with Nataline 50 years ago, during her final year of university, that inspired me to apply to the B.Math program at the University of Waterloo. Math wasn’t a popular option for a girl in 1974 – only about 15% of our first-year class were women.  And I had been dissuaded to major in math my (male) high school guidance counsellor, who advised that pharmacy was a much better career for a housewife. This was, after all, 1974! I was long overdue to let Nataline know that, while I didn’t follow in her footsteps as a math teacher as I had originally planned, I owe my career to her for modelling that a degree in mathematics was possible for me.

We sliced crusty Italian rolls, spread them with olive oil, added anchovies and grated Pecorino and wrapped them in foil to prepare them for the oven. We butterflied and pounded the pork tenderloin and stuffed it with breadcrumbs and chopped tomato and onion laced with olive oil. Nataline demonstrated her method for tying the roast with kitchen twine before sliding it into the oven to roast.

As dinner cooked and we cleared the kitchen and set the dinner table, Mary Anne and I recollected our high school crushes, both those we had admitted to and those that we had kept as secret for 50 years. We remembered our first year at the University of Waterloo, where we were roommates in Notre Dame College, and how we adapted to shared dormitory bathrooms and showers, the daunting prospect of university-level courses and, of course, meals in the cafeteria that definitely had not been prepared by our Italian mothers.

As we sat down to dinner, Mary Anne’s husband, Ken, poured the Cosmo Sicilia Rosso red wine that I had been excited to find, to honour Mr. Bondi as we shared this meal.  I felt blessed to join the sisters, along with Ken, and Josephine’s husband, Elio, to enjoy a meal that celebrated the Bondi family food traditions as well as our long friendship. We raised a toast to Mrs. Bondi, an elegant woman of extraordinary grace, whose love for and devotion to her family was at the heart of her life. And to Mr. Bondi, whose quiet strength was an immeasurable gift to his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

I often make the stuffed pork tenderloin using Mary Anne’s recipe. Each time I do, I am reminded of the three F’s that bring joy to my life – family, friends and food. And count myself lucky to be rich in all three.

Stuffed Pork Tenderloin

Ingredients

1 lb (500 grams) pork tenderloin

1/3 cup (65 grams) day-old Italian or French bread, cubed

½ small onion, diced

2 tablespoons parsley, chopped

1 medium sized tomato, seeded and chopped finely

3 tablespoons olive oil, divided

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon pepper

Method

Preheat oven to 325 F

Slice tenderloin lengthwise to butterfly it.  (Do not slice all the way through.)  Use a meat pounder or the dull edge of a chef’s knife to pound the loin to flatten it.  Season with salt and pepper.

Tear bread by hand or use a food processor to make a medium crumb.

In a medium bowl, combine bread, chopped onion, parsley and tomato, salt, pepper, oregano and 2 tablespoons of olive oil.  Mix well.

Spread the stuffing across the flattened loin and join the edges.

• Tie the loin with cotton kitchen twine: 

• Using a piece of twine twice the length of the roast, hold the twine tautly and slide it underneath the far end of the roast. Wrap it around the roast, ensuring that the stuffing is contained, and make a double knot.

• Make a loop large enough to fit around the roast and slide the roast through it, spacing it a few inches below the first twine wrap.  Tie a double knot.

• Repeat the process until the roast is completely tied.

• To finish, turn the roast over and slide the twine up through the looped, tied twine.

Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a cast iron pan over medium-high heat.  When the pan is hot, slide in the tied roast, cut side up.  Cook until browned, approximately 4 minutes.  Carefully turn the roast, using tongs, to brown all sides.

Place the pan in the oven and cook until the internal temperature reaches 145F – approximately 15 minutes.

Remove from the oven, cover with foil and let rest for 10 minutes before slicing.  Remove the twine from each slice before serving.

In the backyard of my parents first house - a three-story Victorian just off College Street, the backbone of Toronto’s Little Italy in the 1950’s and early 1960’s - Dad planted a peach tree in the middle of the backyard. Those peaches were pale stand-ins for the juicy purple figs from Italy that he so dearly missed.  He then dug up the lawn between the tree and garage to plant tomatoes, zucchini, and green beans.  And, of course, cucuzza longa– the summer squash from Southern Italy and a staple on our dinner table.

When we moved from Little Italy to the western suburbs of Toronto in the spring of 1967, we were the only Italians in our neighbourhood and, soon enough, the only family with a huge backyard vegetable garden. Dad planted another peach tree in the middle of the yard and then worked hard to replace the back third of the lawn with topsoil. And, year after year, truckloads of raw manure – what we would now call organic and unprocessed, but then was simply disgusting and smelly – was dumped onto our driveway.  But the manure worked its magic and the garden thrived with row upon row of tomatoes, beans, zucchini and cucumbers, both those we could find in any supermarket and taragin, the rounder, slightly fuzzier version originally from Bari. And, in a special place of honour on the eastern edge of the garden, the cucuzza. 

Using scrap pieces of lumber, Dad built a wooden trellis from which the cuccuza could hang so that it could grow as long as possible without hitting the ground.  And grow it did – taller than Dad!

The garden had its annual rhythm. Hoeing and planting after the last frost, picking the first ripe tomato in July (on a good year, around my sister Mary Ann’s birthday), collecting cucumbers and taragin throughout the summer, planting garlic in November for its harvest the following spring. And, of course, letting the cuccuza grow as long as possible before finally taking it off the vine. 

As Dad grew older, my sisters took over the annual spring hoeing and planting and the fall harvest and clean-up of the garden. The cucuzza continued to take pride of place in the garden, long after Mom and Dad were the only ones left at home to eat it.  “Take some home with you!”, they would offer at each summer visit.  It was impressive in size – but, for my taste, the least appetizing of the squash family.  I have never cooked it and am happy to keep it as a memory of childhood dinners that I didn’t look forward to.

Dad’s garden provided not only vegetables, but, as important, memories of growing up in rural southern Italy even as he lived and worked in the biggest city of his adopted country of Canada. His garden continued to be his happy place long after his bad knees and advanced age made it impossible for him to hoe, weed, water and harvest. 

I was struck by the scene in the The Godfather, when the elderly Vito Corleone dies while playing with his grandson among his beloved tomato plants. I always thought that would be the perfect way for Dad to end his time on earth, but sadly, life rarely imitates art and Dad’s last days were spent in a bleak hospital room instead of his garden.  Still, the abiding love he had for that garden has left his children and grandchildren with an enduring appreciation for rewards of growing vegetables.

Knowing how much work that Dad and later, my sisters, put into that vegetable garden, I limited my urban farming to patio pots of basil, mint, thyme, sage and rosemary.  But I found myself missing the ready access to fresh tomatoes to serve with that basil, an abundance of zucchini throughout the summer and beets to pickle in September.  This year, my husband promised to build garden planters as a birthday gift for me. Peter had to wait for months after my January birthday to source just the right wood for the two waist-high boxes that now extend our patio by four feet.  He spent hours building and staining the planters and constructing a platform to support the soil to fill them to a two-foot depth – ideal for the tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, beets, swiss chard and zucchini we would plant. 

Peter are I are not engineers, so neither of us thought to factor in the weight of the water for our newly planted seedlings.  We watched in horror as both gardens sank the first time they were watered! Back to the planter drawing board, Peter designed a stronger base and spent days emptying both planters of topsoil and delicate plants, rebuilding the platform to its new specs and refilling and replanting.

His hours of hard work have been worth it.  It has been incredibly satisfying to make dinner using the tomatoes, zucchini and swiss chard picked fresh from our garden. The chard continues to sprout new leaves in defiance of the early fall frosts and there are now lots of green tomatoes sitting on the kitchen counter in hopes they will ripen. 

But the real star of the garden has been the pumpkin plant that has taken over its planter, crowding out the cucumber and zucchini.  As the rest of garden is ready to be put to bed for the winter, the pumpkin continues made its way over the side of the planter to crawl across the patio.  It boasts only one small, green gourd that has been sampled by one of the garden’s resident squirrels.  So, I’ve come to accept that there won’t be a home-grown pumpkin on our porch on Halloween.  And that’s okay – I can buy the makings for a jack-o-lantern at any of the local roadside farm stands. 

Our front porch may not boast a pumpkin from our garden, but the treasured zucchini and pumpkin blossoms that I’ve harvested, stuffed with ricotta and baked to crunchy perfection have been the true rewards of those plants. We’ve enjoyed stuffed blossoms during August and September and I look forward to planting squash again next year – if only to harvest the delicate flowers.

I doubt that Dad would approve of a garden that doesn’t include cucuzza, but I like to believe that he would be glad to know that his gardening traditions live on.  And that he taught us that there is nothing more delicious than a meal made with vegetables we planted, tended to and harvested mere feet away from our kitchens.

Baked Stuffed Squash Blossoms

If you don’t have blossoms to pick from your garden, you can find them at farmers’ markets or sometimes in grocery stores.  The blossoms are very delicate and last only a day so in the fridge.

Stuffed blossoms can be deep fried or baked.  I use this baking method for a crunchy, lighter version of the dish.

Ingredients

10 – 15 squash blossoms

For the filling

1 cup ricotta

1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil

1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley

½  tsp each of salt and pepper

A small grating or 1/8 teaspoon of fresh nutmeg

For the coating

1½ cups panko bread crumbs (you can also use regular bread crumbs)

2 tablespoons grated parmesan or pecorino cheese

2 large eggs

Olive oil to spray

Method

1. Set oven to 350 F.  If your oven has a convection setting, use that – it will allow for all sides of the blossom to crisp up nicely.

2. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

3. Lightly brush off blossoms and carefully open the flower to remove the stamen inside.

4. Combine the filling ingredients in a bowl and then place in a piping bag or a medium-size plastic freezer bag.  If using a freezer bag, make a diagonal cut in one corner of the bag.

5. Gently open each blossom and pipe in the filling.  Once full, twist the flower shut to seal.

6. Combine bread crumbs and cheese on a plate.  Whisk eggs in a medium sized bowl.

7. Dip each stuff each blossom into the eggs, letting excess egg mixture drip off.  Then roll in the bread crumb mixture and place on the baking sheet.

8. Spray the stuffed and coated blossoms lightly with olive oil and bake for 15 minutes or until browned.

My cousin and his family were hosting my son and me for our first meal with extended family in Pisticci.  David had spent much of the pandemic working on our family tree, focusing on his father’s English and Irish branches.  This visit to our tiny ancestral home town in southern Italy would be his first opportunity to see for himself the places he had heard about from his Nonna and Nonno’s stories and to meet the Italian side of his family.

Though David is very much an adult, I had, in true Italian mother fashion, worried about how he would fare as a vegan on this trip.  So much of Italian cuisine centres on meat and cheese. Pasta with veal ragu, sprinkled with parmesan or pecorino cheese. The incomparable Bistecca Fiorentina.  Buffalo mozzarella on Naples’ famous pizza. Seafood pulled fresh from the Adriatic. Would David be able enjoy the wonderful food that is such a central part of any visit to Italy?  How would family react to this way of eating?  I couldn’t help but think about the scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding when an aunt proclaims: "What do you mean, he don't eat no meat?... That's okay. I make lamb." 

Pisticci is perched at the top of a hill and provides incredible views over an expansive green valley and the surrounding towns of the province of Matera.  Located in the arch of the boot that forms the Italian peninsula, the town itself is shrinking drastically in population as young people move to nearby Marconia for modern and larger homes and closer proximity to jobs. But it was the old Pisticci that I wanted to show David, with its signature white houses, churches that had towered above those homes for hundreds of years and the piazzas that I remembered so vividly from my childhood visits. 

We were embraced by family as though we had just been away for an extended holiday as we lugged our suitcases off the train at the tiny station.  And, as families do, we teased each other as we loaded up the car about the grey hair and extra pounds that we had all accumulated since we had last seen each other.

I translated the animated conversation from Pisticesse dialect to English and back as Giovanni navigated the impossibly narrow streets that wound their way to the very top of the hill to our Airbnb in Terra Vecchia (literally “old land).  “You will come to our house in campania for lunch tomorrow.” declared Giovanni.  “The whole family will be there!”

Giovanni and his wife, Giovanna, spend summers in their home in the countryside just outside of town.  My father’s sister, Antonietta, renowned as being as strong as a donkey and just as stubborn, had felt most at home here.  Giovanni has inherited his mother’s love of the countryside and animals. His pride and joy are the beautiful horses he keeps – including miniature ponies for his three little granddaughters. We were greeted by Giovanni and Francesca, his youngest granddaughter, who took David by the hand to tour him through the farm to meet her horse and the chickens, lambs and rabbits.  And then into the house – filled with the wonderful and familiar aromas of simmering tomato sauce and roasting meat. We had come home!

David is no stranger to a traditional Italian family Sunday lunch - but Giovanna had outdone herself to welcome us to Pisticci and her home.  “This is the speck ham that I made from the pig we raised last year.  For David we have artichokes and roasted eggplant and zucchini.”  The abundant antipasto was followed by pasta served with that aromatic tomato sauce and bowls of sausage and meatballs, lamb that had been raised on the farm, French fries, salad, fresh fruit and homemade pastries.  “How many courses are there in this lunch?” asked David as walnuts were passed around to be enjoyed with Pisticci’s locally made liqueur, Amaro Lucano.

The wealth of food and family continued throughout our stay as we were hosted by cousins on both my mother’s and father’s sides of the family and treated to meals that are family mainstays. Orecchiette and rapini for lunch with Ninetta, who also introduced David to lampascioni, the bulb of the hyacinth plant that is a traditional dish of southern Italy.  Swiss chard braised in garlic and olive oil, just as I make it, with Lilia and Umberto.  And, of course, pizza.

Wood smoke from the pizza oven and the joyful pandemonium of the gathering of fifteen cousins greeted us as we walked into Giovanni and Giovanna’s home for our final dinner with family. Wine was poured, beer bottles were popped open, Giovanni’s grandchildren squealed happily as he chased them around the living room and the long dinner table next to the pizza oven on the enclosed terrace was set.  Alessandro and Donato manned the oven, preparing the dough Alessandro had made earlier in the day.  Alessandro chose the toppings for each pizza: mozzarella, gorgonzola, prosciutto, mortadella, olives, eggplant, zucchini and even tofu, which Giovanna had thoughtfully included for David.  Donato slid pizza after pizza into the oven and served the finished products directly to the table from the metal peel.

In all, Alessandro and Donato turned out 36 pizzas – all beautifully thin, crisp and uniquely delicious. Perhaps it was the warm embrace of family, or the delight I took in watching the thoughtful assembly and cooking of each pizza, or the perfume of burning wood and melting cheese made this farewell dinner so wonderful. Because the evening wasn’t about pizza, of course, but about being welcomed by cousins we don’t see often enough and with whom we share a family history but very little knowledge of our daily joys, sorrows, challenges and aspirations.  And for David to meet and find a common language with people whose names he knew previously only as nodes on our family tree. 

We had worried that David’s choice of veganism would be met with doubt, if not scorn. Instead, it led to thoughtful conversations about his desire not to hurt animals. And how the traditional recipes that I learned to cook from my mother, so many of them based on vegetables grown in our family gardens, continue to be served on my cousins’ lunch and dinner tables.

It was a precious gift to visit Pisticci with David, to show him the home his Nonna grew up in, her grandmother’ farm where she played as a child, his Nonno’s family vineyard and the cemetery where the ancestors he has added to our family tree have been laid to rest.  I was comforted by the ease with which we navigated Pisticci’s winding streets and were able to banter with cousins with a mix of English, Pisticesse dialect and judicious use of Google Translate. 

Back home in Canada, the Swiss chard in my backyard garden is now flourishing alongside beets, lush zucchini plants that threaten to take over the planter, exquisite tomatoes and tiny, red-hot peppers.  Basil, sage, thyme and mint overflow from their patio pots.  I think about my family in Pisticci as I cook from my garden’s late summer bounty, knowing that I’m cooking much as my mother, grandmother and the generations that came before them did.  And as my son does in his vegan kitchen.

Dangerous Women in Italy

I discovered Somebody Feed Phil pre-pandemic, in 2018. Phil’s joy in experiencing food around the world reminded me of Graham Kerr, the Galloping Gourmet of 1960’s television who introduced me to the concept of the sensual pleasures of cooking and of sharing food with friends and family.

But it became too difficult to watch Phil eat cicchetti in Venice, gnocchi fritti in Modena and gelato in Florence while we were in Covid lockdown. As he points out on his Phil Rosenthal World website, “The problem with the world is that it’s not Italy.” And, as much as I love cooking in my own kitchen, we weren’t in Italy and couldn’t imagine when we would be able to return.

And then came Stanley Tucci.  I must admit that I’ve had a crush on Stanley since I first saw him in Big Night, the wonderful 1996 movie he co-wrote, co-directed and co-starred in. Inspired by Big Night, I tried to make a timpano one Christmas. This incredibly complicated dish, which consists of a pasta shell filled with more pasta, plus sausages, meatballs and hard-boiled eggs, was as important a character in Big Night as the chef brothers, Primo and Secondo. My timpano was a mess.  Tasty but a mess.  I choose to believe that my family gave me cooking points for trying.

The reviews of Stanley Tucci’s new CNN series, Searching for Italy, have been great - yet I hesitated to watch it.  I just didn’t want to relive that Covid lockdown sadness I experienced with Phil.

But there was no more need for hesitation when I headed to Italy in May with three friends for our long-promised trip to savour Italian food, wine and sunshine together. Sherry, Sherryl, Colleen and I had shared so much over our years of friendship. We had worked together, rejoiced together and mourned together through births, engagements, weddings, illness, deaths, career triumphs – and disappointments, great golf games and boring work dinners. After many years of talking about travelling to Italy and too many months of seeing each other only on computer screens, we booked our flights, packed our bags and set out for Venice and Tuscany.

The overnight flight from Montreal to Venice was the perfect opportunity to finally settle in and enjoy Stanley’s exploration of Italian food. I was surprised to find myself tearing up as I watched the episode on Tuscany. Except for the salt-free Tuscan bread, Stanley loved everything from the famous grilled Bistecca Fiorentina to the humble ribollita soup made with kale, white beans and stale bread.  What a great way to prepare for landing in the country I’ve come to think of as my home away from home!

Venice is a city of canals, of course, but also of winding, narrow streets that make it easy to get lost – in a good way. Sherryl and Colleen wasted no time in heading out to explore.  Their two-hour walk took them everywhere from Piazza San Marco and the Rialto bridge to the more residential parts of the city. We spent that evening toasting their discoveries with prosecco on our balcony as we listened to the gondoliers serenading their passengers on the canal below.

