Hello Summer.....Hello Spiedis!

Today is Memorial Day. Although it's about remembering those who have served our country, which would include more than a few of my uncles and some of my cousins and.....oh yeah....my brother, it is celebrated as the first day of summer fun. People all over are dodging the storms and tornadoes to light up the grill and throw on the hot dogs and hamburgers.
I think as a child, summer is "freedom"! Freedom from school and homework and the cold that keeps you indoors. At least that's how it was when I was growing up. Nowadays kids spend far too much time in the air conditioning exercising their thumbs on some video games instead of running outside to play.
Also, the food is amazing. My husband, who has been on seven day weeks for the past month or so had a long weekend. He spent most of the time working on putting our garden in. The tomatoes and peppers and squash and cucumbers and this year lettuce. The fresh vegetable are wonderful.
My all time favorite is something that takes me back to Endicott, where every summer we went around the 4th of July for a family reunion. There, my aunts and cousins would pull out the metal skewers and begin the long task of skewering lamb, pork, beef, and chicken that had been marinating for days. The smell, while it is grilling is enough to drive a person crazy, but that first bite is the best and then after that it just gets better.
Spiedis!
In Endicott there are actually places called "char pits" where you could get a spiedi sub. Last time we were there I went in and asked if they had lamb spiedis and this young girl looked at me like I was some kind of idiot. "No!" she said with an attitude. Apparently, chicken and pork are the way to go, but I still prefer beef and lamb.
We have family movies that show my grandfather sitting with his straw hat on behind a homemade charcoal grill constructed out of cement blocks. The long skewers cradled by the blocks, the smoke rising and wafting through the neighborhood. In Endicott, most people were probably making them. Here in Ohio, people just wondered what that great smell was.
Although our family name is Salamida, we are not directly related to the famous Salamidas that make Salamida's Spiedi Sauce. I heard that they were fifth or sixth (or so) cousins. I have bought this stuff on line just so I could give it away for Christmas.
When it isn't available, (I haven't seen it in these parts, but I did buy some in Florida about 11 years ago), I use Italian salad dressing. Any dressing. And then I add sliced garlic and other seasonings. Mint is very good, although I didn't have any this time, and actually, it's best with lamb. But other Italian seasonings will do. Be creative. Parsley, oregano, basil, rosemary.....they're all good.
The key to good spiedis is the longer they marinate the better they are. I bought my meat on Friday, cut it into 1 inch (or so) cubes and put it and my marinade into Ziploc bags in the frig. So it's been in there for four days. I've never had it go bad, I think the marinade keeps it from turning.
We use to use metal skewers. The last time I used mine, it was to help my neighbor jimmy the lock of his car door because he locked his keys inside. It worked well, but was never the same. These days it's just as easy to use wooden skewers. And you want to spray them with a non-stick spray before you begin to put the meat on them. This will work wonders. When we were kids getting the meat off of the skewers was so hard that sometimes it would slip and fly across the table. Spraying the skewer will help prevent putting someones eye out with a piece of beef.

Spiedis

1-2 pounds of meat - cut into about 1 inch cubes
(beef, chicken, pork, venison, lamb....etc. whatever you prefer)
1/2 to 1 - 16 oz. jar of spiedi sauce or Italian dressing
As much sliced garlic as you like.
Italian seasonings
Wooden skewers sprayed with non-stick spray

Throw all ingredients into a Ziploc bag and let marinate for 24 hrs - 3 days (in the frig). You may also do them way ahead of time and freeze them. Then thaw them the day before. They will still be good and if you are doing it for a crowd, it will save you some time.
Stick about 4-7 pieces on a skewer. Place on medium heat on the grill and WATCH CLOSELY! Cook them to your "likes" (rare, medium, well done).
An easy way to take them off of the skewer is to take a piece of bread and palm the meat with the bread (wrapping it around the meat while it's still on the skewer) and pull it off. You got yourself an automatic sandwich!
These are great with salad and rice and grilled vegetables. Today we're grilling marinated portabella mushrooms with our spiedis. I cleaned them and marinated them as long as the meat, but in a separate bag. You grill them just like a hamburger. They taste like steak without all of the fat.

