Italian Roots and Genealogy
Heritage Stories and Culinary Traditions
Ready to uncover the rich tapestry of Italian and American genealogy? Join us as we embark on a fascinating journey with Jack and Mary Ciaccia, tracing Jack’s roots back to the regions of Taranto and Messina in Sicily, and Mary’s lineage to the early American settlers of Jamestown in 1608. Discover connections to notable figures like Daniel Boone and President Polk shape their family stories. We promise you’ll walk away with a deeper appreciation for the interconnectedness of our ancestries and the vibrant tales they tell.
But our exploration doesn't stop with genealogy. We dive into the personal anecdotes that bring our diverse heritages to life, with the creation of their unique cookbook, "Paisanos and Pioneers." Learn how growing up in ethnic neighborhoods and understanding Jack's ancestors' labor in textile mills have enriched his appreciation for our heritage. Blending multi-cultural backgrounds, they share how these rich cultures have influenced their lives and culinary traditions.
Finally, we celebrate the joy of family cooking, with a special focus on Italian and American recipes handed down through generations. Hear heartwarming stories of preparing meals like a venison roast on a hot plate and perfecting Italian desserts such as pastiera. Discover the collaborative spirit in our kitchen, where family recipes are preserved and cherished. Whether it’s homemade macaroni, meatballs, or legendary pizza from Leonard's in Corona, this episode emphasizes the warmth and togetherness that family cooking brings to our lives. Don’t miss out on the secrets to creating these treasured dishes, now immortalized in their family cookbook available on Amazon!
Turnkey. The only thing you’ll lift are your spirits.
Paisanos and PioneersMary and Jack share recipes from the Italian countryside and American wilderness.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Ready to uncover the rich tapestry of Italian and American genealogy? Join us as we embark on a fascinating journey with Jack and Mary Ciaccia, tracing Jack’s roots back to the regions of Taranto and Messina in Sicily, and Mary’s lineage to the early American settlers of Jamestown in 1608. Discover connections to notable figures like Daniel Boone and President Polk shape their family stories. We promise you’ll walk away with a deeper appreciation for the interconnectedness of our ancestries and the vibrant tales they tell.
But our exploration doesn't stop with genealogy. We dive into the personal anecdotes that bring our diverse heritages to life, with the creation of their unique cookbook, "Paisanos and Pioneers." Learn how growing up in ethnic neighborhoods and understanding Jack's ancestors' labor in textile mills have enriched his appreciation for our heritage. Blending multi-cultural backgrounds, they share how these rich cultures have influenced their lives and culinary traditions.
Finally, we celebrate the joy of family cooking, with a special focus on Italian and American recipes handed down through generations. Hear heartwarming stories of preparing meals like a venison roast on a hot plate and perfecting Italian desserts such as pastiera. Discover the collaborative spirit in our kitchen, where family recipes are preserved and cherished. Whether it’s homemade macaroni, meatballs, or legendary pizza from Leonard's in Corona, this episode emphasizes the warmth and togetherness that family cooking brings to our lives. Don’t miss out on the secrets to creating these treasured dishes, now immortalized in their family cookbook available on Amazon!
Turnkey. The only thing you’ll lift are your spirits.
Paisanos and PioneersMary and Jack share recipes from the Italian countryside and American wilderness.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Hi everyone, this is Bob Sorrentino, from Italian Roots and Genealogy. Be sure to check out our blog on our YouTube and our Facebook page and our great sponsors, your Dolce Vita, italy Rooting and Abiativo Casa. And I have two great guests today Jack and Mary Chacha, from Italian and way back American roots, and we're going to talk to them about their roots and also their fantastic cookbook, which kind of melds both together. So welcome Mary, welcome Jack.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you, Bob.
Speaker 1:So, Jack, I just want to start with you a little bit. What's your Italian background? Where's the family from? Originally in Italy.
Speaker 3:Okay, well, my grandparents are the ones that came over or emigrated from Italy. Immigrated from Italy. My father's side, the Chacha side, comes from around Toronto, in the little towns of Sava and Pulsano, which are just outside of Toronto in that area, and my mother's side are from Messina, sicily, and my grandfather was from a little town up in the country, up in the hills, called Solici, and my grandmother right from the city of Messina itself.
Speaker 1:Oh, so we have two connections there. One is from my dad's family. His uncle was an admiral in the Italian Navy and he was based inonto because there's a big navy base there. So I have cousins there, uh. And then also, uh, some of from my grandmother's, my paternal grandmother's side, uh, one of her ancestors, or several of her, I guess, great uncles were born in messina. So that's interesting stuff. You know, mary, your background is All-American, yeah.
