4 years…195 recipes…2,500 pictures taken, over 300 phone calls, thousands and thousands of hours and literal blood, sweat and lots and lots of tears.

4 years ago I had an epiphany. I was calling my mom nearly every single day asking for recipes she made for us growing up, cooking tips and advice. ITALIANS DON’T WRITE DOWN RECIPES (at least not correctly…)!!! It’s just “a little of this and some of that.” Well what happens when our first generation of Italian Americans is no longer here to help the rest of us cook. The recipes, the stories, the traditions….eventually they’re just gone.

So, I set out on a mission. It started out as a mission to collect all my Italian family’s “secret” recipes and actually WRITE THEM DOWN! It was honestly mostly for selfish reasons but over time it evolved into something so much more than just a cookbook. 

As we worked to create this book there was no shortage of hurdles to jump. Our families suffered illness, death, loss of employment, and divorce. At one point we lost ALL the recipes we had entered as the site we used went under. When we started again I had literally just given birth to my second daughter and persuaded (forced) my mom to stay an extended amount of time so we could work on inputting recipes. We would alternate holding my week old baby and typing/reading recipes. As we continued to work on the book we knew this would be more than just a cookbook.

It turned into a preservation of our family recipes, a history of our immigrant generation, and a book filled with stories, tradition, and love. It was a labor of love to say the least as we tried to get actual measurements, temperatures, and times for recipes as well as facts, dates, and stories. My mom translated several recipes into English from her brother (who still lives in Italy). 

I had the honor of making over 100 of the recipes to ensure we had correct measurements, times, temps, etc. I started taking pictures of the dishes I was making and the pictures were actually decent so we decided to add the pictures to the book. Then as my mom would tell me stories about the dishes they used to eat and the memories surrounding them, I knew we needed these stories included in the book. We wrote down the personal histories for each of my mom’s siblings including pictures and important details. It took a really long time to put everything together but FINALLY, after 4 years we finished and printed our family heirloom cookbook. 

Somewhere along the way, my heart got stolen by these people and recipes. I became so passionate about food and tradition. I realized the love of food, family, and culture it was instilling in my little 2 and 4-year-old daughters. They would beg to make pasta on Sundays and any time I was cooking they wanted to be involved. My husband even joined in and it bonded our tiny family like nothing else could. I felt so incredibly connected to the people to whom the recipes belonged to. There was power and strength as I worked to preserve their recipes and tell their story through food.

With the cookbook printed, I couldn’t just extinguish the fire that now burned not only in me but also in my mom and children.

So, 3 months later, Mamma Mangia was born. We started Mamma Mangia to share our love of famiglia and the power of food in bringing us all together. 

Xo

Solae’