There was a little girl with a little curl ...

"There was a little girl with a little curl right in the middle of her forehead.  When she was good she was very very good but when she was bad she was horrid." 

     Yep that was me.  Mama always said that to me when I was a little girl.  And from the stories I heard about me that little saying was true.  I was the little curly haired blonde baby that mama was so proud of.  She loved blonde hair and who expected her to have a fair haired and fair skinned little Italian girl.  But low and behold there I was born on October 22, 1946, at All Souls Hospital on Mt. Kemble Ave., in Morristown, NJ.  Mama said I was bald for the first year with just a little curl on top of my head.  I grew into a pretty child and Mama loved the fact that people would stop her on the street and tell her I looked just like Shirley Temple.  She wanted that response; she dressed me and fixed my hair just like Shirley.  I had long blonde finger curls and short little dresses with ruffles on my underpants.  I remember a dark blue frosted drinking glass with Shirley’s picture and name on it that I drank from.  Wish I still had it today. 

     I did not have the angelic personality Shirley had in the movies. I was a little spitfire with a very naughty streak.  But I could be very sweet and friendly to everyone when I choose to.  Washington Street was really a busy highway that went right through town. But that never seemed to worry Mama, she let me wander up and down that street from the time I was 3 or 4 years old with no supervision.  I don’t know where she was but I don’t remember her being anywhere in sight.  That didn’t bother me either; I was friends with all the ladies on the street.  I went from house to house visiting and eating all the cookies they gave me.  There was Elinore the maid, Mr. Murphy the Limo driver and his sister and Rose Corbit and her brother John. Elinore impressed me because in the house where she worked they had a big ironing press and I would watch as she pressed clothes and all the wrinkles would disappear like magic.   Rose Corbit had a pull chain toilet that was on the back porch in a little closet like room and I loved go into it and pull the chain.   Mr. Murphy had a cat that had kittens, which any 4 year old would love. I can still see their little grey faces with huge eyes, the cats not the people.  But most of all I remember Miss Sweeney.

     Mrs. Sweeney was my adopted grandmother since I didn’t have one and what a character she was.  She was already an old lady when I was born and I don’t remember life on Washington Street without her.  She once owned the house we lived in but at the time she lived in the house right next door. As a matter of fact she owned a lot of houses on Washington Street and in Morris Plains all left to her by her mother whom she lived with all of her life.  She was eccentric and sold Mama many of those houses and then would buy them back from her and Mama would make a profit.  Mrs. Sweeney always paid Mama more than what she paid her for it them.

     My mother was young enough to be her daughter but she called Mama Aunt Mae. Mama told me I even started calling her Aunt Mae so she and Papa had to start calling each other Mommy and Daddy. Mrs. Sweeney took me everywhere, I had a big straw pram and even at 4 I would make her push me in it when she would take me uptown to the Park in the heart of Morristown to feed the pigeons.  I loved it when we stopped in at Woolworth and bought the fresh hot peanuts that we fed them, they smelled so good.

     When the Morris County Fair would come to the county she and I would make the journey to see it.  If I remember correctly it was in Pine Brook off of route 46. I say Journey because we would have to take at least 3 busses to get there, Mrs. Sweeney never drove. It was a fun trip for a small child.  Mama would pack us a lunch and we would sit at a table at the fair grounds and eat our lunch and then get frozen custard for dessert.  When I got a little older we would even go to the Movies together.  I remember seeing The King and I, Three Coins in the Fountain and Love is a Many Splendid Thing with her.  She was old but very active and walked everywhere.  Around the house and neighborhood she wore a long black coat and shabby black hat but when she went “uptown” or to Church she wore her Sunday best. 

      She and Mama were dedicated Democrats.  When Eisenhower was running for president against the Democrates candidate Adlai Stevenson our house was full of election talk.  I remember our kitchen in the mornings that summer, Mama and Mrs. Sweeney would sit and drink coffee and listen to WMTR our local radio station and get updated on the campaign.  It appeared to me as a child that Mr. Stevenson could do no wrong and he just had to beat that bad IKE. Ikes’ campaign slogan was “I like Ike” and I would say it just to annoy the two of them.  They would both say in unison, “NO YOU DON'T”.  When Ike won the election it was a sad morning in Mama’s kitchen. 