Speaker 2:It is, I think. My family's been here well I think since the 1600s. They settled in Jamestown and then they moved out too.
Speaker 3:My husband's the genealogist, so yeah, her family on her mother's side came in from, originally from settled in the second ship supply ship from Jamestown 1608, and her father's side have been here since the 1700s, early 1720. Scots-irish that settled into Virginia, in Augusta County, virginia, and both families really pioneered any territory that opened up. They moved there before it became a state and typical Scots-Irish. So you know, if somebody moves in 12 miles, uh near you, so well, place is getting crowded time to move, you know. So um, they tend to settle westward into uh, ohio and illinois and then iowa and nebraska and then eventually into oregon.
Speaker 1:both families wow, that's quite a that. That's some journey. And you know, I didn't realize the Scotch connection way back then until we watched that TV show, and the name escapes me right now Outlander, yes, outlander yes. Outlander.
Speaker 3:Yeah, great show, fantastic show.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:That was. The other big settlement was in North Carolina. This little show is somewhat on target there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, you know a lot of these shows. They kind of play with history a little bit, but it does keep it interesting. So now, have you been able to trace the 1608 ship? Have you been able to trace back?
Speaker 3:to.
Speaker 1:England way back.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we go back to England. We've got to trace back to the 1100s, to the big Norman Conquers, 1066. Yeah, and actually beyond that they were in the Celts etc. We can trace it back pretty well with good veracity. I've been doing this about 45 years so I do a lot of other genealogies for other people as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I could trace back. I trace direct back to William the Conqueror and the Duke of Normandy through my Italian, through my paternal grandmother's mother. So you wouldn't think there would be that connection there. But but you know, when they married all these nobility and royalty all married each other. I could trace all the way back to them also. So we're probably related, mary, in some way.
Speaker 2:I think we are in some way.
Speaker 1:And my daughter. Well, like I said in the pre-interview, my daughter, uh. Well, like I said in the the pre-interview, my daughter, um, her, uh, both her birth parents, because she's adopted, and both her birth parents I've been able to to trace back, but she's actually um, she's direct from daniel boone and Captain Morgan the pirate and she's also a distant cousin of Princess Di. She's got the Spencer going all the way back. I could trace her back to the first dispenser.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's wonderful.
Speaker 3:Yeah, mary's family's got so much history and people. As a matter of fact there is a connection to the Boones, to Rebecca Boone, the daughter of Daniel, and there's a connection there in her family to some of the people, the Rudels, who were also at Boonesboro as well, and but she's got. You know, she's a niece of President Polk, a great, great, great niece to her family, to the Poston and Polk families and many. George Rogers Clark, the Alamo, william Barrett Travis, to her grandmother's side, would be an uncle as well. So she's got all these great American history connections in her family and I always tell her I come from a long line of peasants.
Speaker 1:And there's nothing wrong with that. My mom's side were farmers from Torito and my dad's mother has all these you know noble roots and you know they came to America. If they didn't come to America, they never would have been connected in any way, shape or form. You know.
Speaker 3:Right, right, absolutely, that's right. Yeah, I know I've got my family trace back pretty far on the Chacha side. Anyway, they go back to the 1400s. Really, they were not in Italy at that point in time, they were actually they were mercenaries, it turns out Worked with the Byzantine people out of Constantinople etc. And they had brought a small mercenary army with them. And, of course, when the Ottomans took over Constantinople, everybody headed west at the time and most of them came down to the Baltic countries, as probably most of our ancestors did.
Speaker 3:That ended up in the Bari area etc. Came across what is now Albania, came across from all the what is now albania, um, but uh, that that is the connection uh into, uh italy from uh. You know, if I got my dna, as a matter of fact, I did my dna look, obviously long after I did my genealogy, and it just proved the genealogy, uh, because of some uh anatolian Turk and some Greek, et cetera, et cetera, baltic people in the ancestry over the years and years. So the DNA is, you know, people do the DNA first, then the genealogy. It's one way to prove it, but it's a lot easier to prove it if you've already done your genealogy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know the interesting thing about my mom? Yeah, and the interesting thing about my mom, I sent it to Living DNA because they do the maternal and paternal lines and her maternal line is like 97% from the Caucasus. I never would have imagined that. You just wouldn't think of it being, theoretically, 100% Italian and all of that. So now have you been back to the hometowns at all, Jack?
