Welcome to My World

Every Saturday my husband and I, if we have the time, sit and watch PBS for about two hours in the morning. We start with the home renovating shows. After these are over we move to the cooking shows. We do not have cable and I have to rely on this time to watch cooking shows.

They always inspire me. I've been thinking alot about the food that I ate growing up. Being a full blooded Italian in America in the latter part of the last century was not really a novelty, but now, many of those Italian Americans have blended their rich inheritance with the richness of others.

I grew up in Ohio. My fondest childhood memories were with my family. My cousins, my aunts and uncles, sitting around the table in the basement surrounded by the Italian foods that fortunately (and sometimes unfortunately....my weight issues) made me who I am today.

My mother was from New York. A town called Endicott. I loved going there every summer around the Fourth of July for our family reunion.

This blog will be dedicated to the food and culture that I grew up in. The Ciavarellas in Ohio and the Salamidas and Contentos in Endicott.

I will post stories about my childhood and also recipes of the foods that we savored over the many years.

So, I hope you enjoy.

THE SALADS
These two salads I will share with you are two that I get the most comments about. One is an antipasto salad that I just made up. The other is a roasted pepper and tomato salad that made Grandma Civ (Ciavarella) famous. At least she was famous to us.
Grandma, Mary to her friends and Aunt Mary to her many neices and nephews and great neices and nephews, lived to be 94. She died in early July, 2004 just about two weeks shy of her 95th birthday. She was about 4'10" and until she was in her 60's was a bit roley-poley In her 60's she lost alot of weight and kept it off the rest of her life (You GO Gram!). She never spoke English very clear and had a wonderful accent. She pronounced the word "vinegar"......"winegar". I'm not sure why.....she wasn't Russian....but it was cute. She had more energy than anyone could imagine and I remember her running up and down her basement stairs dozens of times a day.
I remember at least one Memorial Day when all of us cousins in Ohio gathered with our fathers at Grandma's house to dig (by hand) her garden. It sat behind her garage and was quite large. This group was two grown men, four or five boys and me. I'm not sure if Uncle Frank and Chris and Annette (the youngest son of Grandma's and his children) were there. I just remember Uncle Joe's boys. These boys struck terror into my heart. As the only girl (when Annette wasn't around) in Ohio, I got run over, screamed at, spat on, and generally abused by them. Although I must admit, I was a little princess who grew up to be a drama queen. These days I look forward to being with them. They make me laugh and hug me and kiss me and I love them to death!
Anyway....to the salads.

Antipasto
1/2 head of cauliflour and 1 whole head of brocolli flowerettes.
(These should be steamed until they are just tender crisp)
1 red onion sliced thin
1 can or jar of artichoke hearts
1 can black olives
1 roasted red pepper sliced thin
1 small jar green olives

1 cup cherry or grape tomatoes
2 thin slices provolone cheese

4 thin slices salami or pepperoni
2-4 thin slices ham or cappicola
1 cup pepperocini peppers
Cut all the lunchmeat and cheese into strips. Make sure the cauliflour and brocolli are broken into bite size pieces. Mix above ingredients in a container and toss with your favorite Italian dressings. I use Good Seasons that comes in the envelope and mix with vinegar, water and oil. If you like alot of garlic, you could add minced garlic to it, but it's not necessary. Put an airtight lid on the container and let sit for a few hours or overnight, marinating.
The Salad
Add the above marinated mix to any variety of salad greens. I love it with romaine lettuce, although sometimes I buy the bagged Italian Mix or spinach greens. Sprinkle the combination with shredded parmesan cheese.
I'm a believer in being creative with food. Almost any cheese will work with this salad in the marinated mix. The other night I used muenster and everyone loved it. Be creative and have fun with it!

Roasted Pepper and Tomato Salad
This salad is especially good with a hunk of crusty bread such as Italian, Ciabatta or French! It's juicey and has lots of garlic in it!
Roasting peppers is much simpler than the end result looks. In this recipe I start with six bell peppers. Any color will do, but the red ones are the sweetest. Rinse them under water. I always cut them in half and pull the seeds out. Grandma usually roasted them whole and did the seed cleaning after the roasting. We place the peppers on our grill and blacken them, turning them as they blacken. You want to just blacken the outside of the pepper, not burn it through. When I was growing up, we did this part on a gas stove. After the peppers are blackened, you may want to place them in a brown bag, closing the bag to steam the blackened char off. We never did this and had black flecks on our teeth after eating the salad. It was very attractive, in a back woods Italian sort of way. Take the peppers out of the bag and scrape the black off (obviously). Then slice the peppers into strips.

The rest of the ingredients
4 medium to large ripe tomatoes (quartered)
1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup water
garlic, basil, parsley, salt and pepper to taste (It's up to you, Baby!)
In a nice size bowl put the tomatoes and smash them with a potato masher to get all of the juice out. Add the rest of the ingredients, including the peppers, and mix. Serve at room temperature.
CHOW BABY!
(I know that's not how you spell it!)