My Mother's Treasure turns 1! Happy Anniversary!

Photo source: http://www.tabletalkatlarrys.com/

Last night I had an urge to write, and so I did...2 blog posts to be exact.  It was one of those rare times when my heart, soul and fingers were in tune with one another and the words just flowed onto the page.  So, I went with it and wrote.  It never occurred to me that exactly 1 year earlier I followed a similar urge to write, and posted my first of 94 blog posts (thus far). 

Can you believe it?!?!  I forgot my own anniversary!!

Oh, what a wonderful, exciting year it has been.  Granted, it's had its ups and downs, but I have met many people from around the world, reconnected with family and discovered new family, started a family history collection of recipes and stories from my kids, and rediscovered my Mom...

My longing for days gone by was the driving force behind My Mother's Treasure, and while "what was, was" (another of my mother's favourite sayings - but pronounce the "w" as "v" - "vat vas, vas"), I did discover that I am ready to face this world without my mother beside and behind me...because she is inside me...thank you Mom, for preparing me to take on the world without you holding my hand, and for you and Dad teaching me to look inside myself to find the strength I need...it is there, in all of us, we just have to dig deep, look hard and believe in ourselves.  

And now, as fate has reversed our roles, I will stand beside and behind my mother, and hold her hand as we continue to walk this AD journey together.

Thank you all for reading and following My Mother's Treasure.  I am honoured and grateful for your interest and continued support.  And please, keep coming back, there are many more recipes to come in Year #2.

Until next time, thank you for visiting, and I wish you a wonderful day filled with family, fun, friends and fantastic food.  B'Tayavon & Buon Appetito!

Passionate for Potatoes - Nonna's Potato Salad

Nonna's Potato Salad

I grew up eating potatoes...a lot.

Potatoes were the staple side dish in my parents' home.  Regardless of the form - baked, in a kugel, Baba Ethels, mashed, scalloped, au gratin, Duchess, little babies tossed in olive oil, sea salt and garlic, or just a simple plate of fries, potatoes always made it to my plate. 

You would think I'd have developed an aversion to potatoes by now...but it's just the opposite!  I love them more with each passing day.  The proof is in the pudding - or my cantina - there is always at least 1 10 pound bag waiting to be transformed into one delicacy or another...

The kids also love spuds, and Nonna's potato salad is an all-time favourite.  So much so that I found myself throwing out containers of half-eaten store-bought potato salads.   And this was just the push I needed to learn my mother-in-law's recipe.

I tried making it a few times, but it never measured up to Nonna's.  Then I discovered her secret - boil the onions and carrots with the potatoes!  So simple it was genius!  My most recent batch was a huge success - as delicious as Nonna's - hurray!!

What better to serve at summer cookouts along with Bubbie Lou's coleslaw than a side of potato salad?  And so, from my family to yours - Nonna's potato salad. 

Until next time, I wish you a wonderful day filled with family, fun, friends and fantastic food.  B'Tayavon & Buon Appetito!

Nonna's Potato Salad

Ingredients:
10 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into bite-sized pieces
1 small onion, peeled and diced
3 regular carrots, peeled and cut into half-inch rounds
¾C mayonnaise (I use Hellman's Olive Oil) - you may want to add more to reach the ideal consistency
¼C white vinegar
1½ tsp salt
½ tsp black pepper

Method:
Peel and cut the potatoes into bite-sized pieces.  Peel the onion and dice into small pieces.  Peel the carrots and cut into ½-inch rounds.  Place all veggies in large stockpot of water.  Bring to a rolling boil, then reduce to medium heat, stirring occasionally.  Check potatoes after 10 minutes to see if they are cooked enough.  When potatoes are done (easy to bite through but not soft enough to mash), drain all veggies and place in large glass bowl.  Add remaining ingredients, increasing any of the above to taste, and toss.  Keeps well in the fridge - but it won't last long!  Garnish with parsley when serving.

Cookouts, Cottages and Coleslaw - Bubbie Lou Style

Writing these posts has had an amazing effect on me - the more I think back, recalling events and dishes, the more I actually remember moments in my early life.  It's like I've embarked on an adventure for one, and I keep discovering new ports along the way.