Speaker 3:No, we haven't had a chance to do that. I traveled extensively during my business career, but never to Italy. Although I represented Italian companies, I never went back to the country, unfortunately. You know we have relatives there. We're in very good contact with some of the descendants that we found cousins, and some are now actually in Torino. They have their optometrist. And I said what are you doing in Torino? They have their optometrists. And I said, what are you doing in Torino? He said, well, this is you know, it's not a lot of money in the hills of Sicily, so optometry and their surgeons et cetera. So anyway, they settled up north. But we still have a farm, an ancient farm, in the Salici area of Messina and it's still populated by one of the cousins and they still farm it and occasionally still use the old home which has been there for hundreds of years. So he says if you go out there, you're welcome to it.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. Well, you have to go. I mean, it's never too late.
Speaker 3:Well, we better get going too, because you too, because we're in our 80s.
Speaker 2:now we're in our 80s.
Speaker 1:You don't look. 80s.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you, we're fishing for that now.
Speaker 1:I just joined the Italian club over here. I'm 73. I just joined the Italian club over here and they introduced me as the young guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah 73 is young.
Speaker 1:I mean, we waited so long to go and we, we made you know. Oh, it's good last year and the year before and it's just, it's just been really, really great. I traveled a lot. I worked for Chase and I traveled a lot. I hadn't done the genealogy back then. We lived in England for two years. I had no idea that Edward I and II and III and all of these people were all I descend from all of them, so does she Edward, I Edward, I from all of them, you know.
Speaker 1:so so does she edward the first edward, the long shanks. Yes, yes, well, you know as well. Yes, I, I have to put you in touch with with uh kai white, uh, because he did my chart, uh and uh, he does the charts a little bit different in that he traces, he, he really does american lines, uh, you, know, he finds, if you, if you have a, um, a gateway ancestor, he'll do the chart.
Speaker 1:And when I didn't, I contacted him and I said I love your charts, but can you do an italian? And he said well, tell me who you, you know who your ancestors are and I'll take a look. And he was able to do it. But what he does is he, rather than your typical chart. He puts all the royal lines in and then he shows all the branches. So, for example, if you branch back to you know, uh, rolo, you know three different ways. He shows all of that. And uh, uh it's. He really does great job. I'll send you mine and and uh, and he's really it's really not that expensive.
Speaker 1:He's a west point graduate, uh, spent a long, had a whole career in the army, and he does phenomenal work uh and uh yeah uh, but it would, it's you you'd love, and I'm sure your children and grandchildren, all of them, would be blown away by it. Because when you see it when you talk about, it's one thing, but when you see it on one shot, it's completely different.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that could be very impressive. We could wallpaper the wall with one. You know and you don't have to check.
Speaker 1:I'm going to have to check the Boone connection between you and Nicole.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 3:You have to have a lot in common. I can check it out very quick. I have a pretty good handle on the family.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, she's direct from Daniel Boone. She's a direct descendant from him. That'll be interesting, there's definitely a connection there, for sure. Um and and uh. So jack, you did your dna, mary did you do yours? I'm sure it just shows irish and and yes, she's like 97 percent northern european.
Speaker 3:You know a little french and german in there, which was anticipated because she has a zimmerman from, uh, you know, pennsylvania, deutsch deutsch yeah background and obviously it was back to germany and yeah, and there's a french connection that we knew of uh to another, her father's side, from milam, uh side, uh, which is on the maternal side of her family, and they originally came from France to England and Ireland, scotland, etc. But yeah, she's like 97% it turns out I'm only 45% Italian. I mean, you get Sicilian and Italian parents and grandparents. You think, well, I'm 100% Italian until the DNA shows up.
Speaker 1:Well, you know some people get violent over that when they see that you know I'm 100% Italian and you know they see the Greek in there. Or they see you know French, especially from Sicily. There's a big mixer there, yeah, and they don't believe it. I mean you know, it was like especially from Sicily.
Speaker 3:There's a, there's a big mixer down. Yeah, I don't believe it. I mean, you know it was like a 45 RPM country there. You know there was a. Everybody that had passed through the Mediterranean had to take Sicily first, you know. So you got Bourbons, french, you get the, you know, there for years you got. Vikings were there for a while, you know you had the Spanish were there for a long time and you know, then causing some North Africans the Moors conquered for a while the Greeks conquered it for a while the Romans had it. So you know, my mother used to make fun of my wife. We used to call her a Heinz 57, you know, because of the father background Turns out we're more Heinz 57,. You know, because of all her background Turns out we're both Heinz 57.