     But really the reason I will never forget Mrs. Sweeney is because of what happened to my new front tooth when I was 7 years old.  Mama and Papa were going out for the evening and Mrs. Sweeney always babysat for us.  We were watching TV which she loved doing because she didn’t have one. Back in the day not all homes had acquired them.   When it was time for Linda to go to bed, Linda started misbehaving  and ran up the stairs and got under the covers of Mama and Papa’s bed.  Mrs. Sweeney was wheedling a soup ladle she carried to discipline us. She decided Linda needed a smack with it on the behind. As she swung it around to hit Linda she hit me instead, right in the mouth. The ladle broke  my front tooth in half.  The damn tooth had just come in.  I had to go through the rest of my childhood with a broken front tooth.  The dentist would not cap it until I was 12.  All through my adulthood the dam thing had to be changed for one reason or another resulting on me paying a lot of money to get a permanent bridge.  As of several months ago that frigging front tooth, in the bridge, broke once again.  So guess what, I have a broken front tooth again.  So yes she left me with and indelible memory of her and I curse her every time I look in the mirror.  As of last week I had it fix yet again.

      I had heard a story about my cousin Nickie Abato many times and it went something like this.  During the war Mama lived with Zizi Rosie and Uncle Ben, at that time they had one child Nickie.  One day Mama was washing dishes and took her Diamonds off and laid them on the kitchen window sill.   She had forgotten that they were there so when she went back to get them they were gone.  She searched everywhere and never found them. She was beside herself, crying and praying to St. Jude to help her find them.  And St. Jude came through for her. One week later Nickie asked her to go outside with him, he said “Aunt Mae let’s go outside and see if any Diamonds grew”.  A little went off in Mama's head so she went outside with him and low and behold he had buried her diamonds in the backyard. He thought they would grow more diamonds like flowers.  It was just luck that he remembered the exact spot where he had buried them. I like to think it was St. Jude who got Mama's diamonds back to her.   Mama of course, called him a little Son of a Bitch Bastard (her favorite names).  But she could laugh about it and told the story many times.

     Mama went back to work at the Slip Factory when I was 4 and Zizi baby sat for me.  One morning before JoJo went to school (Zizi's daughter) she yelled at me for touching her dolls and told me I could not play with them.  This made the bad little girl in me come out.  JoJo had a complete set of International Dolls which had beautiful dresses replicating costumes from all different countries. I got an idea reminiscent of what Nickie did to Mama’s Diamonds.  I took every one of those dolls outside and buried them.  Later that day when JoJo came home from school she found her dolls missing.  Zizi called Mama and wanted to know what I did with the dolls.  I had to admit that I buried them in the back yard.  Mama had to buy JoJo all new dolls because when she dug them up the beautiful dresses were ruined. 

 Another time I disappeared from my Aunts house while playing outside.  Zizi and Mama spent hours looking for me and when they found me I was in the High School Gymnasium doing exercises on the floor with the girls.  I had wandered up to the school which was on Atno Ave where my Zizi lived.  The Gym door was open because it was a lovely spring day, and I noticed our neighbor, Norma Rocco, with her gym class doing exercises, so I decided to go in and join them.  And that is where they found me, lying on the Gym floor doing leg lifts with Norma. I feared nothing as a child and still don’t and it still gets me into trouble.

     As I have mentioned many times on this blog Mama loved to cook and bake.  She liked to experiment and one day while making cookies she decided to put crushed potato chips in the batter.  Papa loved potato chips and there was always a bag of them around.  They turned out great and Mama named them Potato Chip Cookies. As a small child I loved these cookies and so did Papa.  Over the years Mama gave this recipe to whoever asked for it so even though she created it she never got credit for it. I like to make these cookies because it is fun to have people try to guess what is in them.  No one ever gets it right and are surprised when I tell them.

 Mamas’ Potato Chip Cookies

4 cups of flour

4 sticks butter (1lb.)

1 cup sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 cups of chopped walnuts

2 cups potato crushed potato chips (good brand of chips not baked)

Bake at 350

     Get ready to get your hands dirty. Using Mixer mix together the soften butter, sugar and vanilla. Crush the potato chips by putting them in a plastic bag and roll over them with a rolling pin. Or hit them with a mallet, it helps to get out any aggression you might have.  Add all the other ingredients to the butter mixture and with your hands mix it all together. It is a very stiff dough and a mixer won’t be able to mix it.  Drop dough by tablespoonful’s on to an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 15 minutes.  Do not undercook these cookies because they will be greasy, they need to be crispy. When cooled dust with powder sugar.  Have fun playing the guessing game.

In Memory of Joseph Phillip Cresitello

Copyright Pending
October 27, 1916 – February 8th, 2011

    Papa was born in Madison, NJ to Mary Palma and Phillip Cresitello.  He had two older brothers Vincent and Michael and a younger sister Virginia.  His mother died when he was 2 years old of the flu epidemic of 1918.  His father lived with his Mother’s parents and raised the children with their help.  When Papa was 9 years old his father died of TB and he and his siblings became orphans.  His Grandmother, grandfather and aunts and uncles took over raising them in the Orchard section of Madison, NJ.

