The Italian Wedding

 

The Italian Wedding by Nicky Pellegrino was part of the 3-novel volume that I needed to purchase in order to read The Food of Love Cookery School. I loved The Food of Love Cookery School (still trying to convince my husband we need to take a cooking class in Sicily - now that he watched a Hallmark movie about a cooking school in Venice, he's more intrigued by the idea of a cooking school). I simply liked The Italian Wedding. 

It was the perfect book to read on the plane on the first leg of my Italy trip. (And no, I'm not in Italy yet.) I was initially disappointed that so much of the novel took place in England, but gradually, there was more and more of the story set in Italy. At this point it's very obvious that I love reading books based in Italy, especially when they deal with food!

What was also cool is that in this novel, the main character, Pieta, is a wedding dress designer making her sister's wedding dress and helping her plan a dream wedding. The first leg of this trip I'm on is to attend my daughter's wedding. Lots of connections there!

Pieta's mother, Catherine, helps with the construction of the wedding dress. And as they sew and bead, Catherine tells Pieta about how she and Pieta's father met and fell in love. Until that point, Pieta had a very  hard time imagining her mother before she was her mother. 

This was a very enjoyable novel to read, had my mouth watering in parts, got me really excited to visit Italy (counting the days), and it would make a great Hallmark-type movie.

I look forward to reading The Villa Girls, the third novel in this volume.

The Food of Love Cookery School

I guess I lied the other day. Here is another book I purchased as a result of a Facebook ad, but not until I'd communicated with the author and read an excerpt.

The Food of Love Cookery School by Nicky Pellegrino takes place in Sicily, one of the destinations for my upcoming trip. And it's all about food. Well, not all about food. It's sort of a romance, sort of a story of women rediscovering a part of themselves that had been missing.

Luca Amore (what a name!) grew up in a small baroque town in Sicily (modeled after Modica), left to live and work in London for a little while, and returned to Sicily where he opened a small cooking school using his nonna's recipes. (Pellegrino based his cooking school on a cooking school she attended. Sounds like so much fun!) The four participants live in Luca's nonna's house and go on all sorts of excursions in addition to the one cooking class they have per day.

There's romance, food, self-discovery, friendship, and did I mention food? The descriptions are drool worthy! In fact, as I was reading, I realized that I really need a pair of pants with an elastic waist for my trip. What if I eat all this delicious sounding food and then can't fit into the pants I was planning on packing? I stopped reading with about an hour left to order myself a stretchy pair of pants. 

I could make connections to two of the characters - Valerie, the 65-year old New Yorker and Moll, the British divorcee. One of my favorite highlights was from Moll's story. On weekends I'm always off on little adventures. I love finding spice shops or Italian delis and just breathing in the air. I lust after new recipes and the flavors I might find in them. That was me prior to moving to Florida.

In the author's notes, Pellegrino wrote: Some places I mention are real - the Caffe Sicilia in Noto is famed for its extraordinary ice cream, the Dolceria Bonajuto in Modica (which became Vincenzo Mazzara's dolceria) for its chocolate. I already had Caffè Sicilia on my list of places to try to get to. Now I'll need to add Dolceria Bonajuto.

Because The Food of Love Cookery School didn't come as a stand alone kindle book, I had to buy it as part of a 3-novel edition. So I have 2 more of Nicky Pellegrino's novels to read once I reach a lull in my book club and library reading. They might be good to save for a long plane ride I've got in my future.

The Cookbook Club

On one of my rare entries into a store this past year, I walked into Barnes & Noble with my daughter while she was attempting to pick up a book. I browsed, picked up The Cookbook Club by Beth Harbison. It must have struck my fancy as I added to my ToBeRead list. After finishing Night and This Tender Land, I was wanting something light to read and this was available from the library.

I had a preconceived notion about what this novel would be like and it was nothing like what I imagined. I expected a novel with a bunch of people in a club where they worked on recipes from a particular cookbook for each month. That part was true. But I also expected the story to somehow be connected to the recipes or the cookbook or  the cookbook author. That wasn't the case at all. 

Beth Harbison clearly has a love of cookbooks. My cookbook collection isn't too shabby either but... when I'm in a need a recipe, I typically head to google and search and print the recipe that most strikes my fancy.

Margo, Aja and Trista are each at a crossroads. Trista has just purchased a bar and has come up with the idea of a cookbook club basically to find like-minded testers for the recipes she hopes to cook and serve at her bar. Margo has just been dumped by her jerk of a husband when she comes across the ad for the cookbook club. Aja is hoping that she can learn how to cook! The three definitely bond over food and this is a wonderful book for foodies. However, the book is more about the women's friendships and the choices that each one makes during a difficult time in her life. Oh... but the food...

If only I wasn't going to be on Weight Watchers for the rest of my life! I'd love a cookbook club! It has given me the idea, though, that if I ever bond with people also following WW, a  WW dinner club might be something fun. Who can make the most delicious healthy food?

One thing that really struck me, though, was what Margo had to go through cooking for her husband. He was truly obsessed with a healthy diet so she wasn't allowed to use butter, real cheese, make fresh pasta, and so on. To think that I think I make things tough on my husband! He can use anything as long as he weighs and measures out what he's using. And he can't use a lot of the foods that I want to limit. I'm nothing like Margo's ex-husband. Although her complaints did give me a window into what my husband might be thinking.