Speaker 1:That's funny, that's really funny. Yeah, my wife is half Sicilian and the same thing she's got she's got. When we did hers, we saw a Norwegian pop-up. She's half Sicilian, half Puerto Rican, so we saw the Norwegian pop up, but she's from her family's from Shaka, so the other side of Sicily, but we did, you know, spend the day there just so she could see it and everything Beautiful.
Speaker 2:I mean, all of Sicily is just incredible, it's just incredible. I almost got to Scotland. My daughter's daughter got her a trip to Scotland with her and her brother in September. Yeah, great, my grandson, our grandson and our granddaughter got her a trip. So they went to Scotland and they had a wonderful time.
Speaker 3:And they traced back the roots, they went back to the Isle of Skye, which is the place where they all started, from the McNichol and the McLeods and all those people, and and they uh, you know, because my, my, uh daughter is uh, if I have any genealogy or anybody that's going to be the next generation genealogies, it's her it's going to be the oldest one and she's a stickler because she works in a law office and all she does is detail work on, you know, make sure all the papers and the sources are correct, etc, etc.
Speaker 3:So she's taking my genealogy and she puts them. Uh, you know, the good sourcing etc. Behind it is necessary. So, uh, that she's uh. So when she went back there, she called she had the. Uh, she had it pretty well documented as to where she wanted to go and what she wanted to say, and so they just rented a car and just toured the place and they had a great time yeah yeah so hopefully, the next trip will be to Sicily and we'll go to, or Italy and we'll do both, you know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would love to and do it with her because she's just as interested on this side, but that was an opportunity that they couldn't pass by at the time.
Speaker 2:No, it was for her 60th birthday. So they knew what a stickler she was about her heritage, and so they got her a trip to Scotland.
Speaker 1:That's nice.
Speaker 3:Her granddaughter and her husband paid for the whole thing. For her it was very nice.
Speaker 1:We spent a couple of days in Scotland when we lived in England. Interesting, we were just driving around one day. On the way out we were seeing all these little three-story one room. It's like three rooms but one on top of like a little castle type of thing and oh yeah, um, we saw what looked like a cinderella castle and, uh, on the way back we it was balmoral yeah, it was just, it was unbelievable.
Speaker 1:I mean just, yeah, beautiful, you can't describe it. I mean you drive down this road where all these big, huge pine trees and we got to walk down by the stream where you always see the Prince there, and all of that Really pretty incredible place to be Very, very pretty yeah. And, and you know, out of all my aunts and uncles and my mother's side she had there were nine in the family Only one married a non-Italian and my aunt Margie was Scottish. So there you go.
Speaker 2:Can't beat it. Can't beat it. He says yeah, they would have been well, they probably would have been just about a hundred now.
Speaker 1:Uh, you know, um, but yeah, you know, if you could do it. You definitely have to and try and get back so let's talk about the fantastic cookbook, because it's a uh, it's a melding of the two cultures.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yes, yes it is. And the title, of course, the cookbook, the Paisanos and Pioneers yeah, you get the Sicilian cart and the covered wagon, covered wagon, kind of epitomizes. Uh, both, both sides, both sides there. But anyway, the uh, that was the idea is the fact that her family was pioneering, a pioneering family and and of course, we're all paisanos and and from the italian side. And uh, growing up in rhoda I, I was born in Providence, rhode Island, and we live now in New Hampshire, and I grew up in a real ethnic Italian neighborhood, I think whoever wasn't related to me, which was very few people, because they all tend to settle in the same area and all the rest of them were from the same parts of the country, as my grandparents were Wonderful families.
Speaker 3:And everybody lived within a quarter of a mile of everybody else, as I remember, and of course they all worked. My grandparents all worked in the textile mills. That's all that was in the area. Textile mills, that's all that was in the area. It was in the north, what they call the north end of Providence, which is primarily just this side of North Providence, but an area called Waskett and the Waskett Mills, the Steer Mills, geneva Mills, etc. Wool and textile factories, hard work, and those are the jobs that were available to.
Speaker 3:Um, you know, my uh grant, my maternal grandparents uh came here, uh and my grandmother at a fairly young age I think she was nine when she got here with her, her mother and uh to meet her uh father here who had already been here for about a year, and then my father's side. They came over 1905. And they went to Vermont originally and ended up in Vermont because they had relatives there that are already working in the mills in Burlington area. And finally, you know the costs. Like my, my uncle used to say well, they were gypsies. Anybody had 10 cents more an hour for a job. They took it and they moved. You know, I mean, they were just opportunists, which is the reason that they came here in the first place to have an opportunity to make their lives better.
