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Easter Lunch in Italy

May 19, 2022 by Mary 2 Comments

I absolutely adore the Italian tradition of a proper Sunday lunch, a multi-course wonderful meal in the sun dappled daylight of the afternoon, Prosecco, wine and Vin Santo early in the day. And enough time for a walk in the afternoon to work it all off. And Easter Lunch in Italy is even more special! Buona Pasqua!

(I had debated in my mind that perhaps it was too late to post about my Easter Lunch in Italy but I really wanted to share this time with you and make it permanent on the blog. I had posted some photos as an Instagram story, but they disappear after 24 hours, so here you go. And truth be told, I’ve been too busy cooking, eating and drinking here to do a proper post before this time!)

My Easter, Growing Up

My mom would always serve a big Easter dinner with a leg of lamb or ham or both if we had a huge crowd. I carried on that tradition with my own family, usually roasting a pancetta-wrapped leg of lamb with some additional traditional Polish dishes, including homemade bread and beets with horseradish.

Easter Lunch in Italy -Tagliatelle. — Marzia’s homemade Tagliatelle.

Tiziana hosted this year’s Easter Lunch and it was utterly fantastic. Thirteen people were present, of all ages, and practically everyone pitched in with the food. Her sister-in-law, Marzia, outdid herself making 3 different kinds of bread, all of the tagliatelle noodles, the tiramisu and fruit salad. Marzia’s friend, Eleanor, made a super delicious lemon tart with an outstanding cookie crust.

Andrea, Tizi’s husband, made a spectacular sugo sauce with pork and sausage meat. And then of course we had Tizi’s amazing starters, plus her delicious roasted lamb with rosemary, potatoes and sautéed fresh spinach from the Farmer’s Market. I added a radicchio salad, made with the long leaves of radicchio, which are much less bitter than the round headed variety. Radicchio and thinly sliced celery were topped with gorgonzola, toasted walnuts and a fresh lemon juice olive oil vinaigrette.

The excitement and mirth before and during the meal were palpable. And Tiziana does not disappoint.

Here is the complete menu, but I am almost certain that I left something out.

STARTERS WITH PROSECCO

Crostini with homemade chicken liver pate
Dark bread crostini with salted butter and smoked salmon
Hard boiled eggs
Pollo in galantina
Various thinly sliced meats and sausages

FIRST COURSE: with a light red wine
Homemade tagliatelle with sugo sauce and grated parmigiana

MAIN COURSE: with my red wine – 2020 Bolgheri Bell’Aja
Roasted lamb with Rosemary and garlic
Roasted potatoes
Sautéed spinach
Radicchio salad with sliced celery, Gorgonzola, toasted walnuts and a lemon vinaigrette dressing

DESSERT: with a choice of Sauternes and/ or Vin Santo

Tiramisu
Lemon Tart
Fruit Salad
Meringue and cream cake with strawberries
Coffee

Our After-lunch Walk!

The vineyards are starting to grow again.

After eating (lunch is pranzo) we went for a beautiful walk in the hills of Arezzo, near the house I used to rent!

I hope your Easter or Passover were wonderful and filled with LOVE!!

JUNE 18

July 14, 2017 by Mary 18 Comments

June 18th is emblazoned in my mind.

We could not conquer my husband’s Stage 4 kidney cancer.

Steve passed on Sunday, Father’s Day, June 18th at 2 pm, surrounded by our sons, their wives and me. As he took his last breath, the Mets’ pitcher hit a home run. Seriously.

Steve loved baseball. The Orioles were his team (being from Baltimore) and the Mets were his NY team with our sons.

We had 10 weeks to say goodbye. He was diagnosed on March 31st. And in the beginning, we really thought we could beat this.

I have been putting off writing this post.

Maybe, I’ve been thinking, if I don’t write about it, it won’t be true. We spent nearly 41 years together. I met him when I was very young. We were partners in LOVE, business, parenting and most of all, best friends who made each other laugh, a lot.

Now, the quiet and the evenings are the worst. I play music loud at night. The other day I was folding towels and some of his underwear I had just washed and dried (why, I’m not sure) and thought, oh, he’s just in the next room…and then I realized no, sobbing, he is not in the next room.

We all tried so hard. After Steve’s last hospital stay, our oldest and his wife appeared at the front door with suitcases in hand to move in with us to help care for him. Zach and Agata followed two days later, arriving from Poland.

Our oldest son came up with a “magic water” recipe to get him to drink more. It was filtered room temperature water with a teaspoon of coconut oil and five drops of pure peppermint oil. He loved it. We were constantly making and serving him bone broth, as his mouth was so dry, it was painful to eat. Our bone broth was soothing, full of nutrients and delicious. The secret? Cook it a long, long time in a 200 degree oven – 24 hours for chicken broth, 48 for beef or lamb broth.

He came home that last time with two PIC’s for intravenous nourishment, steroids, saline and heparin. We could all become RN’s at this point – even with Zach watching through FaceTime on the computer from Poland, very late into night, before catching his flight here.

At his memorial service the following Wednesday, over 200 people showed up, with the minister stopping the eulogies after 15 people spoke, as we were going way overtime. We had a jazz trio play and it was truly a celebration of his life. Our meditation piece was Take Five from Dave Brubeck.

