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 and 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, in 2016 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. 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). 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 it needed to be more than just a cookbook.

I had to make most 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 pretty 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 I knew we needed these stories included in the book. And THEN, as we collected recipes from her siblings I thought….well we live thousands of miles away from most of these people and my kids may never know who they are. We need to write about them so when my 25 year old daughter wants to make Uncle Leo’s meatballs she will KNOW who he was and that he was FAMOUS for his meatballs! It took a really long time to put everything together but FINALLY in June we finished and printed the family cookbook 👏🏻 📖 👏🏻
Somewhere along the way my heart got stolen by these people and recipes. I became so passionate about food and tradition. I felt like I came to know my grandparents and aunts and uncles on a completely different level. With the cookbook printed I couldn’t just extinguish the fire that had been lit.

So, 2 months later, Mamma Mangia was born 🇮🇹
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