Italy is best experienced through food and there was no shortage of fabulous pasta, seafood and wine in Venice.  We appreciated the lovely gesture of a complimentary glass of limoncello after each dinner and, of course, had to try the gelato from the shop conveniently located next door to our apartment. Our day trip to Murano was as memorable for the pizzas and wine we shared in the pretty little garden courtyard restaurant as for the incredible blown glass creations in every shop window.

Venice is enchanting, but watching Stanley Tucci’s food adventures in Tuscany had made me even more excited for the next part of our trip. As the train travelled south from Venice, through Padua and Bologna and finally approached Florence, we were enchanted by the beautiful rolling hills and fields of brilliant red poppies. This was the Italy I had missed and longed for.

If Venice was about discovery and exploration, our five-day stay in a Tuscan villa was about the healing powers of friendship. It was on the first evening in the villa, we noted that how, despite the challenges of the past few years, we had survived, thrived and just generally kicked ass.  And we agreed that we are dangerous women.  Women who have been made strong by our experiences, who fiercely stand up for the people and issues we care about and who shouldn’t, under any circumstances, be crossed.  Cancer (or as I now refer to it, Fucking Cancer) had created chaos in all of our lives.  After more than two years of managing devastating diagnoses, surgeries and treatments and their side effects, we were all ready to put resilience, strength and worry aside to revel in the joy and solace we draw from being together.

Joy can come in many forms.  The soothing solitude of early morning coffee on the patio, basking in the sunshine and breathing in the aroma of the garden’s rosemary bushes and cedars.  The comforting companionship of friends as we sat by the pool in happy silence, reading or napping or daydreaming. And for me, the joy of exploring the aisles of an Italian supermarket to collect the ingredients for the lunches and dinners I looked forward to cooking in the villa’s kitchen.

Most people wouldn’t classify a grocery store as tourist destination.  But I’ve found that markets are the perfect places to learn about the cooking and culture of the place I’m visiting.  I counted myself blessed to spend time shopping with my dear friend, Alicia, who offered her guidance both as a local and a chef.  The hundreds of different kinds of pasta (a full aisle!), the wall of wine, the butcher and bakery counters and even the vast assortment of olives, capers and pickled vegetables provided a primer in the ingredients of Tuscan cooking.  The week’s meals were inspired by the incredible colour of the overflowing bins of eggplant, zucchini, kale, peppers and artichokes. The kitchen fully-stocked, I was ready to cook!

Of all the sweet memories of the trip, those of cooking together in the little kitchen with the view of the Tuscan hills and sharing meals with friends are the most precious. I demonstrated the art of stirring risotto, the proper (and simple) recipe for pasta carbonara and how to make a frittata.  For the dinner we hosted for local friends, both old and new, we enlisted one of those guests, Alex, to be in charge of barbequing the Bistecca Fiorentina and grilling the thinly sliced eggplant, zucchini and red peppers. All of which were enjoyed with gusto along with the incredible assortment of wine contributed by Lena, Silvia and Benedetta.

From the beauty of Venice to the sensual pleasure of strolling through the aisles of a Tuscan market to the absolute joy of sharing my love for the country, its culture and food with friends – our time in Italy was wonderful.  But the real magic was that of being together to revel in the pasta and wine, the gondola ride, the drive on twisting roads to the olive oil farm and, most importantly, the long talks over limoncello as the sun set behind the Tuscan hills.  We had delayed this trip and shared joy for too long – and I couldn’t be more grateful to Sherry, Sherryl and Colleen for making the journey with me.

I can turn to Stanley and Phil to keep the wonder of food and travel alive even when I’m happily cooking at home.  And to the memories we made to remind me of the power of bringing dangerous women together.

A few links to the fabulous places we visited while in Tuscany:

Villa La Ripa (https://www.villalaripa.it/en/) The wonderful little winery in Arezzo set in a beautiful villa that dates back centuries.  Visit the winery to see the villa and taste the fabulous wines courtesy of owner Dr. Saverio Luzzi and his knowledgeable and lovely staff members, Benedetta and Silvia.

Ravagni 1421 (www.ravagni.com)  Experience olive oil made in the traditional manner as hosted by the exuberant Francesco Ravagni Bartolomei.

Tuscookany Cooking School (https://tuscookany.com).  I’ve had the pleasure of attending three week-long courses at this wonderful school and can’t recommend it highly enough.  In addition to the wonderful food and wine I’ve learned about while there, I’ve also forged enduring friendships with chefs Alicia, Franco and Paola and managers Lena and Alex. 

Spinach Frittata

This easy to make dish great for lunch or a simple supper.  Frittata can be eaten hot or at room temperature and is perfect with good Italian bread and glass of good rosé or sparkling wine.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 shallot, sliced

4 large eggs

4 cups of spinach, washed

4 tablespoons of Percorino Romano or Parmesan cheese

¼ teaspoon sea salt

½ teaspoon freshly ground pepper

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 375 F.

2. Melt the butter and olive oil together over medium heat in an ovenproof frying pan and sauté the shallots until soft.

3. Add spinach to the pan and sauté until wilted.

4. Beat the eggs, cheese, salt and pepper together in a bowl and add to the shallots, ensuring that the mixture covers the bottom of the pan.

5. Cook until the bottom begins to set.  Lift the frittata with a spatula to allow some of the egg mixture to flow to the bottom of the pan.

   

6. When the bottom of the frittata is cooked, move the pan to the oven and bake until brown and puffy – about 10 minutes. 

The Italian word for this indispensable piece of kitchen equipment is spianatoia or, in Pisticesse dialect, tumbagne.  Measuring 36 inches by 36 inches and made of unfinished wood, I’ve used mine for more than 45 years to roll out pasta, knead bread dough and to valiantly attempt (and mostly fail) to make pie crusts.

We watched Mom make pasta for special occasions - lasagna, maccheroni al ferro (long pasta rolled into spirals using knitting needles) and my favourite, orecchiette.  She would pull the well-used tumbagne from its spot behind the extra table in the basement kitchen and set up the simple ingredients – all-purpose flour and a glass of water.  “I taught myself to make pasta from watching the women in my village”, she tells me.  “My older sisters or our neighbour or aunt would ask for my help and that’s how I learned.” 

Covid lockdowns meant that, like families around the world, I didn’t see my mother, the rest of my family or my friends for much of 2020.  One of the few silver linings of that isolation was the necessity (or opportunity, depending on how I looked at it each day) to up my cooking game.  My tumbagne, long relegated to the garage, came out of hibernation, was wiped down and oiled and put into use.  I foraged for and stocked up on yeast and flour (remember how difficult it was to find those ingredients in the early days of the pandemic?) and set to work making scones, hot cross buns and baguettes.  This mostly reminded me that I’m not much of a baker.  Baking requires accuracy of measurement and sticking to the ingredient list in the recipe.  I prefer to improvise and make changes or additions according to my mood and experience with a recipe. I’ve almost accepted the fact that this just doesn’t work when baking.

When restrictions eased during the first summer of Covid, Mom came to visit and we decided to cook together.  It was well past time for me to master the art of making orecchiette and my friend, Joanne, wanted to learn from, as she put it, a real Italian Nonna.  We set the tumbagne out on my kitchen island and went to work.

Mom doesn’t measure ingredients.  She scooped flour into a mound on the board, made a hole in the centre and added just the right amount of water to develop the perfect consistency of dough to knead and roll into ropes of pasta. 

“I need a knife”, she announced.  “What kind of knife?” She looked exasperated.  A knife to cut and roll the orecchiette of course!  A paring knife? No.  A butter knife?  That wouldn’t work either.  Mom became impatient and I rattled through kitchen drawers to find just the right tool.  She finally settled on a combination of a round-tipped dinner knife and her thumb to roll out perfectly shaped little ears of pasta.

Joanne and I didn’t fare so well.  We inevitably cut pieces that were too large or too small and proceed to roll out our sad imitations of my mother’s work.  Mom looked at our creations, shook her head and sighed.  “No – not right!”.  She gathered up our little ears, kneaded them back into a roll and tried to show us, yet again, the right method of forming the orecchiette.  Mom’s decades of experience make this look effortless.  Joanne and I were apparently hopeless and dissolved into laughter as she continued to reject all of our work.  As beginners, we couldn’t pass Mom’s inspection, much less make the process look easy.

Mom eventually gave up on us and easily rolled out enough little pasta ears to cover the tumbagne, ready to be cooked along with rapini and sausage for dinner.

Did Joanne and I learn how to make orecchiette that summer day?  No – but we did learn that, like so many other things in life, we can keep trying, laugh at our failures, celebrate the successes and keep practicing until our fingers figure out just the right way to roll the dough.

The best part of the day was working with Mom and watching her despair and laugh at our ineptitude.  I can buy orecchiette at the Italian grocery store.  There is no substitute for the memories made that day.

Two years later, Mom hasn’t given up on trying to teach me the art of making those little ears.  “I’ll show you the next time we get together”, she announced when I asked her recently about the proportions of flour to water for the recipe.  And I’ll keep practicing – and cherishing the time spent with her.

Orecchiette with Sausage and Rapini

If you’re not lucky enough to have a mother or Nonna to make orecchiette from scratch, they can be found in the pasta aisle of Italian grocery stores.  Small pasta shells are a good substitute.