I have received so many notes, phone calls and email comments about how wonderful the service was and even an interest in our Unitarian Church. Yes, it is an all-encompassing faith that respects all beliefs and acknowledges that we are all connected and part of the interdependent web of life. A few famous Unitarians are John Adams, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Isaac Newton, and Amelia Earhart.

What is the recipe for a great marriage? Respect and support for each other, clear communication leaving nothing to fester, laughing a lot, and dancing together. Steve was a GREAT dancer!! We danced a lot, clubbing it in the late seventies and just by ourselves lately. We were always complimented on the dance floor at weddings and bar mitzvahs. I think because we were so in tune with each other in life.

We got to have two great sons, lived in the city at first, then Summit, NJ, and then back to the city and country. CollectiveIy, we started four new businesses with our creative juices constantly flowing. I am so very grateful for our full exciting life together, never a dull moment.

My love. My honey. Such a kind, intelligent, creative and fun man who was a terrific father and husband. I miss him so.

And now I am in Poland readying for our younger son’s wedding tomorrow. I kept telling Steve we’d be here together, dancing under the stars. But it was not meant to be.

It’s now time for me to buck it up and be joyful for Zach and Agata. Only the airlines lost my luggage after leaving NYC last Saturday. I was hoping and hoping they’d find it but no luck so now, I need to find a dress for the wedding tomorrow, along with purchasing all other things…

Remember, always cook with LOVE and stay healthy.

Faces of Hunger Film Festival in NYC

September 13, 2016 by Mary 6 Comments

On October 14^th I’ll be heading over to NYU for the annual Faces of Hunger Film Festival. Faces of Hunger is dedicated to increasing awareness of food security issues in the United States of America and is run by Palms for Life, an NYC based non-profit that works globally with organizations on-the-ground to provide access to food, water, education, and sanitation.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know fighting world hunger is one of my main missions in life, and it isn’t just a problem in developing countries. Here in the USA one out of seven children live in food insecure households. And don’t even get me started on the sheer amount of food waste in our country; that was a whole post on its own already! One powerful statistic I saw on the Faces of Hunger page is that if we cut food waste by 25%, we would have enough for everyone to eat. We have to hold ourselves accountable and commit as a country to make a change!!

I welcome you to register here for the FREE event, I think tickets are only available for another day or so, so take advantage and join us!

They will also have an auction with various items including an annual subscription to MARY’s secret ingredients. Remember, each box supports our partnership with the global organization Feed The Children, so if you can’t join us at the event, you can still buy a box and support the cause while enjoying our curated surprises to help you make memorable meals.

How do you say good-bye?

August 1, 2012 by Mary Frances 2 Comments

Her name is Harriet and I met her at our Unitarian Church in Summit, NJ. She became my piano teacher and really, my second mother. Think of a mother you could choose, and who chose you. Very different. She taught me how to play piano at a very late age, but sometimes our piano lessons involved nothing more about the piano than sitting close to one another in front of it. She would point out life lessons I was learning, listen to my troubles or my triumphs, and give me courage and encouragement to keep on doing what I was doing. At the time we met, our boys were seven and ten. She knew intimately our life, our help, our trials and tribulations. We went through her husband’s passing early on. Her first husband invented Play Dough, her second husband invented the Air Cast. She never lacked money, drove a stick shift 700 series BMW in those days and had two grand pianos, back to back in her living room. She raised seven kids, four of her own and three of her second husband’s.

When you choose someone to be in your life as a second parent, it is so very different. She saw me for what I am – not for what my mother wanted me to be (to stay in St. Louis nearby and have lunch and go shopping with her on Saturdays. Yuck.)

She had a huge home in Summit overlooking NYC, one in Vermont and one in Nantucket. We spent time in all of them – she was so generous. When I told her I was thinking of moving back to the city, she understood ALL that that entailed. In the middle of our move, she came over and insisted that all of our furniture for the yet to be found country house, would not go to storage at Westy’s but would go to her house until we found a place. She kept it for a year and still has a few items, five and a half years later.

She taught me to never throw away a roast duck carcass but to make duck soup (yummy), the benefits of hanging your wash out to dry (her favorite thing to do) and pointed out when I was doing things right by my kids and when I needed to do something different (not pointing out something wrong, as my own mother might do). There was a time when we were in our little temporary apartment, before moving in to NYC, that she was over for dinner every Sunday night. Such fun we had in this little dinky kitchen. She had her chair, watching me cook, and all was well. She loved my food. She once said that she would bet that my boys would always live close to us, partly because of my cooking. I sure hope she’s right.

A mutual friend once remarked that Harriet could party like a high schooler, and she could. She loved Grey Goose on the rocks, several small drinks throughout the evening, and never liked wine. She was a true party girl and full of life wisdom.

We just saw each other in early May, partied like old times, cooked her a big dinner, spent the night, and she was fine. She was 82. In late June she was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer, Waldenström Macroglobulinemia, plus leukemia. This was zapping her strength and also affecting her cognitive abilities due to her blood thickening. Her natural children moved her up to a hospice house in Vermont. I had been in touch by phone and we planned to go up there this Sunday. I learned yesterday evening that she passed on Monday morning. I am so very sad. As soon as I heard, I could do nothing but go to the piano and try to play through tears. I’m so very disappointed we did not get to see her one last time.

Yesterday morning, while walking to catch a bus on upper Fifth Avenue, I saw this brownstone stoop. I thought it looked like a stairway to heaven for Harriet. I did not know then that she was gone.