Andiamo...Getting started

Buon Giorno!

There are a lot of simple truths about your life when you are Italian. You go to church. (There is only One) You obey your dad. You eat pasta. LOTS of pasta.

My name is Julie Scalzitti Krueger Massey. I am a first generation American...both of my parents, Frank and Donna (Gigliotti) Scalzitti, were born in Montenero, Italy. They immigrated to the United States in the early 1940s. Many of the 'Montenerese' settled around the Great Lakes after coming through Ellis Island: good jobs were obtainable in the steel mills and on constructions sites in the growing suburban areas of the PostWar era. The Italian Americans made a new home for themselves and their families around the neighborhood Catholic churches and markets in heartland cities such as Erie, Pennsylvania, Lorain, Ohio, and Chicago, Illinois. (I was born in Lorain, Ohio in the summer of 1963)

The 'paisano's spent many hours together in their new country. In fact, the people from Montenero formed a social club in the 50s aptly named 'The Montenero Society'. As I grew up, I enjoyed a wonderful bond with a very large, very boisterous (some would say 'loud') very emotional and very involved extended family. We laughed altogether, cried altogether, prayed altogether and shared our lives.

One thing that really was not shared were recipes. Not because of trademarked secrets, but just because most everyone grew their own tomatoes and other vegetables and prepared their own meals at home, eating out was highly unusual, and even suspect. Cooking all day, canning tomatoes, certainly eating with the family on Sundays, were an accepted part of everyday life. No big deal.

I think it is a very big deal. I felt loved and cared for and special because of it.

So.....that is why I wanted to compile this cookbook. I wanted to express to all the Montenerese, those who loved me so dearly, those whom I knew so well, and those whose spirits I will meet one day, this common bond of our culture.

Mangia!

Baci, Giulia