My Italian Mother-In-Law Told Me I Was Wasteful

and she was right

It happened in 2010 sometime around 6pm after a long day of work in my remote house at the edge of a small Italian village of 1000 people.

That evening, I was making dinner for my 4-year old and a separate dinner for my Italian husband and I to eat later. For my little guy, I grabbed a new package of pre-made tortellini with spinach and ricotta. I spied an open plastic packet of baby snack carrots out of my side-eye, knowing they had probably expired. Sigh. I felt bad about the carrots.

I closed the door to the frigo and opened the freezer to hunt for inspiration for the grown up dinner. Half a bag of frozen --- Greek meat?! I suddenly remembered that I bought a cucumber last week with the intention to make tzatziki to eat with that. I re-opened the fridge to look at the mushy cucumber. Cazzo. Am I going to have to throw this out too? 

That’s not even mentioning the half-pan of cooked, uneaten green beans and plastic-wrapped blob of raw Toll House cookie dough that just didn't quite turn out right. 

Shit. My mother-in-law is right. I AM wasteful. I just gave notice at my job. The old apartment in New York City isn't rented yet. The car has broken down two times in the last month. AND I'm wasteful. 

A stale half loaf of bread in the corner next to the microwave stared me down during my internal soliloquy. 2 multigrain rolls in another bag rolled over and died. A bunch of withered radishes purchased optimistically to try a new Israeli Ottolenghi salad were served last rites.

A moment of overwhelm.

Later in bed that night, I mused and tumbled.

What if I took a year and tried cooking old-school Italian? What if I stopped allowing myself to throw away food and ATE IT? What if I stopped being lazy and cooking what was easy and instead forced myself to use the food I had before it went bad? Cucina povera style. The way I always hear Fabio's grandparents did it and his parents do it now.

Never a summer passed where I didn't hear stories about how his grandfather brought home bags of overripe fruit that had been thrown away… too ripe to sell...and his nonna would sit outside and cut off the good parts into a huge insalatiera to eat and preserve. Or how his grandmother would collect pinecones from the pine trees in the village and spend the afternoon cracking open the seeds with a hammer to collect pinoli to make pesto.

Ok, so maybe the pine nut thing isn’t reasonable for a weeknight, but…

what about how my Italian mother-in-law always manages to cook everything so simply and efficiently for every season?

And so, I decided to change everything.

An American take-out food junkie moves to Italy and raises her child in a traditional Italian family, learning how to cook, live, and eat the Italian way: simply, seasonally, and sustainably. It will change how you connect with food and the world!

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