    Vincent was the scholar and talented football player, he graduated from Villanova University. Mike disappeared and was busy chasing women for years while Virginia got married and had children. Papa was a good boy but not a good student.  In today’s world he would be considered as having a learning disability due to the fact the he was two months premature. Because he was not a good student Papa stayed home with his grandparents while the brothers and sister carried on with their lives.

  
  Papa’s grandfather made him quit school after he finished the eighth grade and put him to work digging ditches with a friend of the ‘old man’, as papa called him. The friend was Mike Piccone, who everyone called Fat Mike. When I was a child we  would go to visit Fat Mike and his wife Lucy, he had become like a father to Papa.   They lived in a big house on Main Street in Madison.  I remember them feeding us plenty of Italian food.  The first course was a big plate of provalone cheese with salami, olives, peppers and as always crusty Italian bread. Mama told me a story about "Fat Mike" going with them to a Chinese restaurant, he had never eaten chinese food before.  When they brought out the fortune cookies Mike ate his, fortune and all.   

Papa also had to help his grandmother putting the clothes through the ringer washing machine, chopping the wood for the wood stove and working in his grandfather’s big garden among other things. Most Italians had gardens back then and loved their fresh veggies. They grew eggplant, lettuce, Jersey tomatoes and corn, asparagus, green beans, zucchini, cucumbers, basil, garlic and anything else that grew in that climate. Since Grandpa was getting old and sick  he would oversee Papa tending to the garden and yell at him if he broke a stalk or stepped on a veggie.  Papa wanted to play baseball with the other boys but he never got a chance to because of all the chores he had to do. He still regretted this until the day he died because he absolutely loved baseball.  Many years later he had a garden in our backyard and it was very prolific. The man could grow anything.  His front yard on Mill Street was filled with flowers that everyone would stop to admire.

     He graduated from digging ditches to becoming a landscaper.  He did landscaping at Baltusrol Golf Club which was very exclusive back in the day and still is.  I think a membership is over a cool million.  He also could be a little bit of a con artist. He told me stories about how he and my Uncles would get roofing jobs and pretend that they knew what they were doing and get paid for work that they only pretended to do. God only knows how many roofs still leaked after they worked on them. Times were hard and they had to make money any way they could. They ran card games in their grandparent’s basement, made wine and sold it for ¢25 a quart and sold fruits and veggies from their grandfathers garden. Grandpa wondered why all his produce was disappearing.  They told him rabbits where eating it all.

    Papa grew into a very handsome man and was still good looking at 94.  He met Mama in the 1939 on a blind date. They dated for a few years and then WWII broke out. Uncle Sam wanted papa. He was drafted into the Army.  He and Mama then decided to get married before he went off to war.  On Dec. 23, 1941 they did just that and 3 days later Papa had to report for duty.  They didn’t have much of a Honeymoon.

    Papa drove an armored tank for 4 years through France and Germany with Patton.  He was shot in the leg by a sniper in France and then sent to Oklahoma to recuperate where Mama went to visit him.  Once recovered, he was sent back to the front.  He received the Purple Heart from President Roosevelt.  After his death he was sent a lovely certificate from the current President thanking him for the sacrifice he made for his country.

    Papa didn’t smoke but he always drank. During the war he would get cartons of cigarettes and save them and trade them for booze.  He did that with anything worth trading.  I can remember his doing this all his life.  Papa knew how to barter.  He traded milk, cream and butter, for cigars, whiskey and even baked goods when he worked for the Dairy.  Food was always in the picture.  He brought goodies home from bakeries and candy shops that he would bartered for.

    Mama was not a pie maker and so he would barter for pies.  His favorite was coconut custard pie.  He would bring home the biggest coconut custard pie I have ever seen and it was always creamy, filled with coconut and the crust was flaky and golden brown.  I helped him eat many of those pies, when Mama was not looking ofcourse.

    Papa always worked two jobs when I was a child but once he got the job at Brendan’s dairy he cut back to one.  By this time Mama was working as a cook in the school so he didn’t need a second job.  He got up at 3:30 am and left the house at 4:00. To this day I believe that is why my sister and I are very early risers. Papa had a commercial route he did not deliver to homes. His last delivery was a restaurant/bar called Angie and Mins.   Papa loved the place and the owners.  It is my guess that he would have his first drink of the day there.  He told me once that Sam the Plumber (Mafia) would come in for a drink and sit and talk to him occasionally. 

