Old Italian Women Don’t Always Get it Right

The other day I was talking with my wonderful mother in law who is very dear to me.   And we were chatting over the phone about food (naturally) and what she made for dinner.   She told me she had made some Italian meatballs and decided to try and give it a sausage flavor by adding fennel seeds to the mixture.  Fennel seeds if you are not aware, are often found in sausage products and can lend a good sausage aroma to food.   So she made her meatballs with the fennel seeds mixed in and served the meatballs to her family only to be greeted with, “What did you do to the meatballs?!” Needless to say, she won’t be trying that again.  

I do not view my mother in law as never having made a cooking mistake, but come on… at 75 she isn’t supposed to be making any more goof ups!  She’s supposed to be an expert at Italian cooking, that means her days of experimentation should be over.   But this is not the case and as much as I love my mother in law, in an odd way it made me feel better knowing that even she isn’t goof up proof.   In fact, it goes to reiterate something I state on my recipe pages quite often, and that is with cooking there is no one perfect way of doing anything.   Cooking should always allow room for  creativity and trying new ideas, how boring it would be otherwise.

So I say “Bravo!” to my mother in law for trying who at 75 still experiments in the kitchen and who isn’t so prideful that she cannot admit her mistakes and find them interesting enough to tell me about them. 

Liz
Simple Italian Cooking Recipes

Related posts:

1. Italian Meatless Meatballs That Will Knock Your Socks Off First let me say, until you try it don’t mock it.   I never heard of a meatless meatball, much less...
2. Italian Peppers and Sausage without the Pork My latest recipe comes from my own mother's recipebox. Literally, that's where I found it, in her recipebox. It's a...
3. We Pulled off the Best Italian Christmas Meal Greetings!  It is 2 days after Christmas 2009 and my previous post described my jitters regarding my brother’s suggestion to...
4. Herb Series – Part 4 – Fennel This may not be the most common Italian herb, but anyone who knows about fennel, knows it is often used...
5. Simple Meatless Italian Pasta Sauce Meatless Italian Pasta Sauce Continue reading →...