Try them and let me know what you think!

Don't Put All Your Eggs In One Basket.....Put Them In A Pan And Fry Them Instead!

I always find it amazing how our tastes somehow change through the years. Growing up, I liked eggs. They were just...you know...okay.
But Now? I love them. I want to eat them every morning and for lunch and dinner. I really think it's my age.
I've never like creamy salad dressings. Now I can't get enough of them and vinegar based dressings (which is all I use to eat), just don't do it for me anymore.
Also, I have always been a carb person. Give me your pasta, your bread, your huddled masses of rice yearning to be eaten.
Now? I love meat. And I say this with a bit of a growl to my voice. Like a neanderthal brandishing a club and grunting in a butcher shop.
Call it my age, the change of life, menopause....whatever. I just don't like the same things I did five years ago.
Anyway...back to the eggs. They were actually one of the first things I learned to cook. And I cooked them with anything. You name it, it could be thrown into a pan of fried eggs. Balogni...salami...onions...peppers...hot peppers...ham....barbecue sauce. Fry 'em up and throw them between two pieces of bread and you got yourself a great meal.
My very favorite is fried peppers and eggs. I find it incredible that this is now served in restaurants. It makes a great sandwich. I especially like it on rye or a crusty ciabatta bread.
The other thing is something I began to make years ago after seeing it prepared in a scene in the movie Moonstruck. Recently I saw a blog with this featured and their little twist made it even more delectable. I call it "Eggs in a Nest".
My last is a family classic. Pepperoni and eggs. This also makes a great sandwich.
So let's eat eggs!

Peppers And Eggs For One

Olive Oil (about one tablespoon)
1 hot banana pepper (or 1/4 green bell or red bell pepper or a combination of both)
2 large eggs (beaten with a fork)

First clean your pepper. If it's hot, make sure you get rid of all the seeds, unless you like your food extra spicy (which I do). Also, you may want to take the vein out of the middle of the pepper. This also adds extra heat. Cut the pepper into quarter inch cubes. Toss them into a small frying pan of heated oil. Let them fry until they are just beginning to get translucent. Add your beaten egg (with salt and pepper to taste). I also sometimes add garlic powder for flavor. Move the peppers around the egg as you move the egg in the pan to make sure it doesn't stick. You want your peppers throughout. When your peppers and eggs are golden....you're done.
I like to toast my bread and add some butter. Then put it on the bread. Some people like mayo on their sandwich. I like the flavor of the olive oil. Mayo will ruin that. It's up to you.

Eggs In A Nest

2 Tbls olive oil
one slice thick crusty bread
one large egg

In the movie Moonstruck, Cher and Olympia Dukakis are eating this topped with a fried or roasted red pepper slice. I tried it. It's great!

I like to start with a crusty bread. Again, my favorites are ciabatta or rye bread, although Italian bread works well. Slice the bread fairly thick. About 3/4 inch. For the next part I use a drinking glass that has approximately a two inch round opening. I turn the glass upside down onto the soft part of the slice of bread and turn it back and forth until I could pull a 2 inch circle out of my bread. (Sort of like a cookie cutter).
In a pan, heat oil. Fry one side of the bread until it's just slightly golden. Flip it over. Gently break your egg over the opening in the bread and drop your yoke into the opening.
I don't like gooey yoke, so I usually break my yoke and let it spread around the bread more. When the egg and bread are very golden on the bottom, I flip the bread again to cook the top side. If you want wet yoke, you may want to just cook this slowly with a lid on it (without flipping it). This way you get that little "skin" over the yoke, but you can still dip your bread. Just check under the lid fairly frequently to make sure you are not cooking your yoke until it hardens.
Again, a piece of red pepper adds a zing to this. My family loves this and I make two each sometimes for supper in my big electric fry pan. I also take the round piece of bread that I cut out and fry it also. It's really good.

