Channeling my Inner Nonna

You ever have one of those days where everything aches for no reason and you walk slow, deliberate and a little like you have a poop in your pants?  Think Fred Sanford, but less elegant.  No? Just me?

OK, whatever.

When I have those kind of days, I think of it as coming down with a case of "The Grandmas".  When you get a case of The Grandmas, everything aches, it takes forever to walk from one side of the house to the other and you forget how to use all your electronic devices.

But sometimes, instead of a case of The Grandmas, you get a case of "The Nonnas".  When you get a case of The Nonnas, you become an elderly superwoman.  You put on your housecoat, cook all day and all night, wash and fold 40 loads of laundry and pick vegetables from your beautiful backyard garden (even if you have neither a back yard or a vegetable garden, when you get The Nonna's they magically appear).

Last weekend, I got a wicked case of The Christmas Nonnas.  I was posessed by the impulse to make Struffoli.  For those of you that don't know what Struffoli are, they are little round balls of fried dough, soaked in a honey syrup and covered with non-pareils.  If you grew up with at least one Italian grandmother, you know what they are and you have warm memories of being shooed away from pots of hot oil, being covered in honey from head to toe and not being able to put anything down after you pick it up because everything sticks to your fingers.

My Nonna did not leave me a recipe for these delightful treats and honestly, I have not ever wanted to make them before because I hate frying.  I hate the smell it leaves in the house, I hate the mess and I hate spatter burns.  But, when the spirit of Christmas mixes with the spirit of Nonna, the compulsion for struffoli can outrun my more neurotic, Felix Unger-type tendencies. Being that I did not have a recipe from my own Nonna, I did what any red blooded Italian Grandmother would do...I used the Internet.

What I found is that there are no shortage of recipes for Struffoli.  Everyone who calls themself an Italian cook has a version - Giada DeLarentiis, Lidia Bastianich, Mario Batali.  They all look pretty good and the recipes are similar...flour, eggs, a splash of alcohol, honey, etc.  But since I was overcome with the spirit of Nonna, I went to the source, Cooking with Nonna.

If you have not seen this adorable series, a young Italian American woman, Rossella Rago, cooks traditional Italian and Italian American recipes with grandmothers.  Yours, hers, any Italian nonna that will sit still long enough to teach her a recipe.  It's quite charming and sweet and it spreads the joy of having an Italian grandmother to everyone.  The recipe that I used, along with a "how to" video can be found here.  Enjoy and Buon Natale!

Home Sweet Rome

Two weeks.  We are two weeks back from Rome and I am still in a blissed out state of relaxation from the memory of all of the amazing meals, cocktails and good times we had.


Rome for me is a centering place, a place that puts my internal compass in balance.  Maybe this is simply because when I am there, I am on vacation and the stresses and worries of work, home and life are dulled for the moment.  Or, maybe there is more to it, something deeper, like a spiritual, almost karmic connection.



Not one to pay attention to things spiritual or signs, I felt an unusual ease and comfort on my very first trip to Rome. With not a word of Italian in my vocabulary and nothing to guide me but a few streetviews on Google Maps, I stepped into the cobblestone lined streets of Rome as confidently as I did the street I live on at home. I had no fear and that alone was telling to me.



That first trip, which included a stay in a Tuscan villa, was a watershed moment for me.  I feel like I have spent the ensuing years since in an endless quest for the next trip to Italy.  In the years since that first visit, we have been to Florence, Sorrento, Naples and Capri, all of which were soul soothing and wonderful in their own right. But every trip has also included Rome.  It had to or I would feel the emptiness of an opportunity missed.  To be teased with the closeness of Rome and skip a visit would cause a longing that I would feel physically, an actual pain.  I know this because I felt it at the very suggestion that we maybe skip Rome this time.


This most recent trip was special because it was about the sweet pursuit of nothing but to bask in the essence of the city itself.  To sit in a piazza for hours doing nothing but drinking wine and people watching.  To be Roman, if only for a moment and to dream of a future where sitting in a piazza could be our primary job in life.  A job that I feel I was born to do.

Cornetto and Cappuccino - aka Breakfast.

 Veggies at Campo de Fiori - always beautiful enough to make me want to eat vegetables (no small feat).

 A closer look at Chariots in the Sky.

A closer look at the Colosseum.

Ingredients for a cooking class. Ingredients like this kind of stack the deck in your favor for success.

The city is full of dogs, which is awesome.

This was the meat sweats waiting to happen but worth every bead on my brow.

 Drinking by the Pantheon by day...

... and night

A beautiful day in Piazza del Popolo.

 Porchetta sandwich and beer from The Angry Pig (consumed at 11 am, so technically the breakfast of champions).

The Tiber by night...

...and day.

And just to spice things up, a day trip to Orvieto.