Lindsay Marie Morris

It's the quintessentially Christmas image: chestnuts roasting on an open fire or, for most modern cooks, in the oven. Just visualizing it calls to mind the earthy aroma, something commonly encountered on the streets of Palermo this time of year. There, le caldarroste are served as street food dusted in snowy white salt in paper-wrapped cones.

Pennsylvania-based blogger Anna Maria Lucchese has fond memories of Sicily's roasted chestnuts and shared her experience in a post on her blog, Solo Dolce.

 

Born and raised in Sicily, Anna Maria studied biology at university and earned her doctorate in genetics and oncology in Italy. For study-related reasons, she and her husband moved to the United States. They intended to stay for a short time, but that didn't happen. Today, both work in Philadelphia in the field of research, and in Anna Maria's free time, she dedicates herself to her blog, where she explores Italian cuisine in depth.

 

Anna Maria recently shared her experience with roasted chestnuts and tips for recreating the flavor at home.

 

 

What makes roasted chestnuts a popular street food in Sicily?

Chestnuts are a seasonal delight because they are harvested in the fall. They are available throughout the cooler months, so they are ideal, especially during Christmas. Roasted chestnuts are a common treat at family get-togethers and regional celebrations, bringing back fond memories of childhood for many Sicilians.

 

How are roasted chestnuts traditionally prepared and served by vendors in Palermo?

The roasted chestnut vendors in Palermo are truly unique. They create a captivating scene, surrounded by fragrant smoke rising from a metal cylinder. Inside, glowing embers rest at the bottom, with chestnuts placed on top. As the chestnuts roast, they're often sprinkled with salt, which interacts with the heat to create a fine, white powder that resembles powdered sugar. This visual and sensory experience draws in passersby, inviting them to indulge in this traditional winter snack. The vendors' lively presence and the warm aroma of roasting chestnuts evoke a sense of nostalgia and community, making them a beloved part of Palermo's winter streets.

 

What memories do you associate with roasted chestnuts during the Christmas season in Sicily?

My memories take me back to my time in Sicily, in my hometown, during the winter holidays. I remember walking along the Corso, the main street of the town, with friends. We would stop by the vendors to buy warm, roasted chestnuts, which became our delicious snacks as we strolled. The warmth of the chestnuts in our hands and the comforting aroma filled the air, creating a sense of joy and togetherness. Each bite was a reminder of the simple pleasures of winter, and those moments spent with friends made the season truly special.

 

What are some tips for preparing roasted chestnuts at home?

Buy chestnuts (Look for fresh, shiny chestnuts that are firm to the touch. Avoid any with blemishes or holes) in the supermarket, cut them, sprinkle them with salt, and bake them at 450 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 to 40 minutes. Or if you have a chestnut pan (or a heavy skillet with holes), you can roast them on the stovetop over medium heat, shaking occasionally, for about 15 to 20 minutes.


Photo by Solo Dolce's Anna Maria Lucchese

 

What do you hope readers will take away from this recipe and your blog?

I hope readers will take away a deeper appreciation for the simple pleasures of cooking and enjoying traditional foods like roasted chestnuts. My blog aims to celebrate the rich culinary heritage of Italy, sharing not just recipes but also the stories and memories associated with them.

 

 >>Get Anna Maria's le caldarroste recipe here!<<

 

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One of my favorite Sicilian treats as a child was torrone, a nut-filled nougat candy my Sicilian grandmother always had on hand, especially for the holidays.

I recently encountered a recipe for torrone in the pages of Giovanna Bellia La Marca's Sicilian Feast, recently reissued as an expanded edition of her 2004 book. 

"Torrone is such a part of Sicilian cuisine that no holiday goes by without it," says Giovanna. "It's delicious. Children love it; adults love it. So it's just part of our culture and kind of a symbol of Sicily."

Giovanna La Marca, who came to the U.S. from Sicily when she was 10 years old, also runs the Kitchen on the Cliff YouTube channel. The name is a nod to the fact that her kitchen is actually on a cliff overlooking Manhattan. 

Giovanna shared with me the history of torrone, how the Sicilian recipe differs from that of mainland Italy, and how this nougat treat has become a Sicilian symbol.

 

 

What is torrone?

Torrone is a nougat candy, and in Sicily, we make it with almonds and sugar or almonds and a combination of sugar and honey. 

It is very much tied to our history. Since antiquity, many people have invaded Sicily. There were the Greeks who made settlements all over Sicily, and they, of course, brought the trees.

The myth is that a boat carrying almond trees and grapevines was going to Puglia, the heel of Italy, which is very close to Greece. And the wind blew it to Sicily. 

But the sweets! Sicily is quite famous for its sweets. One of the great sweets is torrone, and another one is marzipan, which are little sculptures of fruits that are so lifelike that when you see them in the window of the pasticceria, it is just amazing to see the likeness and the artistry with which they are made. 

To achieve that, Sicilians already had almonds, but the sugar was brought by the Arabs around 700, and they planted sugarcane in Sicily.

An interesting side note of that is that the sugar industry in Sicily was dominated by the resident Jews. There was quite a large Jewish colony in Sicily, and they developed the sugar industry. 

Now unfortunately, in 1492, when Spain expelled the Jews, they expelled them not only from their own country but from all the places that they controlled as well, which included Sicily. The Sicilians had no quarrel with the Jews. In fact, the Jewish people really ran the sugar industry. So they waited six months. They didn't want to expel them. But Spain prevailed. And that ended the sugar industry in Sicily, which is a little-known fact but a very interesting one, I think.

 

How does Sicilian torrone differ from torrone found elsewhere in Italy?

Well, the typical torrone of Italy is white, and it's made with a meringue of sugar and almonds and sometimes other nuts and sometimes bits of citron and so on. It is poured on edible rice paper, and that's how it's served and cut. 

In Sicily, it is really almonds surrounded by crunchy caramel. It's very, very crunchy. It's actually a brittle. You can cut it with a knife, and you get all the cross sections of the almonds, which is very pretty. But you can also break it. It breaks in odd shapes, and that's another way that we usually serve it.

 

As a child, I had trouble with it because I didn't have the patience to let it melt in my mouth. I wanted to chew it, and chewing it was a job because it was really quite hard. 

I'm not talking about the soft caramel we all know. I'm talking about true caramel, which, if you pour into a greased bowl and turn the bowl upside down, you end up with a bowl made of caramel.

It's used that way for very high cuisine. In Sicily, we have two cuisines. We have home cooking, which is extremely rich and wonderful because it's influenced by all the invasions. Our invaders did contribute a great deal; they didn't just invade. They contributed to the language. They contributed to music, and they contributed to the food. 

 

What developed in Sicily in the Renaissance was a cuisine for the aristocrats. The cooks were generally trained in France, then came back to Sicily and became the monzu. These professional chefs worked for two entities: the church and the aristocracy. And that was an extraordinary cuisine. 

 

What does torrone symbolize for Sicily?

Well, it's something delicious, and sweets are generally the food that you get at festivals. They're always served at Christmas and for all of the feasts. Every Sicilian town has a patron saint and a feast for the patron saint. 

It really represents Sicily in its products because of the almonds of Sicily, particularly the city of Avola. Avola produces almonds that are called pizzuta, which means pointy almonds. They are very, very fragrant and very flavorful. That, of course, is due to the climate and the soil. In Sicily, the volcanic soil produces fruits and nuts with flavors you don't get otherwise.

Almonds are part of a very important festival in Agrigento. The almonds fruit in February. So, in February, Agrigento is filled with almond trees in bloom. The almond trees in bloom have such a heady perfume that you almost feel enveloped by the scent of the almonds and the almond trees. So there's a lot of folklore around it.

 

What was your goal with your cookbook, and what do you hope readers will take away?

I think I had very specific reasons for writing a book. I am a cook. I am a passionate cook. I have always loved to cook. I started when I was 10 years old. 

My mother cooked well, but she wasn't passionate about it. She had to have a perfectly orderly house and a floor that you could eat off of. My father did a lot of cooking, and he was very good, and I was his assistant. So if he made, say, risotto, I was the one who chopped the mushrooms. And the mushrooms for the risotto had to be about the same size as the grains of rice. So, I had a very good beginning. 