Since Papa was able to cut back to one job he and his brother Vincent went into business together.  They bought a laundromat on the corner of Mill St next to Vian's Market.  Papa made many friend there. My sister told me, at Papa's memorial service, a man came in to the funeral home and said when he was a little boy he lived right next store to the U Wash Laundromat and papa was so nice to him he never forgot him. It gave me chills and warmed my heart to hear that. 

    Papa got home by noon and at 2:00 went to pick up mama at work.  They were very close and although they had fights, especially when papa got drunk at parties and embarrassed her, they did everything together. Papa didn’t like to gamble, well that is not exactly true. Many nights after dinner they would go over to Zizi Rosie and Uncle Bens’ house and have a nice unfriendly game of gin rummy.  I say that because as much as they played they always fought over the game. I think they enjoyed that the more than the actual game.  If you were in ear shot you would here ‘ba fungool’ and my father calling my uncle a cheater and vise a versa. They were only playing for pennies but if you didn’t know better you would think it was for thousands. Papa also became a very good bowler.  He join a league and every year he would go to the Banquet and get Tropheys.  He alwasy bragged that his average was 189 which did not mean anything to me.  As you can see by his picture he had the trophy in one hand, a cigar in his mouth and lots of booze to drink.  Mama displayed those ugly plastic trophys on the matel for years. 

    Mama didn’t drive so Papa drove her everywhere. I remember him taking us into New York City on our clothes shopping trips to Macy’s. Mama always bragged about how papa was so patient and would just hang around and wait for us, but I personally think he went to a favorite bar and tipped a few.  I’m sure he knew plenty of them because before he married Mama he spent a lot of time in the City drinking.  Booze was as much a part of Papa’s life as eating.  I think it was the same for all the men in the family. Every Sunday morning, after the wives where in church or busy cooking Sunday dinner, the uncles would show up dress to kill and have a few drinks, as they made their rounds from house to house. Papa would put the Scotch, Rye and Wine on the table with the shot glasses along with biscotti, Anisette and coffee. They would arrive together or one at a time and belt back a few shots and then move on to the next house, taking papa with them. I don’t know how he did it but in his 60’s Papa stopped drinking.  No AA  no anything, just stopped in the blink of an eye.  I asked him what made him stop  and he said it because of all the new laws regarding drinking and driving. How much you want to bet he got pulled over and it scared the booze right out of him. 

    Papa worked for the dairy until he was 62 and then worked for his son in law, Scott Specht driving truck  and then for his Nephew Donald Cresitello working as a handyman for his apartment building. After that Papa was a school crossing guard in Morristown.  He loved that job and loved all the children. He made sure he had a supply of candy and lollipops to give them. Everyone he came in contact with always enjoyed his sense of humor; he was always quick with a joke and a smile.  He worked until he was 85.  

When he was 87 we moved him and Mama to Arizona.  Mama had Alzheimer’s and Papa could not care for her any longer. Mama died a few months later, they had been married for 62 years.  Papa stayed on to live with Joe and I. He loved living in Arizona especially in the winter.  He said he traded in his snow shovel for a bathing suit.

    Papa had a good appetite even in his 90’s and I loved cooking for him. He never was a sick man and could eat anything.  He loved chocolate, doughnuts, potato chips, cookies, cake, pie and all the Italian dishes mama made for him. I enjoyed food shopping for him and started cooking more Italian dishes when he lived with us.  I tried to make them like Mama did but I never thought I achieved her level of cooking.  Papa thought my cooking was great. He told everyone how lucky he was to have a daughter who cooked so well.  He was another Foodie.  He loved my chicken cutlet parmesan, linguini with clam sauce, stuffed artichokes, salad, which he had to have every night and good crusty Italian Bread. I think the chicken cutlet parmesan was his favorite because every time I made it for him he went out his way to thank me. He would even buy me flowers when we went to the grocery store.

    He enjoyed going grocery shopping with me on the first Wednesday of the month because that is Senior Citizen Day.  That is the day they give out free coffee and doughnuts.  He loved free stuff.  If he didn’t eat the doughnuts at the store he would bring them home in a napkin.  This would annoy the hell out of me because he had plenty of goodies at home but it was free so he had to take it.  Napkins, ’forget about it’, if they were out on the counters he would take as many as he could fit in his pockets. Those little packets of salt, pepper, sugar, weren’t safe either.  I had to put my foot down when I found that one of his dresser drawers was filled with them along with ants feasting on the sugar.  He was not a poor man but I guess it was a carryover from his childhood and living through the depression that made him a little bit of a thief. I swear if it was not nailed down he took it.