Ingredients

Two cups of uncooked orecchiette or small pasta shells

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 cloves of garlic, sliced

1 bunch or rapini, rough ends trimmed

2 Italian sausages (sweet or hot), removed from their casings

Hot pepper flakes and sea salt to taste

Grated Parmesan cheese

Method

Bring a large pot of well-salted water to a boil.  Prepare a large bowl of ice water. While the water is boiling, wash and roughly chop the rapini. 

Add the rapini to the boiling water and cook for three to four minutes.  Remove from the pot with a slotted spoon and add to the ice water. This blanching will keep the rapini bright green.

Add the pasta to the boiling water and cook for two minutes less than package directions.

While the pasta is cooking, heat the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat and add the sausage.  Cook until browned and no pink remains.  Add the sliced garlic and cook for one minute.

Drain the pasta, reserving 3/4 cup of pasta water.  Drain the rapini.

Add the pasta, rapini and pasta water to the sausage and garlic.  Stir together and cook over medium heat until the pasta finishes cooking – about two minutes.

Season to taste with salt and hot pepper flakes and serve with grated Parmesan cheese.

I returned to Pisticci in with my parents, brother and sisters 1970 and again, with a friend, in 2016.  Returning as an adult felt so very different and far more anxiety-producing than travelling as a tourist to Florence, Rome and Milan - all cities with no family or family history.  Would I recognize my cousins, who I hadn’t seen in almost 50 years?  Was this my clichéd attempt to find my roots and learn who I really was? 

My cousins and I had all aged, of course, in those 46 years.  But we connected immediately, with stories of our parents and news of my sisters and brother from Canada.  And I was thrilled that I knew how to find the house where my mother was born, the piazza where we bought gelato with our saved-up lira coins as kids and how to walk to visit my father’s side of the family.  The years had weathered us but the white-washed homes, built over hundreds of years of history of the town, hadn’t changed at all.

Just as had been true decades earlier, the best part of the trip was going back to the homes in campagna that had been passed down from my grandparents to my aunts and uncles and now to my cousins and their children.  San Leonardo smelled of sunshine and fig trees and was as wild and beautiful as when we gathered fallen almonds and cracked the green outer shells to reveal the perfect brown nuts inside.  My cousins and I laughed at how alarmed we Canadian city-raised kids were by the tiny lizards that climbed up the bedroom walls and the horror of walking into the barn as Zia Rosa dispatched the chickens that would become that evening’s dinner. 

The homes in campagna, which had provided eggs, vegetables and the occasional chicken to my parents’ families when food was scarce during World War II, are now used primarily for weekend getaways. Although the hardships of 80 years ago are but stories we’ve heard from our parents and grandparents, my cousin Giovanni continues to work his country land.  He distributes the eggs supplied by his brood of chickens to the customers of his property management business.  The olives from his trees are harvested to produce litres of the superb deep green oil he decants into repurposed plastic pop bottles.  And each January, as is the tradition in southern Italy, he slaughters the pig he raised the previous year.

That pig is transformed into prosciutto, sausages, salami, pancetta, roasts and chops that are served at Giovanni’s family table throughout the year.

Nose-to-tail eating has been a trend in North America but is certainly nothing new in Italy.  “Del maiale non si butta via niente”, which translates to “nothing is thrown away from the pig” has been the theme of the Sagra del Maiale or Festival of the Pig in Italy for centuries. So we were excited to head out to the Basilicata Cultural Society of Canada in Woodbridge, just outside of Toronto – miles away both literally and figuratively from rural southern Italy – for our first Sagra del Maiale experience.

We had been looking forward to this special dinner as the perfect antidote to the short and dreary days of mid-January.  Thanks to Covid’s latest incarnation and the resulting lockdowns, the dinner was cancelled and we went back, yet again, to yearning to share meals with family and friends.  And although mid-March isn’t the traditional time to celebrate all that the pig brings to the table, this was definitely a case of better late than never.

And celebrate the pig we did!  Dinner started, as expected, with appetizer platters of salami, capicollo and sausage and bowls of spicy sausage meat to share.  But was the tray of piedini di maiale bolliti or boiled pigs’ feet, that was the surprise dish of the evening.  Years of living in Waterloo and celebrating Oktoberfest has taught me to love barbequed pig tails, so I should have expected this element of nose-to-tail eating.  Since pigs’ feet were not part of my family’s food tradition, I was glad when Enzo, the chef for the evening, dropped by our table to ask how we were enjoying our meal. 

“The pigs’ feet are boiled and served cold, as a snack or appetizer, with lemon”, he explained.  Consisting mainly of chewy cartilage and skin, this isn’t a dish that that is hearty enough to spoil your appetite for the ensuring courses of the evening.  My take:  I’d be happy to try these again but not intrigued enough to make them at home. 

Appetizers were followed by the pasta course, a delicious pasta and fagioli with pork rind.  Anyone who has attended an Italian wedding knows not to fill up on pasta - so many other courses will follow! We laughed as my cousin, Leo, who absolutely knows better, had four helpings of this fabulous comfort dish. “It’s the best part of dinner!”, he proclaimed, as he made sure there were no leftovers from our table.

Between courses, we talked about the challenges of dealing with lawyers in Italy, our childhood memories of the glory days of the Toronto Maple Leafs and, of course, Canadian politics.  One of our tablemates had contributed wine from Basilicata, D'Angelo Aglianico del Vulture, made from grapes grown on an extinct volcano.  The wine no doubt contributed to the quality and gravity of the conversation and prepared us for the feature of the dinner – the main course.

Enzo returned to the table to present the roast pork and sausages and talk about where he had sourced and how he had prepared the meat. “You have to know your butcher to make sure you get the best quality sausage.”  I recall my mother saying the same thing and, until only a few years ago, making her own sausage each year so that she knew exactly what was in it.  The roast was from the “coppa”, an extension of the loin that runs through the pork shoulder. Enzo described how he studded the roast with garlic and roasted it slowly in white wine.  The meat was fork tender and redolent with garlic. Spectacular!

Though this dinner was to mark the Sagra del Maiale, there was another reason to celebrate, with yet more traditional food to mark the occasion.  We were gathering on March 19, the feast of St. Joseph and Italian Fathers’ Day, making the only option for dessert Zeppole di San Giuseppe.  I had learned earlier in the month that, although Italian bakeries feature zeppole in their display cases before March 19, they are traditionally not served before the feast day.

It’s true that you eat with your eyes first - and the beautiful cream-filled pastries, each topped with an Amarena cherry, didn’t disappoint. I wondered if we could manage dessert after that multi-course feast. Of course we did! 

The Sagra del Maiale dinner was delicious, but the best part of the evening was, as always, spending time with family and friends, especially after a long, cold and dark winter.  These gatherings have reconnected me with family members we haven’t seen in years and introduced me to fellow members of the Basilicata community in Toronto.  What a wonderful way to celebrate the gifts of the pig and of community on a rainy Saturday evening!

Pasta e Fagioli (4 servings)

Ingredients

¼ cup guanciale or pancetta

540 ml can cannellini or white navy beans, drained and rinsed

1 small onion, diced

1 small carrot, diced

1 clove garlic, minced

¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes

1 ½ cups chicken or vegetable broth

2 cups pasta shells

3 tablespoons parsley

Method

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to boil.  Add pasta shells to the boiling water and cook until still al dente – about three minutes less than the recommended cooking time on the package.

2. While the pasta is cooking, add the guanciale or pancetta to a large sauce pan on high heat to render the fat.  Once the guanciale is crisp and the fat is rendered, add the diced onion and carrot and stir over medium heat until the vegetables are soft – about four minutes.  Add the garlic and stir for one minute.

3. Add the drained beans, red pepper flakes and broth and simmer for 10 minutes.

4. Drain the pasta shells, saving a cup of pasta water.  Add the drained pasta to the bean mixture and cook, stirring often, for three to four minutes or until pasta is cooked through.

5. Taste and adjust for salt and serve with chopped parsley and grated parmesan.

Roast Pork (4 to 6 servings)

Thanks to Enzo at the Basilicata Club and Toronto chef and friend, Massimo Capra, for their advice on choosing the right cut of meat for this delicious roast!

Ingredients

2-3 lb coppa pork roast or cottage roll

Kosher salt

Freshly ground black pepper

4 cloves of garlic, slivered

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 large onions, sliced

2 large carrots, slices lengthwise

¾ cup dry white wine

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 300 degrees F.

2. Generously season the roast on all sides with Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper.

3. Using the tip of a sharp knife, poke holes all over the roast and insert slivers of garlic in each hole.

4. In a Dutch oven or other lidded pan large enough to hold the roast, heat the olive oil over high heat until shimmering and add the roast.

5. Brown the roast on all sides.  Remove from the pan from the heat, move the roast to a plate and add onions and carrots to the pan. 

6. Place the roast on top of the vegetables in the pan, add the white wine and cover the pan.

7. Roast for two hours and serve with roasted potatoes or polenta.

My birth certificate and passport insist that I’m officially a senior citizen.  If reaching that milestone has taught me nothing else, it has been that we need to celebrate the present instead of mourning the loss of what was. That isn’t limited to youthful energy and looks.  Places change, mature and evolve as much, if not more, than people do.  

As we emerged from more than a year of pandemic distance last fall, I invited my son to spend an afternoon with me to walk the streets of the Toronto neighbourhood where I grew up. David has heard my stories of the big three-story house on Roxton Road and how I had learned to navigate the streetcar and the subway as a ten-year-old. Now I wanted to see those streets through his fresh eyes.