I met Italian Americans and Sicilian Americans, and they always said, "I remember my grandmother's cooking. It was so delicious. It was so wonderful. But she didn't leave any recipes, and I was too young to ask for recipes."

I heard this over and over again, so I thought, "I would like to write a cookbook that gives them Nonna's recipes."

 

My aim was to give typical and original recipes—not versions of, but the original recipes, the recipes that we all came up with and that our grandmothers cooked.

 

>>Get your copy of Sicilian Feast here!<<

 

 

 

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It's been a long journey—four years, to be exact. But my book baby is due to be born January 16, 2025. I am so grateful for all of the support I've received and am blessed to be working with Storm Publishing, who saw my vision and shepherded this project to reality. You can now pre-order The Last Letter from Sicily; advance reader copies will be available on December 20. 

 

Below, you will find the book jacket copy, which introduces Concetta and Gaetano, who were inspired by my Sicilian grandparents. The story is fiction, but their enduring love—against the odds—will forever be remembered. 

"My dearest Gaetano, if this letter reaches you, know that my heart remains under the Sicilian stars where we made our promise..."

 

Sicily, 1939. Seventeen-year-old Concetta has just received life-changing news: her family is leaving their sun-drenched Sicilian village and moving to America. Desperate to stay with her secret love, Gaetano—a fisherman's son her father would never accept—Concetta spends one last night with him beneath a blanket of stars. There, among the citrus-scented air and cricket song, he hands her a leaving gift: a fountain pen, with a promise to keep their love alive through letters—and return to one another one day.

 

In America, Concetta refuses to let go of her dream of returning to Sicily, even as she struggles to navigate a strange new world of factory work and prejudice. Her letters to Gaetano become her lifeline, each one carrying fragments of her heart across the ocean. But when Italy declares war on the United States, Gaetano's letters suddenly stop. As Concetta faces pressure to let go of her past and accept her new American life, she yearns to discover Gaetano's fate—even if it means crossing a war-torn ocean to find him.

 

From the terraced hills of Sicily to the brewing tensions of wartime America, this richly woven tale of forbidden love and impossible choices will break your heart and put it back together again. Perfect for fans of Kelly Rimmer, Rhys Bowen, and Angela Petch, The Last Letter from Sicily asks just how far you would go to keep a promise made beneath the stars.

 

>>Pre-order The Last Letter from Sicily today!<<

Have you gotten your hands on good-quality almonds? Try making some Sicilian almond cookies!

One to try: pizzicotti alle mandorle. Made with freshly blanched almonds, these holiday-perfect cookies are named for the way they are pinched using the thumb, forefinger, and middle finger before they are set in the oven.

 

I recently stumbled on a plant-based pizzicotti recipe on veganhotstuff.com. Many of the recipes Switzerland-based blogger Deborah Bolton has published are vegan versions of Italian dishes. She shared with me more about her version of this classic cookie and her zero-waste way of using chickpea liquid, aquafaba, as a binding.

 

 

Tell us about this almond cookie recipe and what inspired you to make it.

This almond cookie recipe originates from Southern Italy, particularly Sicily, where almonds grow abundantly in the warm Mediterranean climate. These cookies are called pizzicotti alle mandorle in Italian, where pizzicotti means pinches and mandorle is the word for almonds.

 

Pizzicotti alle mandorle are irresistibly crunchy on the outside with a soft, chewy center that melts in your mouth. I was inspired to make this recipe because I wanted to make a plant-based version that no one would be able to distinguish from the original. This recipe can be enjoyed by omnivores, vegans, and people with egg allergies alike.

 

What is the significance of this cookie recipe?

Almonds have always been significant in Italian culture, symbolizing good luck and prosperity. Pizzicotti alle mandorle embody this tradition and often appear during festive occasions and special gatherings. In Sicily, they are a cherished part of feast day celebrations and weddings, symbolizing good fortune and the sweetness of life. These traditional almond biscuits are often made using family recipes that have been handed down through the centuries. Skilled artisans and home bakers alike take pride in their meticulous preparation.

 

 

If you love almonds, you'll adore pizzicotti alle mandorle. Photo by Deborah Bolton.

 

How is your recipe different from the traditional cookie?

As always, I like to keep traditional recipes as authentic as possible but without the use of animal products. The only difference between my recipe and the traditional cookie is the absence of egg white, which I substituted with aquafaba. Aquafaba is the cooking liquid in a jar or can of chickpeas. It has similar emulsifying, foaming, binding, gelatinizing, and thickening properties to egg whites, and the taste is absolutely undetectable. This recipe turned out perfect, and no one could tell that they were vegan.

 

Another thing I like about using aquafaba is the fact it aligns with my zero-waste philosophy. Chickpea water normally gets thrown away. Using it in our recipes instead of eggs is far better than exploiting hens and costs nothing.
 

Are there any specific types of ingredients that work best for this recipe?

Yes. While it's possible to use either blanched or non-blanched almonds, I recommend using blanched (peeled) almonds because they yield an attractive-looking white cookie. In contrast, the brown skin on unpeeled almonds would result in a slightly darker cookie with brown flecks, which would be ideal for amaretti, for example, but not so much for pizzicotti. It's best to use ground almonds, also known as almond meal, rather than almond flour to ensure you get the right texture. If you can't find ready-ground almonds, just buy whole ones. It's very easy to grind your own. This recipe calls for lemon zest, so make sure you use lemons with an edible peel.

 

Last but not least—sugar. Not all sugar is vegan because bone char is often used in the refining process, so check labels. I use white vegan caster sugar. Caster sugar is finer than granulated sugar, which is ideal for this recipe.

 

What are the most critical steps in the preparation process?

This recipe is actually super easy to make. The most critical step is probably weighing the ingredients precisely. If you're approximate, it will definitely affect the texture of the cookies. Use a good kitchen scale because even slight variations in the amount of moisture will cause the cookies to either spread in the oven and lose their characteristic shape or be harder than they should be. The only other critical step is understanding when the cookies are done. They should be soft and pale when they come out of the oven and firm up as they cool.

Crunchy on the outside and chewy inside. Photo by Deborah Bolton.

What do you hope readers will take away from this recipe?

I hope readers will not only fall in love with the taste of these almond cookies but also appreciate the simplicity and authenticity of the recipe. With their crunchy exterior and soft, chewy center, they remain true to the traditional Sicilian cookie, even with the vegan twist. What's even better is the satisfaction of making a cruelty-free version that's just as good as the original, if not better. I also hope it inspires people to be creative with their plant-based cooking and consider the environmental and ethical benefits of using ingredients like aquafaba. And since they make such great edible gifts, especially around Christmas, I hope readers feel encouraged to share them with loved ones, knowing they're spreading a little piece of sweet, homemade joy!       

 

>>Get Deborah's pizzicotti delle mandorle recipe here!<<

 

 

 

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When you think of Italian wines, your first thought may be northern Italy or Tuscany. But Emilia Aiello is on a mission to challenge that instinct and educate wine connoisseurs on the virtues of southern Italy. 

The Oakland, California, native cut her teeth in New York restaurants, serving as wine director and then leading the beverage program at Greenwich Village's Lupa Osteria Romana. Her interest in wine led her down a rabbit hole to working at a winery through a harvest season in Sicily's Mount Etna region and creating her own regional wine map. She wished to share her experience and introduce more people to the area, leading her to launch her own online wine retailer/educational resource, Cittavino & Co.

Emilia is Italian on both sides, but her passion for southern wines partially stems from her drive to reconnect with her Sicilian roots. Her paternal grandparents emigrated to Pittsburg, California, from Isola delle Femmine.

I spoke with Emilia about her background, life-altering experiences, and what motivated her to launch Cittavino. She also shared career advice for those wishing to pursue a similar path and what she hopes to provide through her wine education.

 

 

Tell us about your professional background.

My experience with wine initially was my experience in restaurants, and I don't see them as different, at least in the first part of my life. I never intended to be in restaurants or wine. Most people fall into it and find that they're good at it. Growing up in my Italian culture, however local it was, I naturally understood how things work in Italy. It gave me a one-up. I was also very curious. I was trying to dance in New York then and support myself with restaurants. I just found I liked learning about wine.

