Welcome to Just4Family Cookbook blog!

Hello and welcome!

This Monfiletto family cookbook is a work in progress.  I'll be posting as I cook and bake the family recipes myself and take photos of them as they come out of the oven or pot.  I hope you'll enjoy taking this journey with me as I document our family history through dinners, desserts and holiday traditions, which I painstakingly try to uphold, under the watchful eyes of my mother Ann and grandmother Rose from above.    

All four of my grandparents emigrated from Italy to America at the turn of the 20th century. They brought with them all of their recipes -- in their heads and hands. Nothing had ever been written down. But once they settled in America, something wonderful was always coming out of the kitchen. It was magical. 

Years ago, my mother wrote some of these recipes down for me and my four sisters.  I’m including most of them exactly as she wrote them. I wrote more of these recipes at the request of my own children, who prefer measuring ingredients instead of using the eyeball-and-handful method passed down to me.

Just a note: I've shared our family recipes from time to time and have even been accused of withholding an ingredient or skewing a measurement to ensure that no one makes it as well as we do. This is not true! I wrote these recipes to the best of my ability -- turning eyeball-and-handful measurements into real world cups and tablespoons.  Sometimes you just have to adjust for taste.

Recipes aside, I learned to make many of these family specialties with my grandmother behind me, waving a wooden spoon and saying, “That’s not-a-right. Do some more.” The best advice I can give, for those who want to give it a go -- and who don't have an Italian grandmother handy -- is to make things a few times, until you get the consistency right and you're happy with the end product. As my mother always said, "Practice makes improvement -- no one ever truly achieves perfection."

 Here's a photo of the family cookbook my mother gave to me:

And here's the handwritten note my mother put in the cookbooks. (I'm fully aware that she addressed each of us as "My best daughter." )

Copyright: All rights reserved. No part of this blog may be reproduced or used publicly without express written permission from the author.  Marlene M. Nice