    Papa died a year ago at 94 and I miss him, especially watching him enjoy the food I made for him.  He was never a burden and was very generous to us.  Although when I was younger he was not my favorite person I grew to love him.  So here’s to you Papa and for anyone reading this I am giving you the recipe for one of Papa’s favorite dishes.  Papa you are my Heart.

Chicken Cutlets Parmesan

1 ½ lb. chicken cutlets or boneless skinless chicken breast

2 eggs, beaten

2 cups Italian style flavored breadcrumbs

1 cup grated parmesan cheese

Salt and pepper to taste

½ lb. mozzarella cheese

Italian tomato sauce, your choice

Pound the cutlets with a mallet between sheets of wax paper to a ¼ inch thinness. Or if using chicken breast slice them in half  lengthwise and pound them to the same thinness.  Dip the cutlets in the beaten egg then in breadcrumbs that has been mixed with ½ cup of parmesan cheese and salt and pepper.  Fry in 3 tablespoons of olive oil until golden brown.  If oil gets dark, wash frying pan and add fresh oil and finish frying the cutlets.  In a 13 X 9 pan line the bottom with 1 cup tomato sauce and layer the chicken on top of it.  Pour more sauce on top of chicken and then put a slice of mozzarella on each cutlet, sprinkle with remainder of parmesan cheese.  Bake for 35 minutes in a preheated 350% oven or until cheese is bubbly.  Mama always made enough sauce on Sunday to use in her dishes during the week but you can use any sauce of your choosing.  I like Classico tomato basil and use it in many of my dishes. Sometimes I add Munster cheese to the recipe because it has a nice smokey flavor and adds a little more zip to the dish.

Cooking Helps Me to Relax from Life Stresses

Copyright pending

As we all know this can be a very stressful world and  I like everyone else I find myself stressed out quite a bit lately.  I love to food shop and cooking is therapy for me.  It takes my mind off of whatever is troubling me and lets me create.  However this past summer I had no kitchen for two months.  I almost had a nervous breakdown.  We have a big kitchen for the size of our house and although it was 15 years old I had all new appliances.  I was pretty satisfied with it.  My stove is wonderful it has a cook top and is both a conventional oven and a convection oven.  The fridge is a French door style and gives me plenty of room to store perishables. The microwave oven is 4 years old and I swear it thinks for itself.

Why didn’t have a kitchen for 2 months, well I will tell you.  One day in July I started noticing black mold growing around the base of our kitchen cabinets and the center island.   As it turns out our dishwasher had a slow leak for quite a while and it had caused mold damage.  The kitchen had to be completely gutted and the mold had to be destroyed.  The construction company responsible to do this sealed off the kitchen and put up a big hazmat sign. I felt like I was living in Chernobyl.  The Remediation was a long and intense project.  Machines had to be left running day and night for weeks, first to dry everything out, then to clean the air of mold spores.  Our insurance company would have paid for us to live somewhere else but with 4 dogs and a cat it was impossible.  We choose to stay in the house and I set up a mock kitchen in our spare bedroom. Coffee pot, toaster, crock pot, dishes and utensils were set up on the dresser.  I had to wash dishes in the bath tub.  Not fun.  Our insurance company agreed to pay for our restaurant expenses. However, along with our kitchen crisis I had a digestive problem.  May stomach had moved into my diaphragm due to a large hiatal hernia and I could only eat soup.  Can you imagine my distress when I found out I could eat out for free, as much as I wanted  but all I could eat was frigging soup. Joe could eat whatever he wanted so he was over the moon.

I have a new kitchen now; you can see the picture of it on top of the first page of this blog.  However I didn’t really get to cook in it until recently. In November after my surgery to fix the hernia I could only eat soup and cream of wheat.  It sucked.  Joe had to get use to eating Chinese takeout. Pizza is one of my favorite foods in the world and I have not had any for months.  My husband and I shop in Costco, he gets Pizza and I get to watch him eat it. He doesn’t realize how close he has come to dying.  No cooking and no eating was making me pretty bitchy.  It’s like I had permanent PMS.

However I did started cooking again several weeks ago and although I could not eat what I prepared it did help my demeanor and saved my dogs and husband lives.  There are days I still want to leave them all behind and go on a cruise but I can’t afford to.  Joe lost his job 2 years ago and is working 2 part-time jobs so we can make ends meet.  I’m sure some of you are familiar with that situation.  I should just never leave  the Kitchen and cook 24/7 to stay calm.