I started bartending. Also, my cousin owns a restaurant here in Oakland, and I started getting interested there, but it was just kind of an interest, not really a career option for me. Then as the restaurant industry does, it definitely sucked me in. One, it's very demanding, and two, it pays your bills.

I started venturing into southern Italy more because there was just less about it and less available, so I wanted to know more. I had already traveled to Italy in college. I took some time off school, which started my interest in the South, and it was just another opportunity to bring it somewhere and have some structure around it.

I took over the wine program at Lupa Osteria Romana. I made it my objective to organize southern Italy like we had organized northern Italy and have more representation.

I could only do so much. Not much was happening in the way of seminars or marketing campaigns. When a marketing campaign for an Italian region makes it to the United States, there's a lot of effort, organization, and money behind it. We're seeing more with Etna, but as a whole consorzio campaign, we're not really seeing it.

So, I started traveling to southern Italy, but specifically with wine as the objective, so I could learn more. I kept learning more. I felt there was space for that kind of information in the wine industry and maybe among consumers. And I did that for a couple of years while working at the restaurant. I worked a harvest, and when I left the restaurant, it happened simultaneously with COVID. I had a lot of time to think.

 

I have Italian citizenship, so I was able to get to Italy during peak pandemic, and I stayed stuck there working a harvest and thinking a lot. I now know what I do to be more niche than I realized. I thought there'd be a little bit more of an audience for it. Within New York and now California, there are two totally different wine consumers, but it started with the restaurant and having to go to the source to understand things. Nobody was coming to me to present me with information or classes or whatever. And while it's changing, I still find that to be true, especially when you look at credentials like master sommeliers and people with higher levels of certifications; nobody specializes in southern Italy—maybe Italy in general, but often it's northern or maybe Tuscany. It's still a bit of a hole.

 

Describe your wine harvesting experience.

That was my first harvest-time experience. I just needed to take a break from work and figure things out, and they let me go for a couple of months. 

When I first started being interested in wine, Mount Etna wines were really coming onto the market. So, I've been able to follow that trajectory. They really started gaining momentum around that time. There was a demand from people asking about them. I also wanted Lupa to be at the forefront, focusing on southern Italy.

 

So I had a bunch of wines, and we were talking about them as if we were talking about other more well-known regions like Barolo, but not really anybody knew what they were talking about. Even just the simplicity of needing to organize it on the wine list, I was like, "Wait a second, we're comparing these two regions, but I don't even know how to put these on the wine list."

People were asking me the difference between these sectors. I had no clue, and here I was supposed to be the professional. So, I went to Etna for my first harvest experience to learn more. And I ended up with Biondi and stayed with them for a few weeks. I just started my journey of being on the ground there and tasting wines with other producers. So, I was able to finally wrap my head around the location.

 

I met an expat who lives there and has become the Etna wine expert. He was also the first to really take an interest in the region in a more analytical or organized way, and we became friends. So, he has been a great resource to me as well.

 

I didn't quite realize how much I was gaining in the moment. I kept asking people about maps. I used to always do that: ask about maps of the region, and sometimes they would be able to give it to me, but in the Etna region, there was nothing to give. So when I went back to the United States, I thought, "Well, I'll do some research online." Nothing was coming up.

 

But that was my moment of being like, "Gosh, I learned so much in just three weeks of being there on the ground, and I get to tell my colleagues so much." I brought back a map of the geology, which everybody was very keen on looking at. I was like, "Interesting. This means something."

That started my trajectory of not just going back to Etna but also the way I approach it now, learning about other regions. I really like to work a harvest or best I can, even if it's not months' worth of time, get some kind of physical movement in there and then just get a little bit more of an inside view with the producer. It's helped me tremendously, not just to gain an understanding of the area but also to understand the human's connectedness to it, why people do what they do, and maybe why we're kind of obsessed with it from afar. So that was incredible. And it was kind of my first adventure into approaching wine that way.

 

What motivated you to start Cittavino?

Probably recognizing when I was working in the restaurant that wines were coming out of the market, but there was not representation in the same way. And then kind of asking myself questions about why and then wanting to find the answers why. So, going there to Italy and starting to talk to more people who actually live there and make wine.

 

I had already planned to take a break from the restaurant, and then the pandemic hit, and I was kind of everywhere. But I just knew that I needed to get back for a harvest because that's where things happened for me. This was also when I started questioning quite a bit.

We still are in this natural wine movement, but at the time it was a new conversation. It'd been a couple of years. We were all still kind of wrapping our heads around it, asking, "Do we like it? What is this?" And I remembered drinking some wines, particularly this one from Calabria, that, as I was reading about it, hit all the criteria of what a natural wine was, but it didn't tout itself as a natural wine. I was like, "What's going on here? I need to go to the source to understand what this is." So I intended to go to Calabria, and then, because of the pandemic, I just ended up spending four months in Calabria. 

It was just a reckoning of my personal life, things happening in my career, and then the pandemic, but I mulled it over a lot. When you're in it, you don't quite realize what you're in.

 

When I got back home, things started circulating quite quickly, and I thought this was valuable to me and may be valuable to others. From the professional side of things, having a lot more information to offer people, the map, and drawing from a consumer side of things, just trying to communicate that inside view people don't get. They could connect with it more because I found for myself how enriching it was to take that time with people, as well as working outside in the vineyards, and how it grounded me. And I was like, "Well, maybe that could be grounding for others, too."

 

We're especially obsessed with wine in place, but do we really know what that means? We're just kind of obsessed with checklists and soil types as if we really know. But we're missing pieces to make it a more rounded experience. I think that about a lot of things, not just wine.

 

I started thinking I could be a resource for southern Italy, a promoter for people who don't have the funds and the Italian system to promote what they do. And there are some really excellent wines that I taste from small producers. So I am working with what you would call more natural (but I also don't like using that term), a certain type of wine that I feel is most connected to the person and the place. And that is my platform; I really only sell a particular type of wine.

Maybe because I've been there and I had the experience, but drinking that type of wine makes me feel a different way than just drinking to drink. That was the whole basis. It's certainly evolved since then. I had a very specific idea of what it was going to be, and it's taken on its own journey for better or worse.

 

I don't know how sustainable it is, but I keep coming back to what keeps me in it: that connection with the people who are making this thing and how important it is to connect with those people. I see it now as a lifestyle because of the wines I end up liking and the people I connect with who have made it their lifestyle. 

Certainly, there's business and finances involved like anything, but for them, it's their entire way of life. Maybe it's just me feeling like I'd like to give back more of that connection to agriculture and that way of life that we've become disconnected from. But that's what keeps me in the game. One could do that with other products and things. I just happen to do it in southern Italy, where I feel most connected, where I started this journey, and where that connection really is for me, that more agrarian kind of lifestyle. 

 

What sets Cittavino apart from other online wine retailers?

The focus, for sure, and the reality is now that, with being so niche, for better or worse, I can represent a lot of one region. With Italy, things are so diverse, and so much is going on. I really like being able to offer that diversity of Lazio, for example. I mean, who has a huge selection of Laziale wines?

 

My platform isn't just about drinking wine. It's trying to engage people on all levels of it and be interested in it, in the person, and in the hope that I'm giving, again, a grounding experience through wine. I'm not sure if everybody's taking it that way, but that's what I'm trying to present. And with this product that I'm giving, there's so much more in it than just your alcohol and grapes; they're charged. It sounds woo-woo, but I really believe it. And I've taken a little bit more of a clear approach to why my palate likes these wines better. And yes, there's kind of a checklist I could go down, but I just keep finding that when people have an entire lifestyle built around what they do agriculturally, their wines taste better.

I keep trying to shoot out different means of getting people to be attracted to that for whatever reason. We're so disconnected, and as we continue to advance in the new age and technology, we're getting further and further away from that. The best way I can pull us back a bit is with wine—farmer wines.

 

What advice would you give someone looking to start a career in the wine industry, especially around less-represented regions?

