Martorana Cooking Weekend

Eat, Play, Love

 

That's exactly what I had the pleasure of doing one recent weekend this summer with my Mom and her 4 siblings. My Aunts Marian, Martha and Jane and Uncle Frank all travelled to my parent's house on Cape Cod for a weekend of cooking, storytelling, eating, drinking and even a little impromptu dancing.

 

They don't look much different now (Jane, Carolyn, Frank, Marian and Martha)

 

The weekend began with a review of the menu (in case anyone thought they would get out of actually cooking).

 

 

Everyone was eager to start and so I handed out some "I'm Italian" aprons and we got to work.

 

 

 

 

We shared and cooked some of our favorite family recipes telling stories about the past and their place in our family lore.

 

We cooked our way right through the weekend with some time off for shopping and the beach on Saturday and a little more shopping on Sunday (after which we may have also stopped for a cocktail- c'mon we worked hard!) 

 

 Cooking my way through these family recipes can be a bit of a lonely process and I've been happy to share them with guests and co-workers on occasion. But to be able to cook them alongside family and learn from those who have helped pass them down ? Priceless.

 

Thanks to my Mom, Carolyn for being the logistics-queen that she is and for doing all of the shopping and lending her kitchen, to Marian for her Italian-cooking expertise and her home-canned tomatoes, Martha for her humor and plethora of stories, Jane for her sous chef skills, pictures and family history and Frank for spending his weekend with a bunch of woman and doing the least popular job of manning the deep fryer. Thanks also to my Dad for putting up with all of us and for of course, tending bar.

 

I look forward to sharing the results of our labor on these pages and keeping the Martorana culinary quest alive.

 

Thanks again to Team Martorana - I had a blast !