Life Long Passion for Food Part 4: Pasta Fagiole Recipe

Due to a request on my previous post about Italian food and specifically Pasta Fagioli, this post is about how to make the soup.  I wrote about a funny anecdote about Ron first tasting pasta fagioli at my mom’s place. There is more. We stayed at my mom’s that night and the next morning, my mom asked us what we wanted for breakfast. Ron says “Do you have anymore of that soup left?”. I about fell over. Did my mom ever love that! And of course she had some soup because she cooks for a gazillion! At that point, I knew that if Ron and I split up, my mom would go with him. read...

Life Long Passion for Food Part 2

In my previous post, I talked about getting started cooking. In this one, I’ll continue on with my lessons from mom. My mom was one of the cooks in the family. Her sister, Aunt Louise, was not.  Aunt Louise cooked but she did it out of necessity. Mom enjoyed cooking and loved to feed people who came over. We always had chops, cubed steaks, and ground meat. My aunt had a drapery shop. Between the decorators, workmen and sometimes clients, they would often get some venison too. I grew up eating lamb, pork, and beef. We ate liver and onions which I still love but rarely eat anymore (more on this later). read...

One Day Vacation–Mission Accomplished

So what do you do when you get a call that your niece and great niece that you haven’t seen in several years may be in your almost vicinity for a day or less?  There is no question that you want to see them.  They are driving in from Ohio.  However, making plans isn’t going to work because You aren’t positive you will get a chance to see them. You don’t know if you are going to get an hour or a day They will be one hour away from you and you need to go to them. You only know that the ocean is an important stop to the youngest member. So I start thinking, ok, how long will it take for me to get them and drive to say Santa Monica beach or Malibu? Google to the rescue.  With construction on the 405 and times varying from 35 minutes to 1 3/4 hours, I must come up with another plan. read...