This might be advice for anybody regardless of what they will do. Again, as I said, things are about money, and we live in a world that constantly shows us that. Especially as we get older, we need to weigh the finances, but there has to be a why greater than just trying to get in something niche, being a figure, and being reputable. There has to be something that connects you and grounds you to what you do beyond that, or else it will get really hard, really fast. And even when it does ground you, you're constantly thinking about the way out, or should I just give this up? You hit those really hard moments. And so what is your purpose beyond money, reputation, whatever? How are you connected to what you're doing in a more fundamental way? Ultimately, what's going to keep you showing up for it?

You are definitely going to have to do things you don't like in anything. At some point, a job is a job, so being able to reconcile a bit of that is not always just going to be fun and creative. The hustle shows up everywhere. So, for me, it's been important, and it changes sometimes, but it's just getting more profound as to why I am even doing this. Would I still do this? If the possibility of making money on it was zero, what parts would I give up, and what parts would I keep? In the wine industry, it feels very glamorous, especially to the outside, and people want to get into it because there are a lot of cool perks to it, but there are a lot of things that are hard as well. And yeah, making sure you're at least along for the journey. That might also be my advice for anybody just starting a business.

 

For underrepresented regions, you're going to have less support. You're going to be doing a lot on your own. Things just come up that you can never anticipate. There's a lot of confrontation of the self for me, especially being alone. I speak Italian, and I am Italian. Still, it's not my native language, and still, every time I go, there's this jolt of getting acclimated again and being in an unfamiliar area culturally, too. It's very clear to me that I'm American when I'm in southern Italy, even if I'm hanging out speaking Italian and speaking wine language and getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. Especially in the places where they are unknown, and you're trying to be a pioneer in them, there's a lot of shooting in the dark and figuring out what your support system is when you go off and do those things alone.

 

What experience do you hope to offer people through your wine education?

I want to open doors for people, and people are traveling a lot now, and wine helps as kind of opening a door. So curiosity, definitely passion, and vigor. If I am just thinking about doing an event, it's getting people energetic again about what they do. And it's not just about listing facts on things; it's bringing in this more rounded human experience. I want people to take away the human experience from whatever it is I do. And if I can transmit that experience just by sending you a bottle, cool. If it's with an event with me, if you're in the wine club, or whatever, it's about trying to create some connectedness between all of us. That would be the best takeaway if somebody felt more curious about what they're purchasing.

 

For me, learning about wine and being with these farmers has totally bled into me. It's now a lifestyle of "I want to go to the farmers market in my local area. I want to meet that person. I want to be curious about what they do and how they do it because that's the closest I'm going to get to my consumption." And we're really missing that in pretty much everything else that we consume or purchase. So, hopefully, they'll have that curiosity and want to connect more.

 

 

 

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Every family has a story. Sometimes, it starts with a name; other times, it begins with an ancestral home. Harder-to-reach family histories require a detective of sorts, someone who can comb through archives and map out complex lineages. 

Genealogist Stephanie Merlino has helped clients uncover Italian familial roots for more than three decades. It all started with her own quest to better understand her Sicilian heritage. This emotional journey led Stephanie to discover her gift for finding connections and decide she could help others.

 

"I'm almost like a savant when it comes to this," Stephanie says. "I can find any family anywhere. As long as the records are available to me, I will find them."

Stephanie and I recently discussed her path to genealogy, her unique approach, her favorite part of the job, and her goal with every genealogical report she produces.

 

What inspired you to become a genealogist?

About thirty-something-odd years ago, I realized that my family wasn't from the United States. I learned just by interviewing my family that we came from Sicily, from a small town—Valguarnera Caropepe—with a very rare surname—Interlicchia. So, I started to look at that surname and its different variations.

 

Back then, we didn't have email and all of this stuff, so I hand-wrote to each person I could find in the phone book in Argentina, Brazil, and Italy. So it just culminated in a process where I started interviewing my grandparents and their siblings, and all this information started flooding in. When I wrote to different people, more information came in. And I was able to connect them all into this gigantic tree of thousands and thousands and thousands of people. 

Once we got Facebook and everything like that, I started to contact some of these people, and I realized that one of my cousins, Vincenzo, still lived in the town we came from. So I went to visit, and he happened to own a bed and breakfast. I ended up staying there, and I would go back there every year for a long period of time. It just became a huge story, and I decided I wanted to help other people.

 

Valguarnera Caropepe photo by Stephanie Merlino

 

How do you approach tracing family lineages?

I start by sending my clients what's called a family and ancestor chart, and I will have them fill it out, and then I will start going backward. So I will start with the information that they gave me. Say they know that Giuseppe Conti was born in 1876 in Aci Trezza. I will go to those archives and pull that record out, and then I am like, "Aha! Now I've got the parents." And I do estimations. I'm saying, "I don't know if this is their first child, second child, or third child, but I'm going to estimate now. We've got their ages. We've got their occupations." So I estimate when they got married.

 

I start going in that direction but backward until I get to the end of the records. I don't just use the direct line. I'll pull out aunts, uncles, kids, everything. It gives you a broader picture than just your straight lineage. I'll even go so far as to find information on the boat your family came over on—where it was built, who built it, how long the journey took, and when your family landed. It all starts with getting as much information from the client as possible. And if they don't have a lot of information, I will go in and try to fill in the gaps. 

Valguarnera Caropepe photo by Stephanie Merlino

What's your favorite part of doing this work?

There's just something about the records; it's like they talk to me. Then there's the satisfaction of seeing the faces of the clients or when they email me, "I didn't realize you were going to go this deep or you were going to get this information."

 

 
Photo by Stephanie Merlino

What is your goal with the work you do?

The overall goal is just to connect people with where they're from. When the people in Italy and Sicily came here, they kept some traditions, but as the generations keep getting watered down, they forget about them. They forget about where they're from, and they forget about why they might act a certain way, why they have this certain tradition in their family that they've kept going, and why those things are so important to their father, their mother, or their grandparent. 

I'm trying to bring more awareness to the younger generations about where they're from because this is a wide world. And America is so far away from Europe and so separated from other places that people really forget. They don't understand the sacrifices their families made to come here and make a better life for them.

As you dive into the records and get into the crux of it all, it's almost like the records start talking to you. They're screaming, "Find me, remember me; I was here once before."

 

 

Family photo courtesy of Stephanie Merlino


 

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Named for their shape and often color resembling oranges, arancini (or arancine) are a classic Sicilian street food with origins dating back to 10th-century Arab rule. These deep-fried rice balls are typically coated with bread crumbs and filled with ragù, mozzarella, and peas, but the components vary regionally. The shape also varies: Whereas in Western Sicily, arancine appear as spheres, they are shaped conically to resemble Mount Etna in places like Catania and Messina. Even the name differs by locale. Eastern Sicilians refer to the individual balls as arancino (masculine), while arancina (feminine) is preferred in the West.

But one Palermo-based company, KePalle Arancine d'Autore, is mixing things up even further, offering menu items such as sweet arancine with Nutella, squid-ink risotto arancine stuffed with salmon, chicken curry arancine, and two vegan arancine options. 

I reached out to co-founder and co-owner Danilo Li Muli, the Palermo-based son of internationally renowned artist Gianni Li Muli and former art director at the advertising agency Gomez & Mortisia. Danilo, who started KePalle Arancine d'Autore with his wife, Eva Polanska, shared with me their inspiration, the process for creating new arancine, the arancina's role in culture, customer favorites, and what he hopes people will take away from experiencing their unique rice balls.

 

What prompted you to create KePalle and focus on reinterpreting traditional Sicilian street food?

Creativity and the desire to innovate. I am a creative by profession: I founded and managed an advertising agency for many years. Then, with my wife, we had this revolutionary idea: dedicating an entire restaurant to the Palermo arancina and offering new flavors (even for those who were previously excluded from tradition), expanding the menu with new gourmet, vegan and vegetarian recipes, and at the same time raising the quality of the product that was generally neglected commercially.

 

How do you develop new arancine flavors and recipes?

Quality is our secret. We choose only the best ingredients: Carnaroli rice, real saffron, Fior di Latte mozzarella, ham from the thigh, Sicilian meat, and seasonal vegetables. And to this, we provide a lot of attention, care, and passion in their preparation. Our arancine are prepared in the kitchen at the back of the shop throughout the day. In our shop, they are fried and served hot and crispy at any time of the day.

