Palmabella's Passions

A few weeks ago, Deborah, and her food book club decided to create a blog and cook their way through Marcella Hazen's classic book, Essentials of Italian Cooking. Deborah, Irene, Beth and Michele each took a day of the week. They needed cooks for three more days, so Deborah asked a few Slow Travel "foodies" who like to cook to participate in this Italian cooking challenge. The goal is to cook one recipe a day on a group blog, which will be posted each morning on Facebook as well, and spreading our enthusiasm for Marcella Hazen's knowledge and experience of Italian food.

Five Slow Travelers rose to the occasion. Cindy took a day, Sandi and Jan are sharing Fridays, and Jerry and I are the Saturday cooks/bloggers. We have a list of ALL the recipes, and our posting dates all the way through the June 2011.

Since Jerry and I are sharing a day, it seemed like we would only need to think about cooking a recipe every two weeks, right? When we went through our dates, and divided them up according to our personal tastes (we KNOW I won't eat bean soup, and Jerry wanted nothing to do with the oysters), we found that some of our recipes for next fall/winter will require ingredients only available in the spring. There are some ingredients that will be easier to find in some geographical locations than others. Between Palm Desert and Toronto, we seem to have everything covered. The greatest challenge was to find a BABY lamb, but after a friend spoke to her son-in-law, an Italian chef an hour away, there is a two-week-old in the freezer waiting for me to pick up. (Hey, I didn't kill the little guy, he was already frozen!)

I've already made four recipes, and completed the chapters on antipasti and soups. Pasta is next. Whoo Hoo! It is so much fun to see everyone's beautiful dishes each day!

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