Sometimes I just sit back and sift through My Golden Recipes or Mom's Cookbook looking for something to make.  Recently I found a recipe for Bubbie Lou's cabbage salad...coleslaw!  I guess the first name didn't sound too appealing to me, so I passed it by.  But this time I was intrigued...the girls, especially Sara, love coleslaw, and so I took a moment to read the recipe and see what ingredients it called for.  Then I started to see (and eventually "smell/taste") a coleslaw from my youth.  It was colourful and had a lot of flavouring (pepper and seeds of some kind)...

As a little girl I used to travel to Regina (with my family) quite frequently.  Many childhood memories take place there.  I can remember the incredible feeling of a prairie summer day - with a bright blue sky, blazing sun and zero humidity.  I can smell the fresh summer air wafting through the open windows at my grandparents' home and cottage...the feeling that this memory evokes is so powerful and comforting that I just want to take a deep breath, close my eyes and float back in time...

My grandparents were classic 1950s folks...picture "Leave it to Beaver".  They always dressed properly and even their casual wear was clean, crisp and fashionable.  They lived on a proper timetable (hmmm  maybe I am more like them than I thought) and even had cocktails after work.  My grandfather used to come home for a proper lunch set down by my Bubbie Lou every day - I remember, I spent many a meal with them! - and then had a short nap before going back to Isman Hide & Fur Shop for the afternoon.  They had a group of friends that they did everything together with - socialized, played cards, went for dinner, even had cottages in the same vicinity - Sandy Beach in the Qu'apelle Valley.

I loved going to the cottage at Sandy Beach.  It was a beachfront property, with a kitchen, huge living room/dining room, and I believe there were 2, maybe 3 bedrooms.  No washrooms back then - just the "biffy" (outhouse), a rain barrel and a lake.  You could use the water collected in the rain barrel to wash your hair (Bubbie Lou and Mom always told me it made your hair so soft) and take a bar of soap in the lake to wash your body.  Oh, how I hated the biffy.  Not only was it aromatically unpleasant, it was full of cobwebs and spiders - at least in my mind it was!  I remember being so afraid of falling in, or worse, of something jumping out!

But it was always great fun to go to the cottage.  Bubbie Lou and Mom would send Davie and I out to the side of the cottage to pick Saskatoon berries for a pie...I just remember that we'd eat one berry for every two we'd pick!  Good thing there were tons of bushes going all the way down to the lake.

We'd have cookouts and loads of food...and this is where the memory of Bubbie Lou's coleslaw comes in...I can taste the tangy coleslaw she would serve with burgers and dogs...I don't recall what else went with the meal...some recollections do get lost with time.

Thankfully the recipe did not.  I found it and recreated it this week!  I cannot wait to serve it to the family and see if it sparks any memories for Davie or Daddy.  To see the original recipe card, click here.

Until next time, I wish you a wonderful day filled with family, fun, friends and fantastic food!  B'Tayavon & Buon Appetito!

Add a little less than ½C of sugar 

Add a little less than ½C of oil

Add ½C of white vinegar

Add 1 tsp salt

Add 1 tsp ground mustard

Add 1 tsp ground pepper

Add 1 tsp celery seed

Add  ½ tsp garlic powder

Combine all ingredients in saucepan on stove

Bring to a boil

Meanwhile...shred 1 large cabbage and 1 thinly sliced
large Spanish onion and combine in bowl (or you can cheat
 like I did and buy a ready-made bag of coleslaw salad mix!)

Add boiled dressing to salad mixture, toss, cool and serve!

Voila - Bubbie Lou's Cabbage Salad <3

Bubbie Lou's Cabbage Salad 

Salad Ingredients

• 1 large cabbage, shredded
• 1 large Spanish onion, sliced thin in rings
• (or you can "cheat" and buy the ready-made coleslaw salad mix)

Dressing Ingredients 

• a little less than ½C sugar
• ½C white vinegar
• a little less than ½C oil (I prefer canola)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp celery seed
• 1 tsp ground mustard
• 1 tsp ground pepper
• ½ tsp garlic powder

Method

Combine salad ingredients in a bowl.  Combine the dressing ingredients in a medium saucepan.  Bring to a boil and pour over salad ingredients (while the mixture is still hot! Norene Gilletz points out that the hot dressing will help to keep the slaw longer).  Toss and cool.  Keeps great in the fridge.