 

What role do arancine play in Sicilian cuisine and culture?

Arancina is the queen of Palermo street food. It is a popular and noble product. You can eat it every day as street food for a quick lunch or dinner, but in Palermo, it is also a great tradition to eat arancine for the Feast of Santa Lucia on December 13. December 13 is also KePalle's birthday. Double party for us! 

 

Which arancine flavors are favorites among your customers?

Our customers love all our arancini, probably because they are good! But the real plus is the quality. It is not for nothing that we have called them Arancine d'Autore. Our customers feel the difference and appreciate it.

 

If I really had to rank them, I would certainly put the Eat Parade, the traditional arancine with meat and butter, in first place. They would be followed by the arancine with mushrooms and vegetables loved by vegans and vegetarians and the gourmet ones: Rosalia, the arancine with squid-ink risotto and stuffed with salmon, and the Arancina stuffed with mortadella, buffalo mozzarella, and pistachio grains.

 

Tell us about your vegan arancine and how they compare to traditional ones.

It is important to us to be able to meet the needs of all our customers. Vegans and vegetarians are a very important category for us. We respect their ethics, and that is why we want the tradition of arancine to accommodate their tastes as well. We have several dedicated flavors on our menu, interpreting traditional and new recipes. The most popular are the arancina with mushrooms and porcini mushrooms (also loved by those who are not vegan because it is a real "walking" risotto) and the arancina with a vegetable sauce that interprets the classic meat arancina in a vegan way.

 

Can you share a memorable experience or story related to arancine?

The best memory I have of KePalle is certainly linked to the day of our tenth birthday, last December 13. On this occasion, we wanted the gift not to be destined for us but also for our city. For this reason, we organized a charity initiative, donating all proceeds of St. Lucia's Day (the most conspicuous of the year) to the pediatric hospital of Palermo to purchase important medical equipment for the rare diseases department. Doing good for others makes us feel good, and KePalle is always good for us.

 

How does KePalle preserve and promote Sicilian culinary heritage?

KePalle has revolutionized the tradition of arancini—not in a negative sense, but in a positive sense because we have contributed to enriching and carrying it forward. We have added new recipes that are now part of the city's culinary heritage, but above all, we have enhanced the authentic recipe of arancine.

 

KePalle offers a product of the highest level commercially, equal to what grandmothers and mothers prepare at home and comparable to that of a gourmet restaurant. We use authentic and high-quality products that other competitors did not use before and still do not use today: Carnaroli rice, real saffron, Fior di Latte mozzarella... We have revolutionized the arancini precisely because we have rediscovered it, bringing it to its maximum splendor.

 

What do you hope people experience with your arancine?

Those who come to the store to eat our arancine experience a unique, immersive experience that involves all 5 senses. The authentic location, the visual impact of the counter with the arancine, the scents that are released, the story of the product, and, finally, the wide variety of flavors and recipes. It is a feeling that cannot be described and that can only be experienced. All our customers know this, and you can feel it in their expressions when eating, as well as the satisfaction you can feel in their words and in the thousands and thousands of reviews they leave us.

 

 

 

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Quilting is not a traditional Sicilian craft, yet it's part of Sicilian American quilter Giuseppe Ribaudo's heritage. Threads tie him to Casteldaccia, Sicily, where both sets of his grandparents came from, and West Babylon, New York, where he grew up downstairs from his seamstress maternal grandmother. At the side of her machine, he was first exposed to needlework. He'd watch her sew and mend clothing while his parents worked at his father's restaurant. But he never saw garment sewing as his thing. It wasn't until college that Giuseppe again picked up the needle and embraced another type of sewing: quiltwork.

In all good quilts, each piece of fabric tells a story. But the stories have been a little different for Giuseppe (aka Giucy Giuce), with some tapping into the fantastic like his sci-fi series and others more lurid like his true-crime collection. And then there's his Nonna series, inspired by the decor of his grandmother's home, where he enjoys Sunday suppers to this day.

 

I recently spoke with Giuseppe, who shared more about his grandmother, influences, and unique spin on the craft. 

 

Tell us about your grandmother.

I always say my grandmother was the first feminist I ever knew, and I don't think she even realizes that she is one or was one. She worked at a clothing factory in Long Island. She was by far the most proficient of everybody who was there. 

How have your Sicilian roots influenced you?

My culture has taught me to be really creatively free. I learned a lot from my father, who is a chef. I learned how to cook from him. I've been cooking with him my whole life. I model a lot of how I approach my craft on how my father approaches cuisine. A love of food, a love of presentation, and a love of detail really influenced my work ethic. My father taught me at a really early age to think outside the box. I don't know where that really came from, but it's something that I feel was ingrained in me at a really young age. I could look at things through an American lens and a Sicilian lens at the same time, so I looked at things differently when I thought about how my family looked at them. 

 

Quantum by Giuseppe Ribaudo

 

Describe your first collection, Quantum.

It's a little weird, but it was like a math professor or science teacher who always longed to be an artist. The collection was what that professor would draw and doodle in his journal or sketchbook between grading papers and things like that. And it was like that for me, too. I had wanted to design for a while.

 

My relationship with the fabric company I was working for at the time began with me pitching a fabric collection to them, and then they hired me. I took the opportunity to soak in as much as I could, but I always had this thing in the back of my mind of what I wanted to be doing. And so that collection really began to mold what my aesthetic would end up being, what I liked, and what I was drawn to literally and figuratively in my designs.  

 

There was stuff inspired by DNA strands, and there's this one print called "Petri" that was supposed to be a graphic visual of different samples and Petri dishes and things like that. It was just very mathematical and geometric. I wanted to do line-drawing versions of these scientific ideas I had heard about and learned about throughout my life. 

It's very geometric, and the colors are very tonal. That's still very much part of my work and what I do. My fabrics are designed as tools for the quilts that I create. I'm always thinking of my color palette and adding colors to the broader palette of all of my fabrics.

 

Quantum fabrics by Giuseppe Ribaudo

How has your process evolved?

It's evolved quite a lot. I don't have any formal design training at all, so I'm constantly thinking of an idea and how to translate that. The thing that's been really fun for me as a designer is no two collections have ever been created in the same way because it's always just trying to come up with a creative way to be able to translate the image that I have in my head—whether it be a file on the computer or something hand drawn. I'm always trying to figure out creative ways of making it happen. I have a true-crime collection that I did a couple of years ago. It consists of all these random little elements that I drew and scanned. 

That's why it's continued to be an exciting job for me. I never go into a collection theme without any idea how I will create the end of the artwork. I daydream a lot. I don't sketch much; I write in a journal and list my ideas. So I'll have a theme for a collection, and if I have an image, I'll just write down a word that's descriptive of that image. And if every time I look at that word, that image comes back, then I feel like I'm onto something with it. I'm very cerebral about it, and then it's like, "The artwork is due in two weeks; it's time to actually get to work on the collection!"  And then I'll sit down and actually start working all out. Sometimes, it'll be half done by hand or half on the computer—whatever way gets the work done. But it's always different, which is really fun as a creative person because it always feels fresh. 

Declassified by Giuseppe Ribaudo

Some of your fabrics display text. Can you speak to that?

I do a lot of writing, and I love words and text. People love text prints, so I do a lot of those. I have a collection called Declassified, which is about the government conspiracy to cover up the existence of extraterrestrials. That collection has documents and written testimonials that I synthesized from lots of reading about alien encounters. I wrote them all out, turned them into my own versions of their stories, and then redacted a bunch of information.    

 

Giuseppe Ribaudo's true-crime series, The Gnarls Hollow Trilogy

You enjoy taking people along on your explorations and research.

For sure. I always try to reveal a little bit more about myself as a person outside of the quilting world with each collection. I've done collections before where it was like, "I'm going to do this because it feels like it will be a home run. It feels like people will want it." And those never perform as well as those that really feel like they're authentically something I actually care about and am interested in. For example, the alien one is something I've always been super interested in, and I have stories of encounters. Sci-fi has always been a big inspiration for me, as has true crime. I've always been kind of morbid. I'm a relatively cheerful person, but I've always had this dark bent on what interests me. We have all these different sides to ourselves. 