Pepperoni and Eggs (for the masses)

About ten years ago we had a family of seven living with us. The father of the family would only eat certain foods. Certain boring foods. Here we go: hamburgers, meatloaf, spaghetti (with pepperoni sauce), pizza, sandwiches made with sandwich pepperoni, and corn on the cob. He also liked eggs. One night I suggested that we make pepperoni and eggs. I thought Mike would die. Absolutely not. I asked him "Do you like eggs?"
"Yes."
"Do you like pepperoni?"
"Yes."
"Then you'll like this." His wife, Chris, to be on the safe side, made some plain eggs. To my astonishment, Mike tried the pepperoni and eggs and liked them.

Ingredients:
One stick pepperoni (chopped into small chunks)
One dozen eggs (beaten with a little milk)
salt, pepper, and garlic powder to taste

In a very large pan fry the pepperoni over medium high heat. You will not need oil or butter because as the pepperoni fries, it excretes it's own oils. (Some people like to add a little chopped onion to the pepperoni oil for more flavor).
Let the meat fry until it darkens. Make sure you move it around the pan so that it doesn't burn. Now by darkens, I don't mean blackens. You don't want it burned. When meat darkens in color, add eggs a little at a time, stirring with a spatula consistently so that they don't burn. When eggs are no longer runny and have a golden tint to them, you are ready. Again, this makes a great sandwich.
Sometimes I will combine the hot peppers and pepperoni and make the eggs with both. Not very often, it's very spicy and can produce killer heartburn.
But, ah me, it's worth it!

Contento Cuisine...The Next Generation

This is a "family" blog and all of the stories have been about food that my mother or grandmothers or cousins made, but this next one is from the next generation. It's my daughter's Alfredo sauce.

And let me tell you, I use the word "recipe" loosely. Actually, it's not a recipe at all. She said, "I don't use measurements."

Makes a mother proud.

I must admit, her Alfredo sauce is yummy. And fattening. It's easy, also, if you're a person who is secure enough NOT to follow a recipe. Some of us are....some of us are not.

When we were growing up, I don't ever recall eating anything with Alfredo sauce. Our pasta was always smothered in a red sauce or garlic and oil. We didn't frequent a whole lot of restaurants, and if we did, more than likely I ordered spaghetti with, you guessed it, a red sauce. Alfredo is so thick and rich, that I can't eat much of it, it's just a bit much for me.

But, let me tell you, when one of my kids offers to make supper, I don't care if it's bologna on rye, I'm letting them do it.

This is what Olivia usually makes.

Olivia's Alfredo Sauce

Okay, I'm going to give this to you just like she gave it to me:
First you melt some butter in a pan
Then you put half-n-half in it.
Then add Parmesan cheese.
(She said something here about adding more butter)
If it gets too thick add more half-n-half
Then I put garlic powder in it.

There, you have it folks. Now you could do that, right?

Here's some measurements I got off of CD Kitchen. This is a website I found.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter or margarine
2/3 cup heavy cream (Olivia uses half-n-half)
1 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 teaspoon salt
dash of pepper
noodles or fettuccine, cooked

This will help with measurements.

Olivia usually adds some imitation crab meat and pours it over hot pasta. The best, but the heaviest is cavatellis. Boy, was that good. But I could only eat a little bowl, it was so rich!

I think it would be good with broccoli and cauliflower. But Olivia has yet to make it with any vegetables.

Enjoy, but don't eat too much!

I'm back.....With Pepper Cookies

It's been awhile and I know some of you are thinking....."What are pepper cookies?"
I've been waiting to get this recipes from my relatives. By the time they finally e-mailed the recipe, my daughter went on line and found a recipe and they were pretty similar.

Pepper cookies. My daughter and I kept eating the dough and talking about the memories these cookies brought back. I know most people have memories of their grandmothers baking sweet cookies. Their round sweet faces aglow from the heat of the oven and handing the children the yummy delectables loaded with things like chocolate chips and raisins and nuts.