David and I meet on College Street - the literal centre of my universe as a kid. The eight blocks between Ossington Avenue to the west and Manning Avenue to the east was the dividing line between home and school, and, most importantly, where my best friend, Susie, lived. We had no idea that just a few blocks east was the University of Toronto, where David would go to school and I would work 40 years later.   

I tell David how, as seven and eight-year-olds, my sister and I would make the Saturday afternoon trip on our own to St. Francis church for weekly confession.  Along the way, we would pass the Power store – the one supermarket in the neighbourhood - and Porco Brothers Food Market, whose name always made us laugh. I point to where Celestino’s shoe store once stood. This is where my parents would take us to buy the white shoes to wear with our first communion dress.  And I explain how important the chalky Sani-White shoe polish was, to dab on the sad but inevitable scuffs on what were supposed to be pristine white shoes reserved exclusively for Sunday church wear.

Near the corner of Grace Street was Il Gatto Nero, the espresso bar that was the dark, smoke-filled domain of men and where no woman would dare enter. We could catch a glimpse of the young men, their dark, Brylcreemed hair shining through the smoky haze, standing at the bar downing their espressos.  The older men, felt hats on their laps, sat together at one of the small tables, smoking cigarettes, playing cards and reading the Corriere Canadese. How could this precursor to the ubiquitous neighbourhood coffee bars of today been such a dangerous and forbidden place for a young girl in the 1960s?

Lombardi’s Supermarket, a much brighter and louder landmark, dominated the corner of College and Grace Streets. The store itself was secondary to the CHIN Radio marquee, the Italian chatter and music broadcast to the street from its outdoor speakers.  Johnny Lombardi was a huge celebrity in the community – known for his store, his radio station and the annual CHIN picnic and bikini contests. I only recently learned that his family emigrated to Canada from Pisticci, my parents’ home town in Italy, and that the family name had been changed to Lombardi from Barbalinardo to make it easier for non-Italians to pronounce. 

David and I walk west and pass the Protestant church at the corner of Shaw and College Streets where, as Catholics, we were strictly forbidden to enter. The building is now a dance club and looks just as dark and gloomy as it did in 1963. I realize that I am as unlikely to enter it in its current incarnation as I was as a child.

The dry cleaner next door to the church was where we would go to exchange five cents for plastic bags to protect our Bristol board projects on Marco Polo or fall leaves. The space now is now a bank in a non-descript 1980’s brick structure that I can’t help but compare to the stately, pillared bank buildings of my childhood.

We stop in front of 784 College Street - PaintLounge. In 1965, this was Susie’s home.  Each morning, I took the short cut through the park across the street from our house to the crosswalk at the corner of Shaw and College Streets. I stood at the curb, extended my arm and pointed my finger until traffic stopped and only then would I cross the street to walk the half-block to meet Susie at Sicilia Bakery. Her parents owned the bakery and the family lived in the apartment above the store. I envied Susie. She had a hi-fi and Beatles albums and the white Go-Go boots I so desperately wanted instead of the ugly brown rubber galoshes I had to wear. It was Susie who explained the mechanics of sex to me, inexplicably using whales instead of humans to describe the process. 

Most mornings, while I waited for Susie to come downstairs, her father would come out from the back of the store, wearing his immaculate white baker’s uniform, to greet me with a chocolate glazed donut that was still puffy and warm from the fryer. The donut was pillowy soft and just the right amount of sweet, made even better by the slightly bitter chocolate glaze. That donut was gone in four bites, finished before we left for school.

The bakery’s glass cases held so many treasures. Cannoli, gloriously brown and crunchy and filled with sweet ricotta. The pastries that looked exactly like luscious peaches - pink and round filled with thick, sweet cream. The small, round cookies, each topped with an almond or a bright cherry. And during Easter season, the marzipan lambs decorated with swirled icing to look like curly white fur.

But nothing was better than the lemon gelato. It was pure white, tart enough to make my mouth pucker and sweet enough to be a treat. I have searched for its equal in in Rome, Florence, Venice, Pisa and Siena without success. Fifty-five years later, Susie and I remain friends, and she is delighted to hear that I can still taste that gelato. “My mother squeezed the lemons by hand every morning to make that gelato.  I’m sure you’re tasting the love she put into each batch.”

I pull out my phone to call Susie as David and I stand in front of her former home. “There’s a manicure place upstairs now,” she tells me. We agree to return together soon, for a manicure in what used to be her pink bedroom, where we debated whether the Beatles should be banned and how sex actually worked.  To reminisce and to catch up on news of our parents, children and grandchildren. 

We cross the street to The Nookie – a “luxury sex shop.” This used to be the cigar store that my sisters and I would walk to after school, where I could feel rich with a nickel in my pocket. It was dark inside and the off-limits section at the back was where the adult stuff was kept. Magazines. The titular cigars. But at the front of the store and with that nickel, I could buy a popsicle that I would split with my sister because a whole popsicle would melt before you could eat it. That same nickel would also be enough to come home with a regular-sized chocolate bar – Oh Henry or Sweet Marie - or box of Smarties. 

Next door is a dental and medical centre. I tell David that this had been the location of Blue Ribbon Stationers. I had discovered this store when Mrs. Gillis, our fifth-grade teacher, announced that we would be learning to write and instructed us to buy a fountain pen and a bottle of blue ink. We were so excited - no more printing for us! The stationery store was brightly lit and the clean and the vaguely chemical smell of paper and ink hit you as you opened the door. I was lured back many times to wander through the aisles, run my hands over the beautiful pieces of paper of every colour and daydream about what it would be like to actually own some of the many pens, pencils and crayons on display.  And so began my lifelong addiction to journals, note pads, markers and pens and my penchant for collecting pencils from my travels around the world.

 “We both love the paper stores we discovered in Florence,” David points out.  “You’ve passed along your love for all things writing to me.”    

Ball’s Drug Store, at the corner of Ossington Avenue, marked the end of our neighbourhood for me. I recall how the sound of the bell that rang as the door opened broke the solemn quiet of the pharmacy. The sharp, antiseptic smell of medicine and rubbing alcohol reminded me that I was on a serious errand. I would make my way to the pharmacist, standing on his elevated platform at the back of the store, to ask for baby aspirin or cough syrup, as instructed by my mother. This wasn’t a place to wander through the aisles. My job was to collect the white paper bag with the medicine and get it home quickly.

Ball’s is gone, of course, replaced by an Easy Financial outlet. Chain drug stores are now the norm and I can’t decide whether to feel sad or grateful to be able to access my prescription online or at any branch of Shoppers’ Drug Mart instead of relying on the man on the platform at the back of the store. The same is true for grocery shopping.

Like all the women in the neighbourhood, my mother shopped at the butcher shop, the green grocer and the bakery – all on the same block of College Street.  The fruit and vegetables stacked in sidewalk displays at the grocer were joined, on rare occasions, by tall wicker baskets filled with live snails. Inside the store, olives floated in dark brine in plastic bushels, rows of whole prosciutto hung from the ceiling and giant rounds of parmesan dominated the meat and cheese counter.  Next door was the butcher shop where my mother shopped for “baby beef”, chicken and soup bones for the week’s dinners.  What I remember best is sawdust on the floor and butchers in their bloody aprons behind the counter, wielding scary looking cleavers and impressively long knives.

College Street now serves a different demographic.  “I’ll bet there weren’t so many cannabis stores here when you were a kid,” jokes David.  The butcher shop is now a Health Hut, selling organic beauty products and make-up.  The shop at the corner of Roxton and College sells pizza by the slice instead of fruit, vegetables and snails.

I tell David about Fass Leather Goods, a store I passed each day on my way to school.  Though this was clearly not a shop for kids, its window full of purses, luggage and wallets fascinated me as a child.  It was a true rite of passage when I got my real big-girl purse there at age 13 to mark my entry to high school.  It was a beautiful, rich brown leather bag, with two pockets on the outside that clipped shut and were perfect for holding bus tickets.  I wish that I could return to that wonderful shop, to relive the excitement of choosing the perfect purse to mark my passage from childhood to young womanhood.  Fass Leather Goods is now Ziggy’s Home Goods and I’m thrilled to discover that the shop is named for Zelig Fass, the original owner of the leather store, and run by his granddaughter. 

The dry good stores, once found on every block and where my mother and I shopped for my first communion dress, are long gone. The white dresses and matching veils were swathed in plastic and hung from the ceiling, just out of reach, above the more mundane tablecloths, tea towels, socks and housedresses. Would I get to wear a dreamy long dress and lacy veil or be stuck with a plain, short, cotton number?  No amount of pleading on my part could change my mother’s mind.  We came home with a modestly priced, short (and, to my eyes, plain) dress, much to my disappointment and sadness. But so many years later, I watch home movies of our first communion procession into church and see that most of us marched piously, our gloved hands in prayer, wearing a version of that same dress.

The diner where people sat at the counter, hunched over their lunches, is now a sushi joint. I so desperately wanted to eat in a restaurant, but this was as likely as being on TV or playing the piano.  I did, from time to time, work up the courage to go inside and ask for a glass of water at the counter, just so I would feel like I was actually eating there.  The kind waitress never questioned me or shooed me away. 