 

 
Giuseppe Ribaudo's Nonna

Tell us about your Nonna collection.

It was my most personal collection, and it's also my most successful collection. Every element was so specific and personal, and every element had a story behind it. From that collection, I learned that if you have the impulse and the instinct to be personal and make it specific, you should go for it because people will be receptive to that. 

 

That collection also hit at the right time—during the pandemic. A lot of people were feeling really nostalgic for better days. I had also moved to Maine (I'm now back in New York), and I hadn't seen my grandmother in seven or eight months. I'm a good Sicilian boy who goes to my grandmother's house every Sunday for dinner. So it was really, really hard to be away from my grandma for that long.

At that time, you had to be careful about who you were exposed to, and you were getting tested before you went to people's houses. We packed up the apartment, and I knew I couldn't move to Maine without saying goodbye to my grandmother. So we got our tests again.

We went to see my grandmother, and we were having dessert. My grandmother had these beautiful dessert plates, and when she pulled them out, you knew that we were having something special for dessert. So she pulled out these plates, and I was looking at them. I've always loved them. They have this beautiful little cluster of flowers.

I was like, "I would just love to have something like this on fabric. I would just sew with this all day long." Then I turned around and looked at my grandmother's couch with its floral design on it. I thought, "I wonder if there's a fabric collection here."

It hit at exactly the right time. It was what I needed to work on when I left New York. It felt like I was still tethered to home in that way, especially during such a hard time. So, I had the print for the main floral, and the dessert plate turned into its own print. There were these little clusters of flowers that turned into their own print. My grandmother has this huge piece of furniture, a big radio record player thing, and the speakers are lined with this beautiful green and yellow tweed. So, the tweed turned into a print from the collection. 

I blended these very personal, specific things from her house. The idea was mashing up my grandmother's aesthetic with my aesthetic. I wanted it to feel very traditional, but I wanted to bring it into the 21st century and make it feel very now. So, I combined my grandmother's florals and very traditional designs with my geometric symmetrical sorts of things. And it's up there in the best work I've done. 

I remember the first time I showed it to her. I had talked to her ad nauseum about this collection, and I didn't realize that the whole time I was talking to her about the collection, she was designing a collection in her mind. I told her, "I used your plate to design this. I used your couch to do this." So, in her head, she was picturing what that fabric looked like. And so I remember when I actually showed her the fabric, she had this look on her face: What the hell is this? Because it was not what she had envisioned. She thought it was going to be the soft pinks in her house and the creams and all this, but it was bright yellow and navy blue. It was my colors. She was really confused. Then I laid it all out and showed her the quilts that went with it, and now, she really gets it.  

 

Giuseppe Ribaudo's Winding Ways

What do you hope people take from your work?

I try really, really hard to do something different, make it my own, and make stuff for people who may not want to work with a painterly floral all the time. There's space in my industry for the people who are sci-fi geeks and for those who like geometric stuff more than they like flowers and things like that.

 

I'm not breaking new ground. I'm taking the same things that have been there before, but playing with them a different way. So they're text prints, but instead of just being regular text, there's the weird alien sci-fi side to it. They look different than what you're used to. 

I'm very fortunate that I have fabric in shops in Australia, Norway, and all of these places. I take that responsibility really seriously, and I really hope that people see that. I try to push it further. I try to make it so that you're getting something new and different because I'm different.

And so if I was just trying to do more of the same, I don't think I'd still be doing this. Because in the most authentic collections, those are the ones where I've really found the most success. And so I hope that people see that I am trying to do my own thing and that I hope that that inspires other people to do their own thing. We don't have to do everything the way it's always been done.  

Giuseppe Ribaudo with Basement

 

 

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There is much dispute over the origins of almonds. Some say the fruit tree first grew in Central Asia between Iraq, Iran, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Kurdistan or in eastern Asia between Uzbekistan and Mongolia. Others cite botanical and archaeological evidence to point to West Asia, particularly the Levant region. Wherever the almond originated, it clearly spread to the shores of the Mediterranean into northern Africa and southern Europe, including Italy. 

One almond in particular, the Avola almond of Sicily, is highly regarded for its applications in pastry-making and was traditionally sugared for use in wedding confetti. Darker, thinner, and stronger tasting than a California almond, it comes in four varieties: Pizzuta, Fascionello, and Romana or Corrente d'Avola.

 

Sally Giannetti, owner of Florence-based Giannetti Artisans, carries Pizzuta almonds, named for their pointed and sharp profile. She took time out to share more about this unique variety.

 

 

Tell us about Giannetti Artisans and how you got started.

I'm originally from Chicago, where I was born and raised. My parents are both Italian, and they were born in Italy. They emigrated to Chicago about 50 years ago.

My mom always brought me back to Italy when I was a kid because my grandparents were here. So, aside from my family in the United States, I was exposed to the country, the traditions, and the culinary "habits." I grew up speaking Italian in my house. It was my first language. 

I hated coming to Italy when I was younger, but then I started college and majored in international business and Italian. My university offered study abroad programs in Florence. It was required that I do at least one study abroad program in a four-year term. 

So, I came to Florence, fell in love, and said I'd move to Florence after I graduated college, and that's what happened.

After several years of working various sales jobs and making a lot of money for others, I wanted to start my own business and make some money for myself! After giving a business plan a lot of thought, I like the idea of somehow connecting the two countries together: my family origins and my place of birth. I thought food was a great way to do that, and I said, "You know what? In the United States, there isn't real gourmet Italian food. A lot of the products that are on the shelves out there are made in the United States with an Italian flag label on them, and they really aren't Italian." So, I said, "I want to start importing true Italian food."

I created my own label and logo. I started from zero. I was not in this business or this industry. I started online, and I created my website. Then, I was selling on Amazon, which I still do, and it grew slowly. 

I started sourcing from different regions in Italy, and I was very picky about choosing the small artisans. I don't buy any products on the grocery shelves here. I look for small- to medium-sized companies that make small-batch products, and that's what is in my product line. It's all Italian. Nothing is made elsewhere. The ingredients are all 100% Italian.

 

What are Avola almonds?

Avola is where they make wine, so it's a very arid territory. It's near Syracuse, and it's a small town located inland but close to the coastline. There is a huge concentration of almond trees. The particular characteristic of the almonds grown in this area is the fact that they blossom in January. This is because this particular area is a microclimate protected by the mountains and the Mediterranean Sea that keeps the temperature mild-mannered. The soil is extremely dry making the almond production environmentally sustainable since almonds do not need a large quantity of water. A special variety called the "Pizzuta" contains a higher quantity of healthy fat, making it an important protagonist of many nutritional values. It is also famous because years ago, it was used to make the confetti for Italian weddings due to its delicious flavor and physical traits since it has a long and thin oval shape to it. 

The Avola almond (unlike the California almond, which contains a lesser quantity of oils and tends to taste rather bland) contains a high concentration of oils. 

 

How else do Avola almonds differ from California almonds?

Obviously, the quantity makes the difference, even in price, because California almonds are easier to get and have a higher production quantity. California almonds are used more for mass production, whereas Avola varieties are used more specifically for making pastries and small-batch products.

 

The taste is very strong, whereas with a Californian almond, it is a bit more bland. It certainly doesn't leave you with that nutty flavor that the Sicilian one does. Some people don't like it because they're used to a more gentle-flavored almond. 

 

 
Sicilian almond granita

How is the Avola almond used?

In Italy, they use it to make pastries. There's a drink that is made during the summer, chilled almond milk, and it's made at the bar. Or they make a granita using Sicilian almonds and adding sugar to it. Sometimes, they toast the almonds; sometimes, they don't, depending on what it is used for. The more you toast them, the stronger the flavor is. They use it to make marzipan and gelato.

 

Fruit-shaped marzipan (frutta martorana) on display in Acireale 

What do you hope people appreciate about Avola almonds?

I think the taste—they have a very distinct flavor. Like I said, not everyone likes them if they're used to a bland-tasting almond.