There's also a bit of home improvement stuff in here. As part of Margo's divorce settlement, she's gotten the dilapidated farm house that has been in her husband's  family for years. An old college friend of hers is in need of an escape so in return for free rent, he is doing some renovations for her. I sure hope that future Cookbook Club meetings will be held at Margo's farmhouse.

If you need something light and "a bit cheesy" (pun intended) to read and food is one of your things, you might want to pick this one up.

Taste: My Life Through Food

Sometime in 2021 (how does one keep track of things that happened in that year that didn't fit any pattern?), my husband and I watched "Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy." We were engrossed. Tucci travels around Italy, exploring the food cultures and the foods of different areas of the country. All we could think of as we watched was that we wished we could travel around Italy with Stanley Tucci. What a wonderful companion he would be. And the foodie doors he would open for us would be amazing!

In Renee's Reading Club, the Facebook group that I am a member of, a woman mentioned reading his memoir, Taste. It sounded wonderful. My husband is not a reader, but I thought he'd really enjoy it. Perfect choice for an audio book for the two of us to listen to together.

And boy, was it ever! We both so thoroughly enjoyed listening to this memoir! Each one of us for our own personal reasons. As Tucci described the role food played in his family, my husband was nodding his head. I was hearing it differently. My husband and I have very different attitudes towards food. As Tucci explained his connection to food, something clicked. My husband wasn't weird in his attitudes to food. He must be coming from the same place as Stanley Tucci. Stanley Tucci was raised by parents born in America with Italian roots. My husband was born in Italy but raised in America. I was raised as a 3rd generation American Jew. Big difference in attitudes towards food!

We both love food and we loved listening to Stanley Tucci tell his stories. We loved listening to him read off his recipes. I have requested the e-book from the library so I can copy some of them down. There were some laugh-out-loud moments and some tearful moments as well.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. And if you have the opportunity to listen to it rather than to read it, that's the route I'd take. 

While I'm waiting for the e-book and Season 2 of "Searching for Italy," I have The Tucci Cookbook to drool over. After listening to the first chapter of Taste, I knew that exactly what I needed to get my husband for Christmas. In addition to Tucci's cookbook, I got him two editions of Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well by Pellegrino Artusi. One in English and the other in Italian (La Scienza in Cucina e L'Arte di Mangiar Bene. It's a book that Tucci recommended in the TV series, almost like the Bible of Italian food.

Buon appetito!

 

Life From Scratch: A Memoir of Food, Family and Forgiveness

 

Once again, when I read the blurb about Life From Scratch: A Memoir of Food, Family and Forgiveness by Sasha Martin, I didn't read carefully enough. I thought it was going to be about the author trying to cook a dish from every cuisine worldwide. It turns out, that was the purpose of her writing a book. But that this book was about much, much more. It's about what drove her to even attempt such a project. Once I was about a quarter of the way into the book, I went back to goodreads to see what I'd misread. Turns out that the blurb really didn't give much information. So I started skimming the reviews. That's when I truly realized my mistake.

A few of the reviewers likened this to The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. Only with food. I tend to agree. There were very many differences, but the vibe was the same. Kids neglected by mother (or parents), trying to come to terms with that while forging ahead in life. Unlike The Glass Castle, Life From Scratch resonated with me. In the past 30-something years of my life, food has played a much more important role than it did in the first 30-something years. Food can be a connection to others, a way to armchair travel, a way to express love.

Sasha and her brother Michael grew up with their single mom who marched to the beat of a different drummer. They were very poor, but because of their mom's creativity and quirkiness, they didn't even realize it. In their small nuclear family, food was important. Events were marked by food. The mom made sure that Sasha and her brother understood their Italian and Hungarian roots - through food.

For about two years, Sasha and Michael were bounced from one foster home to another when the "system" deemed their mom unfit to raise them. When Sasha was nine-years-old, the mom's best high school friend and her husband agree to become the kids' guardians. The family moved from Boston, where their home with their mother was, to Atlanta and eventually, after tragedy strikes, overseas. Sasha is physically and emotionally abandoned by her mother. She leads a troubled teenaged life and only seems content when she's in the kitchen cooking.

Sasha comes into a bit of money when she's at loose ends after college and she decides she's going to use half the money to go to the Culinary Institute of America. She leaves for the first summer to complete an internship in Tulsa and ends up staying in Tulsa and creating a new life. Only after Sasha and her husband have a baby does Sasha realize that food might hold the key to being able to truly move forward. That's when the idea of cooking herself around the world comes in.

When I realized that their was a blog that came before the memoir, off I was to explore the blog. It's called Global Table Adventure and if you are at all into cooking or ethnic foods, it's a worthwhile site to explore. There are some interesting recipes with some beautiful photographs, plus there's a little bit of story telling.

Another memoir this one reminded me of was The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels. Even though I enjoyed Life From Scratch and found The Pioneer Woman irritating. Whose table would I rather sit down to eat at? Sasha's. Hands down. But the same idea, figuring out how to move forward with your life with the help of food.

I'd recommend Life From Scratch.