David and I walk south along Ossington Avenue to the Toronto Dominion Bank, where I proudly opened my first bank account with the single dollar bill I had received as a birthday present.  I can clearly recall my anxiety entering the hushed bank for the first time.  My mother showed me how to fill out the deposit form, using the pen attached to the table with a metal chain.  It was so exciting to leave with a real bank book, filled in by the pretty young teller, to prove that I was grown-up enough to have a bank account!

We finally turn the corner onto Roxton Road to find my childhood home. The house sports a new veranda – at least newer than the one that was there when we moved to Toronto’s western suburbs in 1967.  The front lawn that my father tended so carefully has been replaced by concrete paving blocks and there is a central air conditioning unit under the living room window.  But the big maple tree in front of the house is still there and so is the park across the street.

I stare up at the house for a long time and memories come rushing back.  The summer I cut and bruised my knees repeatedly – falling down the veranda steps and tripping on the roots of the maple tree.  Making snow angels on the front lawn.  Playing jumpsie and skipping Double Dutch on the sidewalk.

We sit in the park under one of the big leafy maple trees that I remember as saplings.  David, who is only too familiar with current Toronto real estate prices, wonders how a young family could afford such a big house across from a park.  I explain that our family, which grew to four children while we lived here, occupied only the first floor and basement of the house.  My two sisters and I shared two single beds in the insulated sunroom at the back of the house.  My parents and baby brother slept in what was originally the dining room.  The second and third floor of the house were rented out. Our toilet was in the scary, unfinished cellar and everyone in the house shared one bathtub in the second-floor bathroom. 

Describing those living arrangements prompts me to reflect on just how much has changed, in the neighbourhood, in my life and in the world in the years since this house, this park, our church and school and College Street were my entire world.

Almost all of our neighbours were post World War II transplants to Toronto from southern Italy, as were the baker, the butcher and the grocer.  My schoolmates and I all spoke Italian dialect at home and English at school.  We all went to St. Francis church for Sunday mass and came home to the traditional Sunday pasta lunch. 

Our dads drove huge Fords or Chevrolets they parked in the garage in the laneway behind our homes.  Our moms made sure that dinner was ready when our fathers came home from their jobs in construction or driving a truck.   We had never heard of a cottage or camping.  Vacations only happened very rarely, when our parents saved enough money for the family to travel back to their home town in Italy to spend the entire summer.

David and I talk about how impossibly exciting it would have seemed to ten-year old me to know that I would travel the world – to China, Africa, Singapore, Australia, South America and throughout Europe.  How incredulous I would have been to know that I would sit in this park with my son more than half a century later to share my childhood haunts and memories.

Just like the trees in the park that have grown from skinny saplings to sturdy maples, I’ve grown up and grown older. My understanding of what defines family and community, the limits of my world and what I can do as a woman are nothing like I could have imagined as the child who grew up in this little village in the big city. Though so much has changed, I always take great comfort in walking down College Street. Not with nostalgia for the past, but with gratitude for how it helped to shape the woman I have become.

On International Women’s Day, we traditionally recognize women who have inspired and motivated us with great social, economic, cultural, and political achievements.  I’ve been incredibly lucky to have worked with many of these great role models and especially lucky to count some of them as dear friends.  But inspiration comes in many forms – including, for me, a woman who made the brave decision to leave her home to come to a country where she had to start from scratch.  Where she had to learn a new language, find a job and become part of a new community in a very different culture.

My mother, Anna, was born on March 8, International Women’s Day, in 1927.  And as we celebrate her 95th birthday, I can’t help but think about how the arc of her life, the courage she has demonstrated and the example she has set for her children, grandchildren and great-granddaughter are perfect illustrations of girls’ and women’s achievements over almost a century.

From the beginning, expectations for Anna were very low.  She was a frail infant, not expected to live more than a few days.  Her older sisters, who were three and six years old when their little sister was born, recalled how excited they were to buy a new dress for the baby to wear in her tiny coffin.

Life in the hilltop village of Pisticci in southern Italy was difficult for a publicly anti-Mussolini family.  When Anna was six months old, her father, Antonio, was forced to flee to Argentina for six years to escape jail - or worse - for his political beliefs and activities.  At school, Anna’s teacher found every opportunity to physically punish the children of anti-fascist families.  By the age of nine, at the end of fourth grade, Mom had had enough and quit school to help her mother and grandmother at home.

How does a woman with a grade four education and raised in a tiny rural village, become fully bilingual and start a new life in the largest city in Canada?  I now understand that being raised by her mother, grandmother and older sisters for the first six years of her life, losing her mother at age 13 and living through the ravages of the Second World War were the defining events in Mom’s life that gave her the tools she needed to survive and thrive in an era when women were expected to follow and defer to their fathers and, eventually, their husbands. 

It was 22-year-old Anna who had the idea to leave Italy after the war.  Mom wrote to her father’s sister, Pasqua, who had arrived in Toronto from Pisticci in 1911, to ask her to sponsor her, along with her father and little sister, Bianca, as immigrants to Canada.  But Zia Pasqua couldn’t believe that her niece was taking the lead on this major life decision and insisted on speaking with Antonio to make sure that he approved of his daughter’s plan. 

Anna’s fiancé, Rocco, followed her to Toronto a year after her arrival and they married soon after.  And so began their new lives and our Italian-Canadian family.

Like so many immigrant women in the early 1950’s, Anna found work in the factories in Toronto’s fashion district.  Her first job was making military uniforms.  “My boss would speak to me in English – but I had no idea what he was saying!”, she remembers.  “I learned to speak English word by word.  I tried to go to night school.  But I finished work at 7:00 – the same time classes began.”

As with so many mother-daughter relationships, ours was not always one of mutual admiration.  It was only as an adult that I thought to be proud of Mom for speaking fluent English while so many of her contemporaries counted on their children to navigate phone calls and doctors’ appointments.  I took it for granted that she cooked every meal, packed lunches for each of us every day and managed grocery shopping without a car.  We complained when she made the hated pasta with chick peas or worse, roasted a traditional goat, complete with head, each Easter. As I grew older, I came to understand how limited my father’s repertoire of acceptable dinners was.  And, since his was the final word on the subject, Mom wasn’t able to deviate beyond his list of what could appear on the dinner table.

As a teenager and young adult, I was frustrated by what appeared to be Mom’s deference to Dad’s rules on everything from what to cook to what house to buy. As in so many Italian families, he was the unquestioned head of the household.  There is no doubt that he enjoyed that role – but Mom’s role wasn’t as traditional as it seemed.  She’s proud that she managed the household finances and let Dad know, in no uncertain terms, when he had made a unilateral decision that didn’t sit well with her.

“I put a $1,500 down payment on a house” he announced not long after I, their first child, was born.  “Congratulations!” was Mom’s sarcastic reply.  And when she saw the huge (and by her account, filthy) three-story house that was now hers to get into shape for their little family, she was furious.  “We couldn’t afford to lose the down payment”, recalls Mom.  They bought the house and Dad learned an important lesson about the repercussions of crossing Anna.

In the silent home movies from our childhood, Mom is always cooking and serving in the cramped kitchen where the entire family gathered.  There was no open concept great room to host extended family and friends that gathered for every birthday, baptism, Christmas and Easter celebration.  She was the hostess, cook, server and dishwasher in a space that could barely hold us all.  And she never complained – because she loved (and still loves) surrounding herself with family and friends to share a meal, to catch up on the latest and to tell stories.

My most cherished memories of those gatherings are of how she and her sister, our Zia Bianca, would collapse in giggles, barely able to breathe, as they joined forces to recount memories of their grandmother’s farm in Italy or of their first years in Canada.  One of Mom’s favourite stories of her childhood is of how she woke up one morning, at age six, to a man staring at her in bed.  “Do you know who I am?”, he asked.  “Are you stupid?  You’re my papa!  Don’t you see your picture on the wall? 

Sassiness, strength and love of telling stories continue to define Mom.  When Dad died five years ago after two years of failing health, she focussed on how to best honour his life – and move ahead with hers.  She didn’t follow the tradition of dressing in black for the rest of her life and there was no question of moving in with one of her children as so many of generation had done.  It wasn’t easy for her, or for us, to dismantle her home of 50 years to get her ready to move to her very own condo in a seniors’ residence in yet another new city.  But after a few months of adjustment, she began to revel in her independence.  “I can get up when I want to, eat what I want and get dressed when I feel like it!”

Before COVID struck, she would make new friends at morning coffee hours and enjoy lunch outings with us.  She loved going to the farmers’ market and the Italian grocers to browse and buy what caught her fancy.  When those activities were suspended, she got busy knitting dishcloths to raise funds for the families suffering the inter-generational impacts of the Canadian residential school system, for the Waterloo Food Bank and to help put presents under Christmas trees for children.

Her stories of her life in Italy, of how she learned to navigate a new country, language and culture and how she held her own with a challenging husband while raising five children inspire me.  And have made me appreciate the advantages and privileges that I, my sisters, nieces and cousins have that she and the women of her generation could not even imagine. 

Because of the trail she blazed for us, her daughters and granddaughters have, in the course of just one generation, each been able to follow our own paths both personally and professionally.  Yes, we have had to face, and continue to face, misogyny and bias against women.  But I remind myself that my mother tackled much more difficult obstacles and not only survived but thrived to tell us the stories.

At the age of 95 and after two years of COVID isolation, Mom has slowed down physically.  Her hearing isn’t so great and she uses her walker for her daily walks.  Thanks to the attentive, dedicated and loving care provided by Etta and Mary Ann, the two daughters who live closest to her, she continues to live alone and cook and care for herself.  And while we’ve heard some of her stories many times over the years, I learn something new every time we talk about her long and eventful life.