These cookies are a bit different. You see, both of my grandmothers didn't have sweet cookies in their houses because they watched their weight closely. Mimi, in Endicott, every night would eat her weight in watermelon. Grandma Civ never had alot of money. The thing I remember the most from her was her zucchini and tomatoes. Her cavatellis and pizza. But niether of them were into sweets.

There were the pepper cookies, however, that sat on Mimi's table and greeted us each time we arrived from Ohio to her kitchen in New York. They were always in a bowl with no lid on them and we would sit at the table and munch them. For me they were addicting. They are NOT a sweet treat. They are more of a.....savory snack.

Instead of being loaded with chocolate chipes, raisins, and nuts, these are loaded with ground black pepper and fennel.

Before you turn your nose up at them, let me tell you, I don't care for fresh fennel, but these have fennel seeds. They are crunchy and crumble easily. But I love them. They are more for eating with beer or ice tea than a cup of coffee or milk.

The recipe my cousin Marsha sent me is something to behold. I was amazed that I was able to understand it. It seemed rather vague to me. It calls for, among other things, 2 1/2 pounds of flour. Not cups.....no...that would be easy. POUNDS! Thank God for the internet. Olivia went on line and came back announcing that 4 cups of flour equals 1 pound. We took it from there. Okay....ten cups of flour.

But then the recipe called for 2 cups of oil....10% of which should be olive oil. Huh.....what the heck. I made so many mistakes trying to figure this out, I just kept adding more and more oil. And since the dough was dry, I even added more.

Anyway, Thank you Marsha for your recipes. Don't stop sending them. It just proves I need to spend more time in Endicott and bake with all of you. So here's Marsha's recipe for Black pepper cookies. Use a good coarse black pepper for the bite.

PEPPERS COOKIES!
2 1/2lb flour
1 1/2 cup hot oil(10% olive oil)
3 tsp fennel seeds (Luann grinds these up fine because nobody likes them whole)
2 cups warm wine(Rhine)
2 tbls black pepper(according to taste)
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbls baking powder(heaping)
warm oil ,when hot enough Mimi would "fry" fennel seeds in the oil
measure flour ,make a well in the middle of the table
add oil a little at a time to the flour ,mixing it with a knife until all flour added
mix well by hand
make another well on table and add wine
work and knead flour mixture
Mimi used to make a large "ball "of the mix and put it under a bowl
make a snake out of a small amt of dough(thin roll)then circle and criss cross and pinch ends
bake ungreased cookie sheet at 350? maybe I don't have it written down and can't find anybody to ask
I think they take about 10 min.or until they start to brown

****It took us about 25 minutes on 350. Maybe the temperature should be 375? Experiment, but keep your eye on them. They should be just golden brown on the bottom and the tips of points.****

Sundays at Ma's

I have in my oven right now a meal that to me will always be in my memory as Sunday dinner. Growing up, we would always have a wonderful dinner after church on Sundays. We began preparing it on Saturday mornings. When I speak with my non-Italian friends, their families did the same thing, but Sunday dinner for them was pot roast or ham or something with mashed potatoes and green beans (my mother-in-laws specialty).

But anyone who is Italian knows that Sunday dinner is always pasta.

We would begin preparing the sauce (tomato) on Saturday mornings. I think I was around twelve when this became my responsibility. My mother would cook the meat (meatballs, beef roast, pork roast....whatever was her fancy or maybe on sale) and then on Sunday morning, before we went to church, we would combine the meat and the sauce and put it on the back burner of the stove on low. We would eat around 1:00 or 2:00 in the afternoon. Usually my grandmother would make the rounds between our home and her other two local sons, Joe and Frank (Lou was in New York). One week at our house and another at someone else's house.

She would sometimes make homemade cavatells or gnocchis and bring them over and that would be the pasta for the day. My father like percitelli (my least favorite pasta....too messy) He also liked rigatoni (another one I didn't prefer). I was strictly a spaghetti enthusiast.