Happy Canada Day: Birthdays, Baking and Channeling Bregman's Chocolate Fudge Icing

Birthdays were always a big deal in our home.

Mom always made our favourite meal on our birthdays - a tradition that continues in the Bruni household to this day.

Not surprisingly, my own birthdays stick out in my memory a little more than the others' do, and Mom always made sure there were amazing cakes for the occasion.  

Me & my parents on my 25th birthday - Dad goofing around
(you can imagine Sara's comment about my acid wash attire!) 

My all-time favourite cake was Bregman's' chocolate fudge cake, which says a lot given the fact that I am a chronic migraine sufferer - chocolate does me in every time.  Ergo, I rarely indulge...the short-term benefits do not outweigh the long-term suffering...except when it came to Bregman's' double chocolate fudge cake!

My 25th Birthday cakes from Bregman's
1 double chocolate fudge,
the other strawberry shortcake

In an earlier post I told you that we would have Sunday morning brunch at home when we were children.  As we grew older, those brunches moved from our kitchen table to Bregman's.

Mmmm...it was worth waiting in a line, and perusing their take-out counter, just to get their mammoth Greek salad with a side of fries and gravy.  To this day it is still my favourite meal to order, just ask Carlo....whether we were going for brunch to the Wexford in our "dating era", or taking the kids to Pickle Barrel for dinner in 2012, a large Greek salad with a side of fries and gravy is my "go to" dinner - old habits die hard!  Funny enough, it has passed down to the next generation...Sara ordered the identical meal just last week!

Recently, Carlo and I were reminiscing about days gone by, how much we miss the amazing chocolate fudge cake from Bregman's - they closed their doors in 2007 - and the fact that we've not been able to find anything that approaches comparison, ANYWHERE, since!  

And that's how it happened...I got a bee in my bonnet and went on a mission to seek out the chocolate fudge icing that has eluded me for 15+ years since we moved north and stopped going to Bregman's.

I stumbled upon a recipe and video online at videojug ... the finished product appeared similar to the fudge icing I've been searching for.  By the time I woke up on Saturday morning I could no longer fight the urge to start up my mix master and make some icing.  I whipped up two batches of cupcakes - 1 vanilla for Sara and me, and 1 chocolate for Carlo and Becca.  Then it was time...with all the anticipation of a kid let loose in a toy store, I brought out the ingredients for my fudge icing.  It was at this point that Sara came downstairs and started to help me.  

My vanilla butter cream cupcakes-love the photo, had to add it!

But first...I had to convert all the ingredients from grams to ounces (oy, my math brain was not yet awake and functioning (thank goodness for Google and metric-conversions.org!).  

Then it was finally time...there was margarine and chocolate squares to melt, then icing sugar, milk, vanilla extract and salt to be added to the mixture, and then lots and lots of whisking.  

The recipe called for 500g (2C) of icing sugar...after 5 minutes of intense mixing it still did not reach the right consistency (heavy sigh).  I kept adding more, and more,  icing sugar (thank goodness for a well-stocked cantina) and after I added at least 5 more cups of icing sugar (remember - I subscribe to the shitarein method of tossing it in until is "feels" right)...HALLELUJAH!  I got it!  It was the perfect consistency!  I cannot tell you how excited I was to have finally found it.  Even Sara, who is not a chocolate fan, admitted it was delish and assumed her rightful position as keeper of the whisk and bowl (read "lick every last morsel")!

I piped 24 cupcakes with unabashed delight, anticipating my beloved's reaction when I placed the cupcake before him after dinner...and then I went about making Bubbie Lou's butter cream icing, and piped another 2 dozen cupcakes.  Then it was time to bake Bubbie Lou's cheesecake, tidy the house and prepare the BBQ and dinner fixings for later.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, it was time to serve dessert.  I brought out the cupcakes, and watched intently as Carlo took that first bite of his cupcake.  He looked up at me…smiled…and nodded…I’d done it!  What a feeling of satisfaction…

PS –the following night we went to Mama Bruni’s for dinner and I took some cupcakes over for dessert.  My father-in-law actually told me I should open a bakery J … I decided to forego my butter cream cupcake and try one of the chocolate fudge cupcakes instead (conditions were optimal, no inclement weather that would brew a migraine)…eureka, I really did do it…the icing was moist, sweet and delicious and perfectly formed.  Bregman’s may be gone, but their double fudge chocolate icing lives on…in my kitchen!