Funny how things work out, I am not overweight because I had Gastric By-Pass Surgery 8 years ago and  now I just lost  an additional 15 pounds due  to my recent surgery.  I am not complaining about losing weight mind you, what woman would. Here is how to do it. Forget about all the diet aids on TV or Jennifer Hudson and Weight Watchers.  Just go to the hospital and have them put you on an IV for 5 days with no food.  You will be amazed how fast the weight comes off, you won't have to go to the gym or hire a trainer.   And then to maintain the weight loss just eat Cream of Wheat and light chicken noodle soup for frigging ever.

The first meal I prepared in my new kitchen was Linguini with Shrimp and Pine Nuts. I found the recipe in a magazine that I read while recuperating.  It looked great in the magazine and Joe said it was fabulous.  I am giving you the recipe.  It was really good, I did taste one fork full of it an then prayed it would stay down and it did.  As soon as I can eat normally I am going to make it again. But first I am going to eat PIZZA!

Linguini with Shrimp and Pine Nuts

1 1b fresh or frozen raw medium shrimp, peeled and deveined

1 lb. linguini

1 cup chicken broth

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

¼ teas. crushed red pepper, more if you like it spicy

1 teas. salt

¼ cup toasted pine nuts

3 cloves chopped fresh garlic

2 tbsp. olive oil

1 ½ cups fresh mushrooms, about 4 ounces, sliced

1 tbsp. butter

4 cups of fresh baby spinach leaves

¼ freshly grated Asiago or Parm cheese.

Thaw shrimp if frozen and clean.  Rinse the shrimp; pat dry with paper towels.  In a Dutch oven or 5 qt. pot cook pasta according to package directions for Al Dente and drain but leave some water in pot so pasta does not dry out.  Return pasta to pot and cover to keep warm. Do no continue to cook it. 

Meanwhile, in a small bowl, combine chicken broth, lemon juice, crushed red pepper and salt; set aside. In a large skillet, cook shrimp ¼ pine nuts and garlic in hot oil over medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes or until shrimp are opaque.  Don’t burn the garlic it gets very bitter   Remove shrimp mixture from skillet.

  Add mushrooms and butter to skillet; cook for 3 minutes or until nearly tender. Add broth mixture to skillet and bring to boil add spinach and reduce heat. Simmer until spinach is wilted. Return shrimp mixture to skillet and heat through. Strain pasta and add to mixture. Add cheese and serve.

Chicken Soup for the Soul for a Cold and for the Tummy

Copyright Pending

Mama and Papa were very sociable and had many friends. Papa was a funny man and Mama was considered funny because she just said what she thought. What was on her mind was in her mouth!  Maybe because she was such a small woman people enjoyed her bravado but I didn’t always enjoy it, especially when she told me “I was fat and worthless”. But that was Mama and I had to live with it.   Unfortunately I was in analysis for two years to boost my self-esteem and realize that I was not just a fat bastard.  I still feel worthless even today if I think I am overweight. Please don’t ever do this to your children. Certainly help them and advise them on eating healthy food but please don’t belittle them. Okay enough of the serious stuff.

Every evening Papa would have someone sitting with him at the dinner table drinking beer.  Many nights it was our neighbor George Carlo.  He was a nice man and was built like Popeye at least in my mind’s eye. Our backyards all ran together there were no walls or fences. When we wanted to visit a neighbor we just cut through the back yards.  George and his wife Anna lived two doors away and had one daughter, Georgeanna named after both of them. She was a doll and I thought she was fun.  As a teenager she was very flamboyant.  George being a man of simple taste and very conservative had no idea what interested teens in the 60’s.  Once he noticed a record that Georgeanna had on the record player.  He thought it was  an Italian Opera. He  turned  on the record player and got the shock of his life when he realized it wasn’t an Italian Opera but acid rock. It was Iron Butterfly singing Anna Gotta Divetta.   I just had to tell this story, I still laugh when I think about it today. 

Papa and George shot the breeze for many hours over the years.  They also went to the corner bar that they called The Green Rug.  I asked papa once why they called the bar by that name and he said because it had a bright green rug.  Okay he was not a very creative person.  I was hoping for a better story than that one.  Sorry.

Mama bought the house I was raised in during WW II for $3,000. She paid cash for the house. Mama was always  good at saving money. She saved the money Papa sent her from his allotment checks and her salary.  $3,000 back in the early forty’s was a sizable chunk of change. Because she paid cash for the house she and Papa never had mortgage payments.

Back in the day the banks would allow you to open a Christmas Club savings account every year in amounts of $5, $10 or $20 a week and by the time Christmas came you had your holiday money. Mama opened one each year for $20.00 which she didn’t always use for Christmas money, she invested in the Stock Market.   The house was probably 50 years old when she bought it and it needed a new kitchen and bathroom very badly.  Mama managed to get them both after she made a large sum of money in the Stock Market and Real Estate.  (More about that later.)