It didn't matter what the pasta...I always ended up speckled with tomato sauce before the end of the meal. Percitelli (I have no idea how to spell it) was fat tubular spaghetti. The sauce would lodge itself into the tubes and then when you tried to twirl or slurp it....the red stuff would spray everywhere. Sort of like blowing it through a straw.
I was well into my thirties before I finally mastered the art of twirling my spaghetti on a spoon. As a small child, I'm sure I just slurped and covered myself with red. I even broke out into a rash at which (to my horror and sorrow), my mother thought I was allergic to tomato sauce and for some time I was not permitted to eat it. It was a nightmare. I was forced to eat a boxed meal of beef stroganoff, the closest thing we could find to spaghetti because the beef was actually in the form of meatballs. I ate it, watching everyone else twirling spaghetti and laughing and mocking me in my dilemma!

I don't recall when we finally realized I wasn't allergic, it was just the acid from the tomatoes. This probably happened when I began to eat without covering my face with sauce. At this point in my spaghetti history I began twirling my fork into my bowl, wrapping mountains of spaghetti onto it and then shoving it into my mouth. I was usually done eating in about four bites. (Of course, asking for seconds). Hmmm. Why am I fat?

What I am making at this time is my father's favorite meat and that is brociole. I literally will crave this stuff. I'm not sure why I only make it once or at the most twice a year. It's really not hard to make. At least, my version is so much less complicated than my mother's version.

Braciole begins a very thin piece of steak, about 1/8 of an inch thick. It is long and narrow. You fill it and roll it to form a jelly roll looking thing and cook it, then cook it more in the sauce.

I am topping cavatells with braciole today. I will be giving you the recipes for our spaghetti sauce I grew up making and bracioles.

There is a whole story behind the complicity of my mother's bracioles. After rolling the bracioles, my mother would take a toothpick and tie the end of a long piece of string to it. She would stick the toothpick into the braciole towards one end, near the seam, and then wrap the string around the braciole. Roll, roll, roll. The string would cover the entire roll and then end at the other end, tied to a second toothpick that was stuck into the braciole towards the very other end of the roll. This was to ensure that the meat would not unroll while frying or in the sauce.

Here is how we differ:

1. I do not use string. (too messy)

2. I bake mine, I do not fry mine (the braciole....not the string)

The reason I don't like the string thing is because unrolling that little rolled meaty thing is like having a tug-a-war with a piece of meat. But instead of it being a "mud tug" over a puddle of mud, it's a "tomato tug" over a pool of spaghetti sauce. Either way, you get the same results. You are sprayed, speckled, covered with sauce.

Here's why, first you must find the toothpick that the wrapper ended with. You pull this out and then begin unrolling the meat. I challenge any of you to see if you could do this without sauce splattering and spraying all over you... the meat plopping back onto your plate into the yummy sauce and it splishing and splashing like a fish out of water. Seriously, it's such a messy process and I always felt guilty about the state of my clothing afterwards. How DO people do this without making a spectacle of themselves!!!!

My mother had a very interesting reason for doing it this way. When she was growing up...back in the day....my great grandmother would take one braciole and wrap it in an extra long string. It was a game for the kids. They would begin unrolling their meat and end up standing on their chairs because the strings were so long. But the one who found the longest string won. My mother says it was great fun! I don't know what they won. But I think it should have been an apron.

Now, about frying the meat. I don't like anything fried, not because I'm health conscious, but because I don't like the mess it makes. Grease splattered everywhere.

I know what you're thinking. I sound a bit obsessive compulsive about being clean. It's not that. It's just that I hate to clean and want as little slop as possible so that I don't have to scrub it up. So there...it's just that I'm lazy. (No Ma, I have not turned into you yet. At least not in that way.)

So, with all of that out of the way....here is how I make bracioles and spaghetti sauce.

Spaghetti Sauce

4 - 28 oz cans of crushed tomatoes

4 small or two large cans of tomato paste

2 TBLs olive oil

2-4 cloves of garlic (minced)

1 medium onion (chopped)

The following herbs to taste:

oregano

basil

parsley

salt

pepper

or you could just use Italian seasonings

***balsamic vinegar (my own addition, I'll explain why later)***

In a large pot, on medium high heat saute garlic and onion in oil until transparent. Add tomatoes and paste and seasonings. Make sure you stir this all together to combine it nicely and thicken the tomatoes with the paste. When sauce begins to bubble, turn it to low and cook for two or three hours.