Until next time, I wish you a wonderful day filled with family, fun, friends and fantastic food.  B’Tayavon & Buon Appetito!

Naomi’s Chocolate Fudge Icing

Ingredients:

• ¾C butter
• 7oz semi-sweet chocolate squares  
• ½ C milk
• 7½ C icing sugar (minimum)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• ½ tsp salt

Method

Slowly melt chocolate and margarine together in small saucepan (over low heat, stirring often to ensure it doesn’t burn).  In the meantime, pour milk over a mixture of the sugar and salt in mixing bowl.  Mix on low speed until fully blended, then add vanilla and continue blending.  Turn off mixer, add melted chocolate/margarine combo and blend on low speed until fully mixed, then increase mixing speed and mix for at least 2 minutes.  You may want to add more or less sugar depending on your preferred consistency) until you achieve your desired consistency.  Pipe onto your cake/cupcakes and chill to set.  

Caesar Salad Dressing ...a sure-fire way to "de-stress" for study success!

This is not my Sari...but I think you get the idea!

Sara is in exams...she cloisters herself in her room to study...I come in for a quick peak and see my sweet girl, sitting on her couch, surrounded by papers, notes and textbooks...it is like she is stranded on a deserted island of academia with no hope of rescue for at least 2 more days.

Oh how I remember high school exams, so much information that needed to be committed to memory...studying for so many hours that you brain starts to ache...then writing the exam and discarding everything you just learned so you can cram the next subject in there!

The difference between Sara and me is that she is a great student, bright and well-rounded, and I was not.  I didn't develop a love for learning until I went to universsity, where the floodgates opened and education was transformed from a drudgery to a delight.  

I have told the girls many times before to seriously consider staying home for their undergraduate studies.  We live in a fantastic city that boasts 3 universities and a number of colleges...why not live with us - eat well, dwell well, and avoid the additional burdens that going away adds to an already stressed student's life?

When I was in university, I lived with my parents.  I worked during the day, and studied at night.  My evenings and weekends were spent poring over textbooks and notes...reading, re-reading, highlighting, typing notes, reducing the notes to short form, and then further reducing them to point form.  Who had time for cooking and cleaning and laundry?  Not I, and I was fortunate to have a mother who just wanted to see me surpass her achievements, so she indulged me by taking care of the day-to-day life stuff, freeing me to devote my time to work, study and socializing.  Thanks Mom...now, as a mother myself, I am able to see just what she did for me, and only now can I fully appreciate her efforts, her devotion and the sacrifice of her time just to make my life easier.  

Which brings me to the present day...right now there is little I can do for my sweet Sara, except try to be there and support her where I can...are you guessing where this story is going?  Where is always goes...to food!  

To add insult to injury (a favourite expression of Mom's, by the way), Sari has come down with a cold and nagging cough...bad enough that she is back on asthma meds to help her heal.  The timing could not have been worse if we had planned it.

So what can I do?!?!?   Nouridh my baby, feed her foods that she loves and that will give her strength...pastas, proteins, and salads, of course!

In recent years Caesar salad has lost its appeal...it tastes fantastic during a meal, but all the garlic and seasonings wreak havoc on my aging system.  None-the-less, Sara loves Caesar salad, and I wanted to cheer her up before her math exam, so I added it to our dinner menu.  

On the way home from our final tutoring session before the exam, we stopped at Metro to pick up some simulated bacon bits (what's a Caesar without it?!). Then we headed home, and I put all the fixings together and went to the fridge to get the Renee's Caesar Dressing...it wasn't there!!!  Where had it gone?!?  I was sure that I had a bottle in there...well, there was no time to dwell on the missing salad dressing, the troops were starving...so I pulled Norene's Meal-Lean-I-Yumm, now Healthy Helpings cookbook and looked up dressing recipes (page 278).   Seemed easy enough, but I didn't have all the ingredients.  So, I decided to wing it, using her recipe as a guide.