This is the reason why I started this business. If you purchase chestnut flour from a grocery store anywhere in the United States, it won't have the same taste as the chestnut flour that I sell, for example.

What is done in processed foods with these large mass-production companies is that they don't dry or roast the fruits on wood embers but rather in huge industrial ovens. Nuts are dried in these ovens for 8 or 10 hours rather than on wood embers for 40-plus days. The processing method makes the difference. Large multinational companies need to cut their costs and produce high quantities. It makes the product cheaper and perhaps of lesser quality, but it also takes away the authentic taste of that nut or fruit.

 

If you taste some of my chestnut flour, it has a strong smoky taste as opposed to flour purchased off the grocery store shelf that tastes just like plain flour! A lot of people's palates are not accustomed to such a different flavor because most food in the United States has a standardized production method, making everything taste just about the same. 

 

The same rule applies to almonds. If you're used to eating processed foods, your palate becomes accustomed to those limited flavors; when you taste a Sicilian almond, it's strong, nutty, and just delicious. 

 

Hopefully, people will appreciate something different from their palate's "comfort zone." Those who have been exposed to authentic Italian goods will know what they're looking for, which is exactly what my business is all about.

 

 

 

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Driven by a goal of bringing Sicily's flavors and traditions to every table, Salvatore Pluchino left a career in aerospace to launch Seligo, a Brooklyn-based Sicilian food brand. Specializing in Sicilian-crafted extra virgin olive oil and unrefined pasta and chocolate, he also collaborates with gourmet shops across the U.S. to organize what he calls "pasta-making parties." The majority of these are held in New York's Catskills region. Also in the works: food and wine tours in Sicily.

"Seligo was the answer to my need to stay connected with Sicily and to share the incredible richness of Sicilian culture with others," says Salvatore.

Salvatore shared how he got started, what inspired his unrefined, traditional approach, what goes into product selection, his focus on sustainable sourcing, his plans for the future, and more.

 

 

What is your connection to Sicily?

Sicily is home and family. I am Sicilian. I was born there and spent most of my life there, and I go back whenever possible, always trying to savor different seasons. At some point, I quit my career in aerospace engineering to build a brand that would talk about Sicily and my roots. Everything I do in my life ultimately brings me back to Sicily. It's a bond so strong that it's difficult to explain in a few words, even though I now have a second home and life in New York. I always like to compare Sicily to a benevolent mermaid that attracts me, and I reject it once I get too close. When people ask about my origin, I reply that I'm Sicilian, and people often point out that I say this instead of simply saying I'm Italian. Their curiosity about the clear distinction I always point out has made me reflect deeply on my identity.

 

What inspired you to start Seligo and focus on unrefined, traditional Sicilian foods?

At a certain point in my life, I realized that food was the most effective way to share my vision of Sicily beyond its borders. Starting a brand like Seligo also made me extremely happy and helped me stay loyal to my principles. Culinary traditions are the pillars of the Sicilian lifestyle, and every aspect of life revolves around the family table.

 

The concept of unrefined food emerged when I was immersed in New York's innovative food culture. I was surrounded by many food entrepreneurs who wanted to create something new and revolutionary because there was a sense of betrayal in the food industry in general. My intuition was suggesting that I had to walk on a different path, almost opposite. In that context, I began by looking back on Sicilian gastronomic history and traditional products. 

Unrefined food sounds like an innovation, but in reality, it's just a treasure from our past. At that time, I was lucky enough to find amazing people in Sicily who were already pointing in that direction, making artisanal food products that I started to call "unrefined" because they respect certain criteria. They are not processed but rather gently transformed or minimally processed.

 

 Seligo's unrefined pasta

How do you select the specific ingredients and products featured on Seligo?

Everything starts with meeting the right people—producers committed to their work and prioritizing quality above all else. The meaning of quality is often confusing, but it becomes clear when producers eagerly show the origin of their raw ingredients, especially when they're involved in producing those ingredients themselves. Another key indicator is their knowledge of how their products will affect consumers' health. In that context, it's easy to team up with them and change some details to make a product even more unique and palatable, but always unrefined and traditional. For example, the choice of making the unrefined heirloom Sicilian chocolate in cubes instead of bars was a winning one. The grainy texture and roughness of the bar were making people skeptical. The cube, instead, made the product easier to approach, appreciate, and fun to eat.

 

 

Seligo chocolate cubes

What are the sustainable practices you employ in sourcing and producing products?

Since our inception, I've focused on sustainable practices, beginning by observing and learning from farmers, artisanal cheesemakers, and fishermen who consistently prioritize local, seasonal, and eco-friendly practices. They are the pillars of the Sicilian local food culture, and in some cases, they don't even realize they're following sustainable practices; they're simply following traditional methods in which the customer's appreciation and well-being take precedence over profit.

 

Sicilian food culture helps preserve the region's natural resources and distinctive culinary identity. With Seligo, I'm just following a path that started hundreds of years ago, and I'm learning to preserve more than innovate. Of course, there are products like extra virgin olive oil, whose quality has increased dramatically in the last decade thanks to technological innovations. In that case, brave producers have made huge investments, which has been a game-changer for the small artisanal productions, especially in the southeastern part of Sicily, where Seligo's extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) is made.

 

Seligo 100% Extra Virgin Olive Oil

What distinguishes your unrefined chocolate, pasta, and extra virgin olive oil from similar products on the market?

The answer lies in the word "unrefined." This explanation may be somewhat technical, but understanding these details is crucial for making informed choices about the food we decide to eat. 

As I mentioned, in New York, I was surrounded by numerous new food brands whose common priority was manipulating and mixing ingredients, mostly plant extracts, to create something new when, in most cases, nature has already created everything we need. 

For our heirloom pasta, the innovation was actually returning to the time when flour was simply made with ground wheat kernels, and nothing was removed. There was no bleaching and no GMO manipulation of the plants to change the gluten composition. Similarly, with our chocolate, there's no need for refining processes like tempering or additions to stabilize the product. Actually, what the industry has done was to deprive chocolate of an incredible quantity of nutrients that made cacao in the past a superfood. So, I'm giving back to Seligo's heirloom pasta and the unrefined chocolate the name they deserve. They are natural superfoods.

EVOO is somehow a special case. Because it is the ultimate unrefined product: juice extracted from olives at a very low temperature, in which the water has been removed. It's essentially a healthy potion with powerful nutrients concentrated in just a few tablespoons per day. EVOO must be protected from UV light and oxygen, so technological advancement and investment are very important.

 

How do the products offered by Seligo reflect Sicily's cultural and culinary traditions?

Sicilian cuisine is, above all, simple but the result of a complex and long evolution. Few people know Sicily's history as part of powerful kingdoms and empires that shaped the incredible depth of Sicilian culinary culture. Kings demanded that sophisticated cuisine be made with refined ingredients. From there, the common people developed their own humble recipes, often substituting meat with fried vegetables. It's a mixture of recipes originally created for royalty but perfected by the people for the people. In a way, Sicilian people have always found their freedom through food.

 

Salvatore Pluchino prepares pasta for Seligo event guests.
Photo by Joann Arruda.

How do you engage with local communities?

In the past 5 years, I've collaborated on events with wonderful gourmet shops that carry my products. They are scattered all over the U.S., but the majority of them are in New York State, mostly in the Catskills region. There's a strong sense of community there, and these establishments are becoming nodes in a larger network. People rely on them to find local products and trustworthy producers. I've started organizing intimate culinary events to demonstrate simplicity is key to a healthy lifestyle.

 

What are your future plans?

First, we're expanding our product selection. While this could be done quickly, we're taking our time to maintain quality standards. Second, we're developing food and wine tours in Sicily for small groups to showcase aspects that others haven't been able to reveal. I admire people from around the world who show interest in Sicily; we need this attention to promote our resources and boost our small economy. However, it takes a lifetime to understand Sicily and its people, and even then, one might fail to fully recognize the beauty and richness of the culture. I've taken the risk of failing, but I'm committed to this journey of living Sicilian authenticity and sharing it with others. A big help in this direction will come from my brother, who has been successfully promoting a slower way to visit and experience Sicily through bike tourism. In collaboration with his business, Sicily Bike Routes, we will start offering tours in 2025.