**A not so important note, but a little piece of interesting information....When I was beginning to learn this process, we would begin, as I said earlier, on Saturday mornings. The sauce would cook on low all day, stirring periodically, to make sure it didn't stick on the bottom of the pot. When I say "all day"...I mean until around 10:00 PM at night! Then on Sunday mornings we would cook it some more for about 2-4 more hours. Usually by the time Saturday night came, the sauce would actually be a paste and on Sundays we would have to add water to it. One time when I was preparing it for some friends, another Italian friend of mine added sugar to my sauce. (The scoundrel!!!! Touching MY sauce!!!!!). But I must admit, she was right. It was pure acid. I really don't like it cooked this long anymore and the longest I'll cook it on the stove top is two or three hours. I now add a sprinkle of balsamic vinegar (believe it or not) to reduce the acid taste. It sweetens it nicely. Do you do anything to reduce any acid flavor? Some people I've heard add cucumbers or carrots or a potato.....sounds strange to me, but if it works....I say go for it!

These days if I want to cook my sauce a long time I put it in the oven on low or I cook it in my crockpot on low.

Braciole

4 pieces of round steak

You could buy these already flattened for braciole, but they will cost more. When you are done flattening them, they should be approximately 12 inches long, 4-6 inches wide and 1/8 inch thick.

About 1 cup (or more....be courageous and experiment) of Parmesan or Romano cheese (grated fine).

The following to taste:

salt

pepper

parsley

black pepper

garlic

***You may want to use toothpicks to keep the meat from unrolling, but it may not be necessary***

If you did not buy your meat readily prepared for braciole, take your piece of meat and place it in between some plastic wrap and pound the begeebers out of it until it's the correct thickness and easy to roll up. This is a fun activity for the family that's really ticked off at each other! Hurt the meat....not the family.

After the "pounding party", release the meat from it's plastic prison and lay it in front of you. Sprinkle 1/4 of your cheese, covering the steak. Next 1/4 of all of your herbs (to taste). I love my bracioles spicy so I take at least one or two and pour the black pepper on it. (Today I didn't have toothpicks and all I could find to hold mine together were some kebab skewers. I broke them in half and pierced my rolls with them. The spicy ones are the rolls with the pointy ended skewers...shoot....or is it the unpointy ends....dang! I can't remember!!!)

After repeating the process with all four pieces of meat and skewering meat with toothpicks, place into a deep baking pan (pot pan) and bake on 350 degrees until the meat is no longer showing any pink. (or red) When the meat is cooked through (drain any grease), add your sauce (recipe above)...just enough to cover it and bake on low for several hours until the meat is tender. I love it when the meat falls apart. Although some people don't like it that tender, so just bake it until it is hot and bubbly.

My favorite way to eat this is topping cavatellis (it's cavatelli, cavatell...excuse the missspellling.)

So enjoy! Remember, I really want to know how you keep your spaghetti sauce from being too acidy.

It's That Time of Year Again! LENT!

Lent! That time of year when you make the ultimate sacrifice. Most people give up some sort of food for Lent. How cruel, that Valentine's Day falls during Lent and women, and even men, everywhere are denying themselves that rich, creamy treat. I have friends who have given up "meats and sweets". When I was younger we had to give up meat. I think it was just on Fridays. (I can't remember, considering that the Catholic Church made us give up meat on Fridays all year long when I was very young.)

Anyway, Fridays were pizza night. Now, my brother and I remember my Mom's pizza quite differently than she says she made it. We remember pizza covered in parmesan....not mozzarella. My mother says she used mozzarella.

Sorry about that. I got off on a rabbit trail there with the pizza. I actually want to post a couple of pasta recipes that I grew up enjoying on Fridays. I especially remember my Grandmi, (Mimi to her great grandchildren in New York), making this dish in her basement and all of us sitting around the long connected tables eating it happily.