Before Mama could  afford to have the Kitchen remodeled by professionals  she had George do small remodeling jobs.  George was a Carpenter by trade but when he married Anna Rocco and moved to New Jersey from Massachusetts. Once living in Jersey he became a janitor at our High School.  George worked on our  house  often and help Mama remodel the kitchen at least 3 times.  

George enjoyed Mama’s chicken soup and when he was doing Carpentry at our home she happily made it for him.  She loaded it with chicken, veggies and noodles of course she made it from scratch.  I loved it to, especially on a cold winter’s day when I came in the house after walking home from school.

I have made 3 pots of Mama’s Chicken Noodle Soup this week. It has been going fast because my husband has a bad cold, and I think he is drinking it.  I swear the man has an appetite of a horse. If he likes something I make in a blink of an eye it is gone. I made the first pot of soup thinking it would last a few days, wrong! Joe liked it a little too much. The next day he came down with a cold so I made another pot.  He did a repeat of what he did with the first pot.  But guess what the cold only lasted 2 days.  Today I am making the 3^rd  pot.  It is cooking on the stove right now.  It smells wonderful.  Since it is one of the few things that I can eat, I have even been eating it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It sooths my soul and calms me so I am not acting like Broom Hilda, as Joe sometimes calls me.  Even if   we are arguing when he calls me that it makes me laugh and it is a better name than being called a Fat Son-of-a-Bitch Bastard.

My version of Mama’s Chicken Noodle Soup

2 large bone-in chicken breast or whatever parts of the chicken you prefer.  Remove the skin, this makes the stock lower in fat and not greasy.

1 large onion halved

1 whole clove of garlic halved

2 carrots

2 stalks of celery

1 teas. Onion powder

1 Tbsp. granulated chicken boulion

Salt and pepper to taste

1 bag of fresh baby spinach

1 can of corn. frozen peas or vegatables of your choosing

 ½  bag of medium egg noodles

2 eggs scrambled (optional)

Put 8 cups of water in a large stock pot.  Add the first 8 ingredients to the water and bring to boil. Reduce the heat to simmer and let cook for approx. 3 hours.   Remove the chicken and put aside. Strain the stock into a large bowl and discard the vegetables.  Pour the stock back into the stock pot.  Shred the chicken and add to the stock. Add the vegetables and bring up to a boil.  Stir in the scrambled eggs and add the egg noodles.  Lower the heat slightly so the soup does not bubble over.  Cook until noodles are done.  We Italians like to eat our soup with lots of Parmesan Cheese sprinkle on top in our bowls.  If I don’t have the Cheese I won’t be eating the soup.  The cheese melts over the hot soup and adds a nice layer of flavor.

Crumb Buns Instead of Sunday Mass

Copyright Pending

Every Sunday morning in my childhood my parents made me go to St. Margaret’s Church with my Zizi Rosie and her daughter JoJo.  No one else in our immediate family went to Church.  Not Mama, Papa or my Uncle Ben.  Zizi had a son; Nickie and when he was a baby he became so ill Zizi thought he was going to die.  She made a promise to the Virgin Mary that she would honor her and go to Church every Sunday if she cured her son.  Nickie recovered and Zizi made good on her promise.  She went to Church every Sunday and I was cursed with having to go with her to Mass. Church was very boring for me. However, I liked the Fashion Show.  Back in the day people dressed to the 9’s when they went to church. My Zizi wore her Mink Stole and best jewelry and dresses with hat and long while cloves. In those days woman had to cover their heads in Church and had a pretty good hat competition going on.  Zizi wore a hat that I liked; it looked like a little green beanie with feathers sticking out of the top.  It reminded me of a helicopter.  Zizi was insistent that we get to church early so she could get to her favorite seat, therefore I was able to watch all the ladies march into church showing off their finery. It was like they were on a fashion show Runway.   Other than that I though the whole thing was a big waste of my time.  The mass was in Latin so I could not even understand what the priest was saying.  All I heard was blah, blah, blah.  At the end of the Mass he would say in English “Go the mass has ended”.   Everyone would reply “Thanks Be Too God”.  What I was thinking was ‘Yeah get me the hell out of here’. Because of that I am probably going straight to HELL.