Speaker 3:So I eventually all ended up in Rhode Island, while still working in the mills. Although my grandfather, my cha-cha grandfather he was one of the very few Italians I think came over pretty well educated through a secondary school education and already spoke English and read and write English, et cetera, when he got here, had a background in chemistry but couldn't get a job as a chemist, didn't have? He worked as a weaver in the mills. So you know, finally he ended up working for a dye company doing chemistry later on. But you know, it's interesting that they had to take jobs whatever was available. As you probably well know in your history, in your family, same thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So I don't suppose you know Dr Ian Luccelli by any chance, do you? Because he's from Providence and he writes.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, Ian Luccelli. Yeah, I went to school with him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I went to school with some. Yeah, I interviewed him. Boy, it must be at least three years. I remember that interview. Yeah, and.
Speaker 3:Dr Iannacilli, I knew very well as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:That's another local family in the area that I grew up in.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean Providence, I guess, especially, you know, back in the area that I grew up in. Yeah, well, I mean providence, I guess, especially you know, back in the 40s and 50s must have been everybody knew everybody, I guess, yeah absolutely yeah and so so, mary, you're from, are you from? You're from providence also, is that where you guys met? No, no, I'm from oregon um all right, so that's like 3000 miles apart.
Speaker 2:Yes, I met him when he was in the service and then we got married and the rest is history. But, um, yeah, I'm, I'm from Oregon and my parents settled there and then they moved to Northern California. My dad was a logger and a rancher, and there's not really too much to say about that, other than that's how we lived our lives was. He was a logger, and he was a logger because, well, that was what was available to them in those days and they were used to clearing property anyway for homes and things. So he went into logging for a big corporation and he just stuck with it, and I don't know what else to say.
Speaker 1:I mean that must have been real wilderness back then.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, Well, for them it was for us. No, we were, we were. We lived in the. We lived in the mountains. That's true, it was wilderness. We lived in the mountains where he was the supervisor of the logging corporation, and that was nice. I liked living in the mountains rather than in the country down in the valley.
Speaker 3:Nothing wrong with living in the Mendocino Forest. No, it was nice.
Speaker 2:I'm sure it's not Quite a distance to go to school, though my mother had to drive us to school every day, and it was like 20 miles to school. So that was a but that didn't bother us either. I mean it was, our lives were just normal everyday lives.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So what prompted you to write the cookbook?
Speaker 2:I love to cook and my husband was saying we should put together a book for the kids. We thought we'd put together a book for the kids and basically that's what started us was putting down all the recipes from both sides of the family my mother-in-law's recipes. I had to have all the Italian recipes. I had to figure out the measurements because she would tell me well, you use a little bit of this and you we all Italians cook like that?
Speaker 2:we don't yeah see, and so I would try to figure out what is a little bit of this and I would watch her again. You know, and, uh, you couldn't get a, you couldn't get the cup measure, because she didn't know. She just knew there's a little bit of this and when you put cheese in the sausage, you look at this a couple of times, so I figured that must have been about a half a cup of cheese. You know that's. I don't know. I just I love to cook and so I had to have all their recipes. I loved Italian food and of course we had to put in my mother's cooking, my mother's family side of it, for the venison, which was was usually we usually had normal everyday food. I mean, we had chickens and we we used, utilized the chickens and the eggs and they may be, and we raised beef and pigs.
Speaker 2:Yes, we had pigs and so, but the recipes that I put in the cookbook were venison, which a lot of people are not familiar with, and I thought, well, that would be a good, a good thing to put in there too. The kids are not familiar with, and I thought, well, that would be a good, a good, uh thing to put in there too. The kids are not familiar with it.
Speaker 3:I mean, we didn't have it that much as they were growing up no, um, no, I think, uh, I think my last name means lousy hunter yes, well, I don't know what mine means, but I'm not a very good hunter either.
Speaker 2:My aunt I have aunts that were hunters, I have my grandmother was a hunter. We've got pictures in the cookbook that show, uh, my grandmother with her deer on the on the car and, um, I don't know if we had to in there, but the aunt, my aunt, my mother, I doubt it anyway.
Speaker 3:But they all hunted for you know that was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they all hunted. That was a way of life.
Speaker 3:It was a rite of passage. You know pretty much.
Speaker 2:And they used everything of the venison. I mean, my grandmother would make what is it? Mincemeat from the neck of the deer, and oh, it was so good. Now I can't do that, I have to do it with beef because I can't get the venison, but it's still good. It's still good, and so that's what we did. And my sister would make roasts, roast venison on top of a. I remember a time we stopped by to visit and she had made a roast dinner. It was a venison roast and she had done it on a hot plate.