My grandmother's basement was one of my favorite places when filled with all of my relatives. It was noisey and cramped, but our focus wasn't the "ambience" it was the people and the food.

The room was surrounded with photos of my grandparents' favorite people. Their siblings, parents, grandparents, children and grandchildren, neices and nephews and JFK. That's right. We were Catholic and his picture made it into the basement with all of the others after his death. My grandfather, Pete, loved the guy.

I loved looking at all of the old photos, still in the old frames with the bubble-like glass. My great grandparents and their children, my grandmother and her siblings, with my aunts and uncles was my favorite. My great grandmother had seven children who grew up and gave birth to a bunch grandchildren and great grandchildren. This favorite old photo of Grandma and Grandpa and all of our aunts and uncles ranging in age from baby on Grandma's knee (Aunt Katie) to my grandmother who was I believe a teenager (or young adult) included an added picture of Rose, the little girl who died at age five. It is a beautiful antiquity that I loved looking at.

There was also a bulletin board covered with a collage of black and white photos of the family. I would stand in front of that bulletin board for hours and look at those pictures, soaking in our family history.

Also, in the basement was a the favored blackboard, that generations of Contentos and Salamidas (and their extended family and friends) wrote on. Adults and children alike, had at one time or another chalk covered fingers. We drew pictures and spelled words and kept score during the hundreds of card games played at those tables when we weren't eating at them.

The two recipes I'm going to talk about today were both eaten on Fridays during the Lent season because they didn't include meat. The one recipe, my brother, Mickey (to me) and Michael (to his wife), loved so much that when he was older he made his own version of macaroni with tuna sauce. When we were kids, it was usually made with spaghetti or "hats". Mickey made it with rigatoni, and I actually prefer it this way.

Most of the recipes I share with you will have been altered some. Time restraints and busy lifestyles have casued many of us to come up with quicker and easier ways to create the wonderful foods our parents and grandparents put hours into preparing. Also, we are now "old" and can't really remember how to make them and written recipes are scarce and sometimes scoffed over.

So I will share with you the easy way to create this dish that I perceived my brother made late at night when he lived with me and my parents. (My grandparents will be rolling in their graves and I may get some hate e-mail or phone calls from relatives).



3 Ingredient Rigatoni and Sauce with Tuna
1 lb cooked rigatoni (al dente)
1-2 cans albacore tuna (drained very well)
1 regular sized jar of prepared spaghetti sauce (God, forgive me)
(My brother used Ragu....I like Prego)
A sprinkling of parmesan or romano cheese

***Things in italics in this recipe are my own additions***

If you wish to make your sauce from scratch, go ahead, I'm sure it will be better than out of a jar. I just remember my brother throwing the three things together and I was amazed that I liked it. I myself begin by sauting garlic and onions and sliced fresh mushrooms together until onions are translucent. Then I add the albacore and sauce. I always add a little sprinkling of balsalmic vinegar to my sauce (whether I make it from scratch or not) to add some sweetness to it. Heat your sauce in a medium saucepan on medium heat, stirring occasionally to keep it from burning or sticking. When sauce is hot and bubbly, pour over hot rigatoni and sprinkle with cheese and/or hot pepper seeds.



This next recipe is something my mother, Angie or Angelina Rose Salamida Ciavarella (nice Irish name), made when my father was working nights. She would wait until my brother and I were in bed and then she would make just enough for herself (how selfish!). Now that I am married and have children, I wait until the whole family is out of the house and make it for myself. I do this about once or twice a year. My mother would also make garlic bread, something I don't ever recall eating until I was older. I like to make this as a side dish to steak, chicken, or baked fish. I do make it for the family when I make it as a side dish, because my husband wants meat with it. But I think it is just as good by itself with a salad on the side.