Sara loved it!!  She said it was flavourful yet not overpowering, and because there was no anchovy paste, she wasn't left feeling queasy afterward.  The best part for me was that Becca and Carlo gave it the thumbs up too.  An added bonus was that I didn't suffer any after effects from this dressing either.

So I guess Caesar salad dressing is back in the running as a regular option for our dinner salad and no longer relegated to a treat we indulge in once every couple of months.  I hope you enjoy this recipe, a Norene-based Naomi original, as much as my family does.  

Until next time, I wish you a wonderful weekend filled with family, fun, friends and fantastic food.  B'Tayavon & Buon Appetito!

Naomi's Caesar Salad

Salad Ingredients 

• lettuce - cut or torn into bite-size pieces (I use romaine or iceberg)
• Caesar croutons (any brand will work, I prefer No Name or PC)
• "bacon" bit (I keep simulated on hand but you can use the real deal if you prefer)
• parmigiana cheese, grated

Dressing Ingredients

• ½C mayonnaise (I use Hellman's Olive Oil mayo) 
• 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 2 to 3 tbsp lemon juice
• ¾ tsp  each of salt and pepper

Method

This is a shitarein recipe.  Prepare your salad (notice there are no measurements for the salad ingredients...I toss in whatever looks like it will satisfy my family depending on how hungry we are - although I must admit we eat tons of salad, and I will take any leftovers to work the next day.  I then mix all the salad dressing ingredients, pour over the salad, toss and serve!

"What's Cooking Good Looking" - It's Thrilling Thursday!

For those of you who do not subscribe to Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or Pinterest, I wanted to share today's "What's Cooking Good Looking" with you!

It's Thrilling Thursday for me, and here's why.

A couple of months ago Rebecca came to me with a plan she'd devised to raise money for Alzheimer's Research...she and her best buddy "A" started a project called "Super Books".  All on their own, without any help whatsoever, these girls developed a plan of action plan, wrote and illustrated short story and colouring books for children, printed them, made matching bookmarks, bags and bracelets.

They produced over 60 individual books & bookmarks by hand, and started to market them to friends and family.  They've raised over $100 thus far, and tonight is the Super Books Official Debut at a local school Arts Night.

We are meeting with the York Region Alzheimer's Society next week to see about getting some support for this project and taking it to the next level.

And that is why it is Thrilling Thursday in my world.

In the meantime, Becca won't be home for dinner tonight!  So, it's just the 3 of us...I will whip up stuffed pasta shells with tomato sugo, a side salad, crusty bread & spizza camientu...and voila - dinner is complete!

Whatever you are having, I wish you a wonderful day filled with family, fun, friends and fantastic food.  B'Tayavon & Buon Appetito!

Going Greek on a Meatless Monday - Greek Pesto Pasta: A Nomi Original

I love pasta.   I don't discriminate among shapes or sauces - I adore them all.


Growing up I knew of only 3 ways to eat pasta - with Mom's delicious meat sauce (the closest I've come to recreating it is Gloria Kobrin's fantastic meat sauce), with jarred tomato basil sauce, or with jarred Alfredo sauce.


In fact, until I met Carlo, I did not know you could make your own sauce!  Embarrassing but true.


This little tidbit is even more shameful when you consider that I have always gravitated towards Italians.  My closest girlfriends in high school were Italian - Nadia, Luciana and Elsa - and it seemed like I was always eating at Nadia's house - ie. I was eating the real deal, no jarred sauce would ever pass their threshold.
Then, when I went to university I met Dee, and she introduced me to Mary - they've been my closest friends since my late teens, and they, too, are Italian!


So you see, while I have always treasured and embraced my Jewish heritage,  have also fallen head over heels in love with everything Italian.  The country, the cuisine, the people - especially the people!


So it made sense that, as I was working my way through university, I would meet a handsome Italian man with whom I struck up an immediate friendship.  As I got to know him better I decided to play matchmaker and introduce him to my best friend, Dee, who was also Italian.  She came to meet him after work one evening, and afterwards she asked me why I introduced her to someone who I was clearly nuts about, and that it was just as obvious that the feeling was mutual! ... and so began my dance with destiny.