Speaker 2:She did the whole dinner on a hot plate. Yeah, she could cook, and I mean that's including biscuits. So her cooking was incredible. I thought it was roast beef, I did not think it was venison, and so I had to do that myself. And yeah, just lots of little. I didn't put in a whole lot of recipes of the venison, but enough that I thought people might like to try yeah, and there are still.
Speaker 1:You know, there are still some people who yeah, you know hunt out there, so yeah, uh what I liked about it was, like myself, I have some of my my mom's uh and recipes and some of my grandmother's handwritten but they were by my cousin but they're my grandmother's recipes. But I like the fact that you have some of the original recipes handwritten in the book, which kind of gives it a little bit more nostalgia, you know exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2:I thought they would be nice to include very different from the way that we cook, isn't it?
Speaker 1:so now that, so so jack, do you do any cooking at all, you just let mary do all the italian turns out see, the deal was when we get married, I says you cook, I eat you know and I out pretty well for a lot of years, yes, but now you know I have taken pretty much taken over at least the cooking part.
Speaker 3:We work together. She's my sous chef, she does all the cutting and preparing et cetera, and I stand by the stove and try not to burn everything.
Speaker 2:He's a wonderful cook. Don't let him beat you.
Speaker 3:So it turns out. You know, I have a talent that I didn't know that I had and it's fun, actually I enjoy it, and so, yeah, I'm using the recipes in the book. Now that you know she pretty much helped I always do, and everything else, and so anyway, it's fine. You know, I make my own bread, sometimes the Italian bread, because most of the Italian bread you get up here in New Hampshire is Not Italian bread. They're afraid of a hard crust. For some reason.
Speaker 2:That's the best. Bread is the hard crust. Well, and why do you have to cook so much?
Speaker 3:well, you know, now that you know, mary's uh got some physical ailments and can't stand up for long periods of time at the stove, so you know. And I can't have a sauce done in three minutes, so you know there we go, unless it's from a jar yeah, that's just not gonna happen, that's not allowed that's not allowed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do. I do most of the cooking, my, you know that my deal, our deal, is I, I cook, she cleans, because I don't clean well enough anyway that's great, uh, that's great, I had to learn to make rice and beans. So you know, you didn't know what the ingredients were right uh, yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's not hard.
Speaker 1:The key to all of that is you have to make uh the um, like uh peppers and uh cilantro and garlic, and we make that all up, put it in an ice cube trays, freeze it. So whenever you need it, you just pop a couple cubes out, got it.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 3:That's right, uh, so true, yeah we grow a little bit of it. We live with our daughters here as well.
Speaker 2:For now yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so anyway, she's a green thumb.
Speaker 2:The oldest.
Speaker 3:Yeah, she's got the budge of the gall, the parsley and everything, so I can go out and pick a few things off whenever I need it.
Speaker 2:Peppers, and jalapeno peppers too.
Speaker 3:Tomatoes that's pretty good here in the garden area. So it's nice that we have a little bit of that. But I have a collection of spices I keep adding to and the more I get involved in the cooking the more I find recipes that not only just Italian and American. I mean I'll cook Chinese, I'll cook anything, pretty much, you know if I have a taste for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And it's fun to learn. A lot of stuff like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I dabble with Chinese every now and then. I'm not the greatest at that. I think it's great. I dabble with Chinese every now and then I'm not the greatest at that. I just joined the Italian club over here. Every two weeks they do a dinner where we cook. I volunteer to cook there. They charge $10. You get soup and salad and pasta and meat and a dessert for $10. You can't go wrong.
Speaker 2:You can't go wrong there. I don't think you can make it at home for that. No, you know.
Speaker 1:Probably not.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:So it's a pretty good deal, yeah, so what are your favorite recipes in the book?
Speaker 2:My favorite recipes. Well, I love the samaritio, yeah the steak and the juice. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, what was the other? I love um, I love, oh, I'm a. I love parmesan, parmesan, eggplant eggplant parmesan and what else. Oh, there was some that I read oh, beans and escarole. Oh yeah, I love thearole. I love the peasant food.
Speaker 3:We call it peasant food Spinach and lentils, yep, pasta, basil. We go for the old, basic, traditional foods yeah Frittata, yeah, frittatas. We enjoy making those Zucchini and fried zucchini on top of my spaghetti. You know Me too, and you know just about everything that I can remember from childhood. My mother was a terrific cook.