Spaghetti with Garlic and Oil
1 lb spaghetti, linguine, or angel hair (cooked al dente)
2/3 cup olive oil
2-3 closes garlic chopped or sliced.
a sprinkle of parmesan or romano cheese
a sprinkle of hot pepper seeds or black pepper or both

Pour olive oil (I prefer extra virgin, it has the most flavor) into a small fry pan or pot. Heat over a medium heat. Add garlic before oil gets too hot. Use a wooden spoon to move garlic around oil (or swirl it gently.....gently). When garlic just turns golden, pour oil over hot pasta. My mother always scooped the garlic out of the oil and tossed it. (Not me!) It's up to your tastes. I brush my teeth after I eat to spare everyone around me from the smell. (Not that my mother doesn't). Toss pasta with forks or tongs to make sure it all gets coated. I like my pasta covered in cheese and red pepper seeds, but again, this is up to your tastes.

Why Contento....why not Ciavarella or Salamida Cuisine?

Okay, in case this comes up....Contento seemed to me to be the best name. A few reasons really: I'm pretty sure that Contento is the same as content. I think that I would like to feel "contented" after eating. Thus....Contento Cuisine.
Salamida and Ciavarella had their drawbacks. For instance, when I was in junior high, my girlfriend's father thought the name "Salamida" sounded like "We...sellabreada...notsellameata." This is funny when said with a really bad Italian accident, but looks stupid on the written page. As for Ciavarella...let's face it...I was called Cinderella for much of my childhood.
Who are the Contentos?
Contento was my mother's mother's maiden name. My Grandmi was Elwyn Contento Salamida. Angela (or was Angelina) Contento was my great grandmother. She was a blast! She didn't speak much English and was the typical Italian grandma. Her gray hair was pulled back in a bun, the pointy facial features, her stockings rolled down just above the knee. She sat in the livingroom at her house in Endicott watching TV. It was a large pink and white stucko house (did I spell that right?). Grandma loved to watch Lawrence Welk, football, boxing, and wrestling. She was convinced the wrestling was real and you did not want to tell her otherwise. I heard from my older cousins that the language that came from her little Italian mouth while watching boxing was not only hair-raising, but amusing.
My cousin Luann and I use to sit on the floor on either side of Grandma Contento when we were younger. We would smile, look at each other, and at the same time roll her stockings down to her ankles. I don't remember what she said to us, but it didn't sound like birds tweeting. The two of us ran away....giggling. (nasty brats!)
Like any other Italian grandmother, she laid out a table to die for. Pastas and salads galore.
This next salad was something that we all loved. My mother and father both said that I should include it in my blog. I told them I had no idea how to spell it. Between the three of us, we came up with this spelling: L'aqua Salle.
This is a salad that has truly survived the generations of Contentos and Salamidas. Today, my children will go out into our garden and pick tomatoes and make this juicy, garlicy salad. Just as the roasted pepper and tomato salad, you must have a good hunk of crusty bread to dunk into the bowl while eating it. When I was younger, I believe we ate from and dunked our bread into a common salad bowl as a family. It was fun, but not quite sanitary. These days, being more aware of germs, we pour it into individual bowls and have at it!
Although we call it a salad, L'aqau Salle is almost like a cold soup. I hope you enjoy!

L'aqua Salle
6-8 medium to large very ripe (not rotten) tomatoes
2/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/3 cup cool water
2-4 cloves of garlic-sliced or minced
basil, parsley, salt, and pepper to taste.
Rinse your tomatoes. Then cut (quartered or cubed, whatever size you like)them into a bowl. Cut out the core, but leave the seeds and juice with the tomatoes. Take your potato masher and smash your tomatoes to get all that juice out. Add the rest of the ingredients and toss. I like to let it sit awhile and soak in all the flavors of the herbs and garlic. Serve at room temperature.

**Tips learned through Carla's Cooking School of Hard Knocks**
(in other words, I screwed up and found out the hard way)
If you are making any salad with olive oil in the dressing, you really don't want to refrigerate it. The olive oil tends to solidify and turns into a sort of gross, slimey gel. If you are making a salad that you anticipate will produce leftovers that need refrigerated and it calls for oil, use canola oil or an oil other than olive oil. I have found that canolia oil refrigerates nicely.