Anna and the women of her generation may not win any lifetime achievement awards or public accolades for the work they did and the barriers they broke.  And yet they changed the world by persisting through poverty, illness, loss, war and the incredible challenges posed by leaving home to start new lives, to transform the traditional roles of women and to raise strong daughters.  And that’s something to celebrate, along with Mom’s birthday, on International Women’s Day!

But I wouldn’t be doing justice to Mom’s spirit and unflagging sassiness if I didn’t end this with how I like to sign off phone calls with her.  “Have a good night, Ma, and be good.” I’ll say as we’re ready to end our conversation.  “That I cannot promise!” is always her answer.  Pure Anna!

Mom is the baby in our Nonna Michelina’s arms. With her sisters, our Zia Rosa and Zia Camilla. Pisticci, 1927.

Mom in story-telling mode with my Nonno Antonio, our cousin Sal, Uncle Pasquale and Zia Bianca. Toronto, 1961.

Mom with her sister, our Zia Rose. Pisticci, 1963.

Mom with her daughters: Mary Ann, Micki, Adele and Etta.

Mom. Radiant at 95!

She appears in almost every shaky birthday party home movie.  She carried a navy-blue leather purse that she would allow us to rummage through to find treasures of loose change and cellophane-wrapped mint candies.  On very special occasions, she wore a tidy little hat with a veil and her fur stole, an unidentified animal (a squirrel? a fox? a mink?) that wrapped around her shoulders and clasped shut with its mouth to its tail.  She wore her long grey hair, the longest I had ever seen on an adult woman, in a crown formed by two braids fastened with long, squiggly hair pins.

Pasqua Maria Sardella, my mother’s aunt, my Zia Pasqua, was born in the tiny hilltop village of Pisticci in southern Italy in 1893.  She was 18 and pregnant with the first of her six children when she and her husband, Donato, crossed the Atlantic to start a new life in Toronto in 1911.  Zio Donato had travelled to Winnipeg as a younger man - to find his fortune and perhaps a bride.  But there were no Italian girls in Winnipeg for him to court, so back he went to his home town to find a wife and returned to Canada with the beginnings of his family.

Family lore has it that their first home was essentially a shack in the east end of Toronto.  Zia Pasqua talked about being able to see the sky through the holes in the roof and struggling to keep her children warm in the winter.  They were 20th century pioneers, part of a community of Italian newcomers to Anglo-centric Toronto – a place not yet used to being a vibrant city of immigrants. 

City directories of the 1910s and 1920s list Zio Donato’s occupation as peddler. Was he one of the “rags and bones” men who drove their horse-drawn cart through the streets to collect junk?  Did he sell household goods from a wagon driven through the streets in the east end of Toronto?  Sadly, those stories died with Zio Donato and Zia Pasqua and their children.  What lives on are the memories of how they taught the next generations of her family to be Canadian.

My mother, Anna, was 18 when World War II ended, leaving Southern Italy ravaged by poverty and destruction.  Her mother had died as the war had started and she realized that her fate in Pisticci would be to raise her younger sister, Bianca, while living under the thumb of her disillusioned and angry father, Antonio.  In what I now understand to be a stroke of genius and act of great courage, Anna wrote to Zia Pasqua, who she had only heard about through stories from her father, to ask to be sponsored to emigrate to Canada.

Zia Pasqua’s long-awaited response came with one condition: “Tell my brother that I’m happy to sponsor you. But HE needs to write to ask me!”

Antonio, Anna and Bianca arrived in Toronto on a cold November day in 1950 after a rough 17-day ocean voyage marked by seasickness and overcrowded dormitories.

Fourteen-year-old Bianca’s memories of her mother, who she had lost when she was only four, had been quickly fading. “She was more than a mother to us” says my mother of Zia Pasqua, recalling how she and Bianca found a home and comfort in Toronto after so many years of war, death and upheaval in Italy.  

Bianca now remembers with great fondness that she and Zia Pasqua were inseparable and a fixture on College Street.  The grocers would announce “Here comes Mrs. Lazazzera and her niece!”  They dreamt about going back to visit Pisticci together.  But Bianca, who had to lie about her age in order to go to work and contribute to the family income instead of attending high school, only earned 40 cents per hour – not enough to make that dream a reality. 

It’s wonderful to hear my mother and Bianca reminisce and laugh at the memory of Zio Donato allowing them to put scratchy curlers in his hair, pretending to give him a perm.  It was under Zia Pasqua’s guidance that they came to love Canadian food like hot dogs and corn on the cob, learned to speak English and how to navigate streetcars to their jobs doing sewing piecework in the factories of Toronto’s fashion district.

As children, my sisters and I knew nothing of this family history. Zia Pasqua’s tidy house on Treford Place was sweet refuge from our own home, where curiosity was seen as questioning of authority, loud play was forbidden and challenging adults was out of the question.  At Zia Pasqua’s, we could gaze with wonder at, though never touch, the piano in the front room.  A real piano!  With a bench that fascinated us because it opened to reveal undecipherable pages of sheet music.  If we had a nickel to spend, we would walk to the corner store at the end of the block to buy popsicles.  On summer days, we sat on the veranda and worked on mastering the yoyo or getting a top to spin. 

Sunday Mass at St. Francis of Assisi was a weekly ordeal of sitting very still and very quietly while doing my best not to be overcome by the stifling stench of incense.  The best Sundays were those when we would escape the church to breathe in the fresh air and to run to see Zia Pasqua – who lived just around the corner.  More than 60 years later, I can still see the green hedges that outlined the tiny front lawn and smell the thousands of pink and red roses that climbed the trellises in Zio Donato’s elaborate front and back gardens. 

The kitchen, with its red linoleum floors and yellow wall tiles, was the true heart of Zia Pasqua’s home.  The aroma of tomato sauce that had been bubbling on the stove since her return from early morning mass greeted us as we came through the front door.  Sunday lunch always featured Zio Donato’s homemade sausages, flavoured with fennel and sweet and tender from their long simmer in the sauce.  After lunch, the men would linger at the table, smoking Sweet Caporal cigarettes while the women donned aprons, gathered at the sink and washed dishes.  The very best Sundays were those when Zia Pasqua treated us to sweet and frothy 7Up strawberry ice cream floats that we were allowed to drink through straws. 

When visits lingered into a Sunday evening, we might sit on the scratchy brown couch in the front room to watch Bonanza or Topo Gigio on Ed Sullivan.  The television set competed for space with the wooden floor radio in that small room.  For us, the radio was an unfamiliar piece of furniture.  For Zio Donato, it had been where he had spent hours listening to fellow Italians Perry Como, Jimmy Durante and Dean Martin.

Just as she had been a mother to my mother and aunt, Zia Pasqua was the the grandmother in our lives. At age 8, I knew to go to her for help when I found myself responsible for a very sick little sister while walking home from church after First Communion rehearsal.  Micki could barely stand, shivering with a high fever.  As we stopped to lean against the chain link fence of the school next to the church, I understood that we were in big trouble and that I, as the big sister, had to fix it.  A great wave of relief washed over me when realized that we could go to Zia Pasqua’s house, just two blocks away.  “What do these kids want?”, I heard her say as she came to door after we rang the doorbell.  She hadn’t recognized us at first – but once she did, she enveloped us into her big, reassuring hug and took over. 

As we grew into teenagers and moved to the suburbs, we saw less and less of Zia Pasqua and Zio Donato. With the self-absorption of a sixteen-year-old, I barely registered their deaths nor did it occur to me that I would miss their presence in my life.

Fifty years later, I see Zia Pasqua’s reflection in the mirror when I braid my greying hair and pin it up as she did.  As the roses in my front garden thrive and provide sweet perfume on a summer evening, I think back to Zio Donato’s incomparable gardens and wonder if they survived the decades since the house on Treford Place was sold.

I reminisce with my mother, my Zia Bianca, my sisters and Zia Pasqua’s grandchildren about the house on Treford Place.  “Do I remember an old-fashioned wood burning stove in the kitchen?”, I ask my mother.  “No – that was in the basement and used only when Zio Donato smoked homemade sausages”.  Their grandson, Larry, now has the piano that fascinated us so as children.  And we have the black and white photos and silent home movies to remember them by.

Bianca remembers that Zio Donato would often say, in that Italian-Canadian way of mixing English with Italian, “Troppo too much good, no good!” – troppo meaning too much in Italian.  I cherish the good memories of the love and warmth found in the house on Treford Place.  All good!

Left to right:  Zio Donato, my cousin Lucy, me and Zia Pasqua - who apparently needed the Vulcan Death Grip!

Tomato Sauce – AKA Sugo

Zia Pasqua would have made this sugo using the tomatos and conserva/passata she bottled every September. 

Sugo isn’t just for Sunday’s pasta dinner.  It’s what makes eggplant parmesan delicious and the first step in getting pizza dough ready for the oven.  It can be used as the base for a delicious meat sauce for weekday rigatoni or used to poach eggs for a Saturday lunch of Eggs in Purgatory.

This recipe makes enough for two pasta dinners for four people and can be frozen for up to a month.