Carlo and I started dating soon after, and then he invited me to his place for dinner.  I asked what I could bring, and he said "sauce and bread".  That was easy enough...I went to the grocery store and bought a jar of Ragu tomato sauce and a loaf of Wonder bread.


Really, I did.


What does a nice Jewish girl know about Italian cooking?  And what was this nice Italian boy thinking when he asked the nice Jewish girl to bring sauce and bread!?!?


Well, we laugh about it (read: "at me") all these years later.  Soon enough I learned to appreciate the fine flavour of a fresh, home-made tomato sugo, and eventually I even learned how to make it!


Fast forward to the present and my current predicament...my beautiful family gets tired of the same old sugo week after week.  So I have incorporated a couple of new sauces and shapes into our family menu.  Carlo loves fusili, Sara loves spaghetti, Becca is pretty easy and I adore pennine rigate.  And for sauces...well, if you follow me on Facebook you know that Alessandra Rovati's pasta cacio e pepe is a huge hit in our household.


This week I needed to shake Meatless Monday up a bit.  We are falling into a pasta rut, alternating between the two.  Then I remembered a pesto, feta and vegetable pasta I used to make.  The family used to really like it.  So, I declared it "Greek Night at the Brunis", stopped by my neighbourhood No Frills for a bottle of pesto, and a fresh dinner idea actually made it to the table.


As I began sauteing the vegetables in olive oil, the girls started making their way to the kitchen, sniffing the air and asking what smelled so good.  Then, Sara abandoned all her EQAO preparations to stir the sauteing veggies, add the pesto and grate the feta ("it just tastes better that way Mom").  Becca was setting the table and photographing the final dish.   FINALLY...dinner was served.  We sat down, exchanged a B'Tayavon & Buon Appetito, shared our day's happenings with one another, and started to eat.  All you heard were a lot of "mmms", "this is really good", "make this at least once a month please" and "can I have this for my lunch tomorrow?".


All in all, it was a lovely, refreshing, healthy and flavourful dinner - one that I will happily recreate again next month.  A pictorial step-by-step of my Greek Pesto Pasta follows the recipe below..


Until next time, I wish you a wonderful day filled with family, fun, friends and fantastic food.  B'Tayavon & Buon Appetito!


Greek Pesto Pasta: A Nomi Original

Ingredients:

• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1 Chinese eggplant, diced
• 1 zucchini, diced
• 1 cooking onion, diced 
• ½ red onion, diced
• ½ green pepper, diced
• ½ yellow (or other colour) pepper, diced
• 1 package white button mushrooms, rinsed & quartered (cut of the ends!)
• 1 tomato, diced
• 6 - 12 cured ripe black olives
• 2 heaping tablespoons of pesto sauce
• ¼ C feta cheese, grated
• 1 package of pasta (whatever shape you like)

Method:
Heat oil (medium heat) in large skillet.  Add both the red & cooking onions, eggplant, zucchini, green & yellow peppers (all vegetables are diced) and saute for about 5 minutes.  In the meantime, boil a large pot of water for your pasta.  Around the same time you add the pasta to the boiling water, add the mushrooms and tomatoes to your veggies, and saute for 5 more minutes.  Then add 2 heaping tablespoons of pesto sauce and the cured ripe olives to the veggies and cook for 5 minutes longer.  Remember to stir occasionally throughout. 

Drain the pasta and add to sauce in skillet.  Toss and serve with a garnish of grated feta.  B'Tayavon & Buon Appetito!

Add 3 tbsp olive oil in large skillet

Add  ½  red onion, diced 

Add 1 medium cooking onion, diced

Add  ½  yellow pepper and  ½  green pepper, diced 

Add 1 Chinese eggplant, diced

Add 1 zucchini, diced

Saute all veggies in olive oil on medium heat 

Add 1 package white mushrooms, rinsed and quartered

Add mushrooms to sauteed veggies

Add 1 tomato, diced

Saute all veggies, then toss in ripe cured olives
and 2 heaping tablespoons of pesto sauce 

This photo does not do the sauce justice
...it smells & tastes delicious!

My dinner plate, garnished with grated feta,
because `it just tastes better grated Mom`