Speaker 1:She was better than my grandmother was you know that she learned from.
Speaker 3:She had to start cooking at a very early age. She was like you know. They worked, like I said, both of them worked in the mills. I think she was like nine to ten years old. She was starting to cook for her brothers standing on a box at the stove, you know and uh, you know, making uh dinner so that when your parents get home dinner was ready. The brothers she had four brothers. It was probably like feeding a herd there. Those guys were pretty hungry boys, very active people.
Speaker 1:One of the things that caught my eye was the icebox cake, because my Aunt Dolly used to make that all the time.
Speaker 2:Did she? Oh my goodness, the icebox cake.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we make my practice of Father's Day coming up.
Speaker 1:I don't think anybody under 60 even knows what icebox cake is.
Speaker 2:They don't, they don't, they don't, they do not, that's for sure, yeah they do not, that's for sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and um, I think we got that from what? Oh, my one of your girlfriends yeah, well, my mother's girlfriend, she had uh girlfriends. Yeah, her, he had a girlfriend was one of the most terrific bakers, I think, uh, of all times. Her family owned a market and uh, and anyway, she was a terrific baker and she taught my mother a lot of wonderful recipes, italian recipes.
Speaker 2:One of them is the pastiera.
Speaker 3:And the pastiera comes from a girlfriend, emma, and they used to work together making artificial flowers when they were young. That's where she had a Focalac company in Providence. It was a world-famous company at the time for artificial flowers and anyway she met her there and they became good friends and she learned how to bake, primarily from her and just exquisite baking things pies, cakes, all kinds of Italian pastries, and it's amazing, we weren't 250 pounds each when we were kids, but you know my mother was like 90 pounds soaking wet, all five put one over.
Speaker 2:That's a favorite. The icebox cake is a favorite to the whole family.
Speaker 3:I'm going to have that and father say they asked me what I wanted.
Speaker 2:Macaroni and meatballs.
Speaker 3:Sausages. I never made iceboxages. I never made icebox cake.
Speaker 1:I never made it, but I'm going to take the recipe. Oh, you try it, you'll love it.
Speaker 2:You'll love it. It's so smooth and it's not fattening by the way, it is not fattening.
Speaker 3:Nothing's fattening in our cookbook.
Speaker 2:Well, I won't say that I didn't get like this without it, you know. Anyway, I mean mean with it, um, it's, it's a favorite. Anyway, that's what he's getting from from father's day. I we don't need to ask what he wants, because it's either lasagna or it's macaroni and meatballs, or why not?
Speaker 1:I love it too, unfortunately yeah, I know, you know what, what I used to love? Um, you know, my uncle used to make the homemade ravioli and he had the board with the big dowel. And I can't do it, but he, he could. He could roll out that piece of you know pasta like like just the perfect thickness, and knock out you know 12 dozen raviolis, like you know, in like an hour or two, it's just amazing to watch them.
Speaker 2:Nothing like homemade, nothing like homemade.
Speaker 3:Watch the grandmother make the arachidi and things like that it's so good. It's terrific, but I opt for whatever comes in a box. Well, we do now.
Speaker 1:I'll make it. Once in a while I'll make. Oh you know, if I, if I do lasagna I'll, I'll make the pasta myself sometimes good for you. Good for you, it's better oh, you know I'll make the. You know I don't make bread a lot because we have a great bakery right like down the street with hot crust.
Speaker 1:We could have hot crust. But I'll make the pizza and I have the bakery in Corona where my grandmother lived. My aunt and uncle both worked there. My uncle was a baker, my aunt worked behind the counter and somebody posted that the best pizza they ever had was from Leonard's in Corona, and so I asked. I said does anybody have the recipe? And the granddaughter of the owner said no, it died with my father or my uncle, and her cousin came in and said I have it but I can't give it out. I swore that I would never give it to anybody but the family. So I said so. She said well, you know Bob's in Nicoletti and I said yeah, my Uncle Frank used to work there. You know he baked there. I got a message call me Right. So I called up and he says I'm Uncle Frank, I love your Uncle Frank. I remember watching he used to make the pizza you could have. I'm Uncle Frank, I love your Uncle Frank. I remember watching he used to make the pizza you could have the recipe.
Speaker 2:I was able to get the recipe. Nice.
Speaker 1:So I could make the. It's not as good as they made it, but it's not bad.
Speaker 2:Hey, that's your say, so. Well, you know, the big difference is.