A tip picked up in cooking class in Tuscany:  if the sauce tastes too acidic – don’t add sugar to sweeten it.  Instead, add half a teaspoon of baking soda to counter the acidity.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons good quality, extra virgin olive oil

1 medium onion, diced

2 large cloves garlic, minced

1 28 oz can of whole tomatoes, preferably San Marzano

1 bottle of passata

Method

1.    Sauté the diced onion on medium heat in the olive oil in a large sauce or Dutch oven until soft - about 3 or 4 minutes.  Add the garlic and sauté for a minute or so - don’t let the garlic brown.

2.    Add the tomatoes and use a potato masher to break them up. Add 1/4 cup water to the empty tomato can and add that to the pan to get the remaining tomato juice into the sauce.

3.    Simmer for 10 minutes, stirring often.

4.    Stir in the passata.  Add ¼ cup water or red wine to the empty passata bottle and add that to the pan to get the remaining passata into the sauce.

5.    Simmer, covered, on low heat for at least half an hour and up to an hour.  If the sauce seems too thick, add ¼ - ½ cup of water as it simmers.

As August turns into September, my little garden is glorious in its bounty of basil and rosemary. The abundant roadside stands of produce in our semi-rural community have inspired me to preserve those wonderful flavours and colours.  So, I decided to trying preserving again - after a forty-year hiatus.

This wouldn’t be the labour-intensive tomato season of my childhood which started with trips to farms on the outskirts of Toronto to pick bushels and bushels of tomatoes. My father’s job was to unfurl his paint-stained, green tarp to cover the basement floor where we would spread the tomatoes to ripen, the smell of the fruit and the green stems filling the house.  My mother then spent hours every day boiling, peeling and processing those tomatoes in the hand-cranked machine that separated the pulp from the skins.  The jars that had been carefully washed and then sterilized in huge vats of boiling water were then filled and transferred to yet another pot of boiling water to finish the process.  For my mother, the result wasn’t a feeling of accomplishment so much as relief at having survived the ordeal with minimal burns and no bottles that had slipped to the floor to explode tomatoes and glass across the kitchen.

No – this will be a celebration of summer that I can preserve and store away neatly on shelves to be savoured during the depths of January gloominess. 

I start with a pesto making session with friends Joanne and Dayle, who have become cooking buddies during the pandemic. Instead of coming together to cook one of our regular, themed dinners – Spanish, Italian, Indian, Jewish – we decide to pool our basil, olive oil, garlic, pine nuts and parmesan.  We serve the pesto with fresh pasta we make using duck eggs from a local farm. And bruschetta topped with just-ripened tomatoes and fresh basil set aside from the pesto making. It’s the best dinner yet.

Joanne rings my doorbell a few days later.  “I bought two bushels of tomatoes and just can’t make any more salsa!”  She presents me with a box of ripe Romas– and I immediately begin thinking about how many ways I can preserve these treasures.

Planning is half the fun and I dig into my collection of cookbooks for the best recipes.  I decide on a spicy salsa to go with my favourite comforting chicken pot pie and to serve with corn chips I’ll make by crisping tortillas in the oven.  And tomato/peach BBQ sauce that will be slathered on ribs and pork tenderloin.  Cherry tomato BBQ sauce looks intriguing and will be a great way to use the last of the cherries before they disappear until next summer.  And, if I have enough tomatoes after all of that, pizza sauce for my homemade dough that will be on the menu for movie nights in the dead of winter.

I start with salsa.  I shop for the peppers, onions, cider vinegar, cheesecloth and preserving jars.  I lose myself in chopping, measuring and stewing.  Four hours later my legs are numb from standing, my kitchen counters and floor are strewn with chopped vegetables and I seem to have used every mixing bowl I own.  Eight beautiful jars of salsa are pinging shut after being processing in the boiling water bath and I’m hooked.

Next up is smoky peach BBQ sauce. The recipe calls for ripe peaches.  “Peaches are peaches”, I think and pick up a basket that looks good to me.  But after five minutes in a boiling water bath, instead of the recommended one-minute dunk, there is no way that the peels will just slip off.  Out comes the paring knife and I manage to add an extra half hour to the process with this mistake.  But I remain confident that the end result will be delicious and test that theory by stealing some of the sauce while it’s still simmering to use on the ribs we’re grilling on the BBQ for dinner. And I’m right – the peach/tomato combination is the perfect spicy companion to the tender ribs.

Time to begin preparing cherries for my next endeavour.  My husband is impressed that such a thing as a cherry pitter exists and that we have one in our kitchen. Unfortunately, I manage to snap that magic device in half within a few minutes and spend the next hour pitting cherries by hand.  I realize I’m running late for an appointment with my hairdresser – and though I scrub as long as time allows, leave the house looking as though I’ve committed murder with my bare hands.

Back in my kitchen, I’m back to the now familiar task of peeling and chopping blanched tomatoes, measuring out sugar and spices and enjoying the heady fragrance of stewing fruit that permeates the house.  The recipe tells me I’ll have five jars when all is said and done – but I finish the evening with eight ruby red bottles of cherry BBQ sauce lining the counter.

I’ve used 17 pounds of tomatoes so far, but the box looks almost as full as when I started.  I know that I’ll think back on these ripe and juicy tomatoes with nostalgia in January, when the supermarkets will only have mealy, tasteless replicas on offer, and so am determined not to waste them.  Seven pounds left – just enough to make pizza sauce.

The routine I’ve established serves me well and there is great satisfaction in tossing the now empty box that held the tomatoes into the recycling bin.  Eight little jars of pizza sauce ping away to signal that this week’s work is complete.

Was it worth the mess, the hours of washing, chopping and stewing?  The answer is a resounding “yes!”.  Lining up the jars of jewel-coloured preserves on my kitchen counter gives me a sense of enormous satisfaction.  I have transformed a $10 box of tomatoes into a winter’s worth of cooking inspiration for me and for the family and friends who will receive some of those jars as gifts.

I’m grateful that has been a labour of love of cooking for me and not a dreaded annual chore.  Though my mother is now 94, her memory of just how much work it was for her is fresh.  When I ask her how many bushels of tomatoes she processed each year, her voice betrays the bitterness she still carries.  “I would tell your father we needed two or three bushels.  He loaded ten into the car.” 

“He would come home from work and complain that dinner wasn’t ready and that I hadn’t finished yet with the tomatoes”.  But she laughs at the memory of the time he ranted about a dirty floor.  He was overheard by a neighbour who later told my mother she was tempted to come over to break a few bottles of conserva over his head. 

For my mother and the women of her generation, tomato season was a thankless two-week slog of hot, messy labour on top of the usual work needed to run her home and feed her family.  She didn’t have time to contemplate the perfume of the tomatoes and basil or to admire the beautiful jars that were the reward of her hard work. 

I can’t wait to share some of my pesto and preserves with Mom.  As gratitude for what she taught me and to celebrate how what was strictly women’s work has become a celebration of the season and its bounty.

This was during my parents’ first trip back to Pisticci, the hilltop town in southern Italy they had departed to emigrate to Canada in the early 1950’s. They had left a country ravaged by WWII and were returning as Canadian citizens, homeowners and parents of three curly-haired, decidedly Canadian daughters. 

My mother tells me that because I was named for her, Nonna showered me with special affection at the expense of paying attention to my younger sisters.  I have no memory of a bond with Nonna. Aside from the scrap of memory of her cooking, I only knew her from black and white photographs showing an imposing woman in the traditional costume of Pisticci, where she was born in 1893 and lived her entire life.

Adelina is an unusual name.  There was only one other Adelina in my class growing up in Toronto’s little Italy in the 1960’s – and the two of us stood out in a classroom full of Marias, Angelinas and Teresas.  All Catholics are meant to be named after saints to ensure their patronage. In a pre-internet world, it took some time and effort for me to discover that December 24 is the feast of St. Adele.  Unlike friends and relatives named after better-known saints, my onomastico, the feast day of the saint one is named after, was never celebrated or even acknowledged.  In retrospect, I doubt anyone knew about it other than me.

Our family made the move from Little Italy to the western Toronto suburbs the year I turned 11.  I was now in a world where being Adelina made me unbearably different from my schoolmates.  So, I rechristened myself Adele.  Adele DiLeo rolled off the tongue and was still unusual, but was minus the dreaded additional vowels that broadcast my Italian heritage.

When I married, I thought that I wouldn’t have to constantly spell my last name (the capital L seemed to be the big stumbling block) if I took my husband’s name, Newton.  Besides, it was 1976 and switching from “maiden” name to married name was as much part of the ritual and excitement of getting married as registering for china and choosing bridesmaids!

The convention in Italy is for women to keep their birth names when they marry. When I applied for and proudly received my Italian passport twelve years ago, it was the first time in decades that I signed a document as Adelina DiLeo.  As far as Italy is concerned, that’s my name.

Adelina no longer feels like the mark of difference that it did in 1967.  Over the last 50 years, those of us who grew up in Italian-Canadian households in the 1960’s and 1970’s have witnessed the food of our childhood dinner tables and the contents of our school lunchboxes evolve from being exotic at best and disgusting at worst, to being ubiquitous. Italy is celebrated as the home of great artists like DaVinci, Michelangelo and Fellini and it has almost become a cliché to escape to a Tuscan villa to find one’s true self.

As I prepare to retire and eagerly look forward to adventures to come in the next chapters of life, I have decided to reclaim my birth name to use as I share stories about growing up Italian-Canadian.

My name is Adelina DiLeo and I have stories to tell and recipes to share!

Left to right:  Mary Ann, Michelina and Adelina DiLeo showing off Christmas gifts circa 1963