In 1963 I turned 17 and I was very excited because I was going to get my learners permit and Papa was going to teach me how to drive.  I learned to drive in his 1958 Ford.  Papa always beat the heck out of his cars; driving them back and forth to work 6 days a week.  This one had a coat hanger for an Antenna and it also had an oil leak. Every so often we had to stop and check the oil and if it was low added more. Papa kept a supply of oil in the trunk. I didn’t care what I drove; whatever I was driving was going to give me freedom to get out of our little town and going to church with Zizi.  I was going to be able to explore other towns and meet new friends and new boys. Going to new restaurants was high on my list. New Fast Food Hamburger Joints were starting to spring up and I wanted to sample the burgers, fries and Shakes I was hearing about. One of the first burger joints was Westson’s on Rt. 46 in Livingston.  It was approx. 15 miles from Morristown and I needed to be able to drive to get there. They did have great little burgers for 19₵ full of onions which is a flavor that I love.  McDonald’s had not made it’s debute into our world or at least not in New Jersey. I think that happened in the late 60’s.

Once I got my Driver’s License Papa let me take the car and drive Linda and I to Church. Mama gave me the envelope to put in the collection basket.  I am sure she thought we would not try to cut mass because she got a statement every month that documented the amount of her donations. But Linda and I were smarter than she gave us credit for. I would drive to the Church and Linda  would go into the vestibule and give the envelope to the usher, telling him she forgot to put it in the basket at the last Mass and then off we would go to Danzingers Bakery. The Bakery Shop was a busy place on Sunday mornings and we would have to take a number and wait our turn while looking at all the wonderful, cakes, pastries and breads through the glass cases. 

My sister and I loved the iced crumb buns and bought at least 4.  After we made our purchase I would drive us to a lovely look out spot on Picatinny Road.  It was a secluded back street on the outskirts of town where we were very sure we would not be spotted.  After we ate our fill and we knew it was time that the mass would be over we would head home, and there we would eat Mamas’ big Sunday Italian meal. She always served it at noon on Sundays. We were so good at our deception that we never got found out and we did it just about every week.

My sister loves to bake more than cook and is also a talented artist with an art degree. She can make her baked goods look great. Years ago she had a little cake business and she made amazing custom cakes.  If someone wanted a cake to look like a corvette or a Big Mac with French fries she could do it.  This was back in the 80’s long before the Cake Boss was around.  Currently she owns a Fastsigns Business in E. Hanover, NJ and brings homemade goodies to her shop every day and feeds her employees and customers. Occasionally a customer will call and ask what she had made for that day, this is good for business. After she closes her shop she goes home and bakes. She had a cup cake business for a while a few years ago.  She would make dozens of cupcakes from scratch for weddings, showers, graduations, birthday parties, etc. and she decorated them for the theme of the party.  All this and working all week as well.

I on the other hand prefer cooking to baking and enjoy experimenting with recipes.  I just can’t follow a recipe exactly as it is written. I know I can make it better by adding or taking away ingredients, I call it “making the recipe my own”.  A few times I have forgotten what I did different and my husband would get pissed because he enjoyed it so much he wanted me to make it again.  I have learned the hard way that I must document the changes I make or write down a new recipe when I develop one.  There have been times when I just started adding things together with no recipe and it came out fabulous.  But because I didn’t write it down it was lost in the Culinary Sky forever.    

Just this past weekend Linda went to a cooking class, provided by the Cake Boss at his shop called the Lackawanna, in Jersey City, NJ.  You might have seen his show on Cable TV. There she learned more about using Fondant for cake decorating.  Mama would be so proud. Linda makes the best Crumb Cake I have ever tasted.  It tastes a lot like the crumbs buns we loved so much as kids. But her cake is moister  and the  crumbs are thicker and richer.

  

Linda’s New York Crumb Cake Recipe

                        Preheat oven to 350                
 

13 x 9 Tin Foil Pan, Pam sprayed

 

CRUMB TOPPING 

2/3 cup packed brown sugar 

1/3 cup sugar 

2 teas cinnamon

2 sticks melted salted butter, cooled

3 ½ cups cake flour

Confectioner’s Sugar for dusting

In large mixing bowl using your hands, mix everything together until it makes a cohesive dough. Set aside.

CAKE

2 ½ cups cake flour

1 cup sugar

½ teas baking soda

¾ stick salted butter, softened

¾ cup veg oil

2 Jumbo eggs

2 Jumbo egg yolks

2/3 cup buttermilk

2 teas vanilla

In large mixing bowl stir together flour, sugar & baking soda. Mix in everything else with mixer until just combined. Do not overmix. Scrape sides with rubber spatula and finish mixing by hand. Put batter into pan. Drop crumb topping in large chunks on top of batter, starting all around edges then finishing in center bake 45 mins or until toothpick comes out clean.

When cooled dust generously with confectioner’s sugar