Speaker 1:The big difference is big difference is you know. You know, if you don't have a proof box, it's hard to get it. You know that's right. That's right, it is but what I do is is I I put it in the oven and I I put a um boil water, I put it in a in a uh pan and kind of let it steam, like that. So it kind of works a little bit like a proof box. So, yeah, right. So so before we go, where can people find the book?
Speaker 3:Well, it's on Amazon. You know, I did it with an on-demand type of thing. That's the easiest one for me to do. I've never done a book before, so I did whatever I thought was easy enough for people to get to. And it's on Amazon. Just type in Paisanos. It's P-I-A-S-A-N-O-S. It could have been P-A-E, but I did a more common spelling and pioneers and or you put our last name in and it'll pop up as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, although there are other people my last name to write books as well, it turns out and not that I know we're probably all related and anyway it's up there and it comes either as a kindle or as a soft cover book, and soft cover book is came out very nice. I was very, very happy with the. Uh, what happened to?
Speaker 3:you know how it came out. Yeah, because when I originally did this uh I used to when I did it for the kids, you know I did all the pages. I did it in a publisher from MS, you know, publisher from Microsoft. And then I take it down to the printer and you know, and then by the time you do a color printing both sides of the pages, you know, full color the printing gets to be about 75 cents a page. That's 130 page book, so it's not cheap. So I did four of those books. I said I'm not going to do this anymore. Then you have to bind it and make cover pages et cetera. Then what happened is the kids had it and they showed their friends, then some of our family saw it, my sister et cetera.
Speaker 3:We're going to have one. Everybody's got to have one, and you know I tell them what it costs. They go oh no, I don't know if we need to have one of those. So finally we got it down to. You know it's a very, very reasonable price. It's a very long, it's a good sized book.
Speaker 3:And it's a truck full of information, pretty thorough. It has. Uh, you know where the recipes came from. I think you know I put a different touch on other than just recipes and index I mean, uh, where the recipes came from, a little history on some of the recipes that I know of, etc. And, uh, some other anecdotes in there. I found some charts and some cookbooks that we had from the 1920s that belonged to our grandmother and we used some of those charts because they give you where the beef come, the mutton and beef and deer etc. Shows you where the cuts from, kind of interesting stuff. So I put all that stuff along with it, things I thought were informational. And you know a little bit of my Cute yeah, cute things and some of where the history of the Italians recipes come from.
Speaker 3:You know I can't take any credit for lentils and spinach. I think that came from the Romans. It's kind of an old recipe.
Speaker 3:As I say in the book and it was a something I read at one time says uh, the roman legions uh marched on primarily uh legumes and uh like lentils, uh, anything that could carry, that was light, and if they could eat and get protein out of et cetera.
Speaker 3:And if you gave them meat they would rebel, you know, because they were able to. You know they had four smarts with 20, 25, 30 miles and they travel like crazy and so they wanted to travel light and they had to carry their own food pretty much. So you know, they didn't have like the armies I have today with a cook wagon is upcoming, but anyway, that recipe goes back quite a bit uh time and uh, then a lot of other ones, the six summer is yo. I'm not sure where the recipe comes from, but it's been in my family as long as I remember. It is great and uh. Basically it's a braised, uh thin steak and put in no water with oil and oregano and salt and pepper, and you put a steak in there and a little piece of hard bread.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Dump that in there. We get a little bit soft with that nice combination and steak with it.
Speaker 2:Well, you boil a couple of cups of water and put oil in the water and then you pour it over the steak when the steak is really hot and it brings juice out of the steak and that's where the juice comes from. Steak and juice, yeah it's really try that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll have to try that too yeah, saute your steak so it's like brown, but saute them quick on both sides and then put them right in the into this, the seasonings in your dish, and then the water can be boiling on it or come to a boil on the stove while you're doing that and then, when you're done, just pour it over the oregano and all the steak and everything, and it just brings all the juice out of the steak.
Speaker 1:Oh, nice yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I can't go wrong when I cook. I have a talking cookbook here.
Speaker 1:You have a sous chef, you have a sous chef. You have a sous chef, yeah yo, I get graded on my food. My wife grades it today was a good day yesterday wasn't a good day, you know you didn't make this right, or whatever I do.
Speaker 2:I try to give them advice, but the girl's like I think it's great.
Speaker 1:Well, listen, guys, thanks again. I really appreciate you taking the time and I'll put the links out there for the, for the cookbook and hopefully everybody, everybody will enjoy the recipes.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm glad you took the time to Bob Nice to meet you, my pleasure, my pleasure.