 

Seligo hosts food events in New York's Catskills region and beyond.

What experience do you hope customers and event attendees will take away?

I hope people will understand that daily cooking isn't something to delegate to others. It's the first act of self-love, beginning with the knowledge of proper ingredients. We can't rely solely on

the food industry, as it's primarily driven by profit. I know that may offend someone, but in the majority of cases, that is the truth. We must learn to connect with local farmers and artisanal makers, ask them questions, and learn from their perseverance and honesty, especially when the food industry pushes them toward different practices for profit's sake. As we say in Italy, "We have to put our hands in the dough" and make our own food. Through all of Seligo's initiatives, I'm humbly showing people that cooking can be fun and a great way to build new, long-lasting memories, which may be the most important in our lives.

 

 

 

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December was a busy month in the kitchen as my mother baked her way through all of her Sicilian cookie specialties. Come Christmas, we'd wrap up our finished batches and bring them to my aunt and uncle's home, where they'd be added to a nearly overflowing tray of classic holiday Sicilian confections.

 

One of the prettiest among these was the pizzelle, a thin and delicate waffle cookie dusted in powdered sugar and made with a hint of anise extract.

 

Produced in the Abruzzo region of Italy since the 15th century, this cookie, alternatively known as ferratelle, nevole, or catarrette, is also enjoyed in Sicily. The region, historically known as Abruzzi, was, after all, once part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, so it's no wonder there are shared recipes.

 

I recently stumbled on Maria Vannelli's blog, She Loves Biscotti, where I found a pizzelle recipe. Maria's recipe looks just like the cookie I remember, but with a twist: it's plant-based. The Montreal-based dietician and content creator developed this vegan recipe for her daughter so that she, too, could enjoy Christmas cookies.

 

Maria shared her background, her favorite Italian Christmas memories, and the special significance of this recipe. Among her recipe development goals is making recipes more accessible so everyone can share holiday traditions through food.

 

 

Tell us about your background.

I was born in Montreal, Canada. My dad was born in Ripabottoni, Campobasso, in the Molise region of Italy, while my mom hails from Molinara, Benevento, in the Campania region. Both emigrated to Montreal, Canada, in the early 1950s, where they met, married, and raised a family. My dad owned an Italian grocery store, and my mom was a homemaker, which fueled my fascination with food and ultimately led me to become a dietitian. As the eldest of three, I grew up speaking Italian and had the privilege of living with my paternal grandparents, which deepened my connection to my Italian heritage.

 

What kinds of foods and recipes left a lasting impression?

I have countless "food memories" tied to family gatherings, making it challenging to pinpoint my favorites. Sunday lunches were particularly special, always filled with love, laughter, and a sprinkle of family drama, with homemade cavatelli as a staple that beautifully represented my nonna's Italian traditions. It is still my favorite pasta to this day.

The excitement and preparations for holidays like Easter and Christmas also left a lasting impression, with an abundance of mouthwatering food prepared from scratch! Whether it was my mom's lasagna or her homemade cannelloni, every dish was a labor of love.

Living with my grandparents meant our home was always open and inviting to extended family and friends. At least once a week, I would come home from school to find a great aunt or uncle visiting. This often meant a delightful spread of biscotti and Italian cookies—an amazing after-school snack and probably where my obsession with Italian cookies began.

 

Did your family bake Italian cookies for Christmas?

Yes, my mom and nonna baked a variety of Italian cookies for Christmas! Some of my favorites include almond biscotti, struffoli, chiacchiere, pizzelle, and mostaccioli, Christmas Eve fritters, and chestnut cookies, also known as calzoni di castagne. Each cookie brought its unique flavors and textures to our holiday celebrations. My mom would also make beautiful Christmas baskets filled with these cookies to share with family and friends.

 

Do you have any special memories attached to Italian Christmas foods?

Absolutely, I have so many special memories attached to Italian Christmas foods! One of my favorites is the time spent in the kitchen "baking" with my mom and nonna, especially when they would make pizzelle. They made ferratelle one at a time with a stovetop pizzelle press with long handles. 

 

Watching them work their magic was such a joy, and I can vividly remember eating the pizzelle faster than they could make them! Those moments were filled with laughter and the delightful aroma of these freshly baked treats, creating memories I'll always cherish.

 

Did your family observe Italian Christmas traditions?

Yes, my family certainly embraced Italian Christmas traditions. In the days leading up to Christmas Day, the kitchen was a lively hub of activity, with my mom and nonna bustling about, baking and making homemade pasta as they prepared for the big meal.

On Christmas Day, we would begin by attending Mass, which set a meaningful tone for the festivities. Afterward, the final touches for our festive meal would continue, with everyone pitching in to ensure everything was just right. Once the main meal was served and enjoyed, we waited for more of the extended family to visit. While we waited, there was always a spirited game of Scopa, adding to the day's excitement. Finally, we would indulge in homemade desserts and fruit platters.

These family traditions on Christmas Day created lasting memories for me. Although many loved ones, including my mom and dad, are no longer with us, we continue to cherish those wonderful memories as we celebrate with my brother, sister, and their families.

Being the eldest, my family now hosts Christmas, and I take great pride in continuing the traditions by making some of the traditional foods my mom and nonna would prepare. It's a way to honor their legacy and keep our family heritage alive. 

Inevitably, as we gather around the table, a story is shared—whether it's a food memory of past celebrations or a humorous anecdote from our family history. These stories add warmth and connection to our celebrations, reminding us of the love and joy that has always been at the heart of our Christmas gatherings. 

For the younger ones, these "stories" serve as a bridge to their heritage, connecting them to their great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents they never had the chance to meet. It's a beautiful way to keep our family history alive and instill a sense of belonging in each generation.

 

Mara cools her pizzelle on a rack to ensure they stay crisp.

 

Tell us about your pizzelle recipe. How is it similar or different from the traditional recipe?

My daughter's journey into veganism inspired my vegan pizzelle recipe. I wanted her to continue enjoying one of her favorite Italian cookies, so I adapted my nonna's traditional recipe.

Seeing her joy when she tasted these vegan pizzelles for the first time was such a heartwarming moment! This recipe combines my family's traditions and her dietary choices. After some experimentation, I found that using flaxseed creates a batter with just the right consistency, giving the pizzelles a wonderfully crisp texture without any vegan butter.

The intricate patterns that pizzelles are known for come out beautifully in this vegan version, thanks to a well-heated pizzelle press. These vegan pizzelles keep our Italian traditions alive while being perfect for plant-based diets, making it easy to enjoy this cookie together!

 

Does this recipe have special significance to you?

These vegan pizzelles hold special significance for me because they help keep our Italian family recipes alive while being perfect for plant-based diets. It means so much to enjoy this beloved cookie together as a family!

Christmas is a time for baking special cookies and treats, and pizzelles are classic Italian waffle cookies that many families make during the holiday season. By adapting this recipe, I can honor our family's culinary heritage while ensuring that everyone can partake in the joy of baking and sharing these delicious cookies. It's a wonderful way to connect with our traditions and create new memories together!

 

What is your goal when developing recipes like this?

With my pizzelle recipe, I hope at-home bakers will see that it's possible to honor tradition while accommodating different dietary needs. I want them to feel inspired to get creative in the kitchen and adapt cherished recipes to fit their lifestyles, just like I did for my daughter.

My goal in developing recipes like this is to bring people together through food, making it accessible and enjoyable for everyone. Cooking and baking should be a joyful experience filled with love and connection. By sharing this vegan pizzelle recipe, I hope to encourage others to create their own special moments and memories around the table, celebrating both tradition and creativity!

  

Maria Vannelli aka @SheLovesBiscotti

>>Get Maria's recipe for vegan pizzelle cookies here!<<

 

 

 

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I was just a little girl the first time my nonna pulled out a deck of cards to show me how to play a game called Scopa. We'd visit every Sunday, so I could always look forward to another after-supper game. Memories of playing it inspired a few scenes in my first novel. 

The game's name comes from the Italian word for broom, as the winner gets to sweep all the cards from the table. And unlike a standard deck, these are slightly reminiscent of the tarot with 40 cards, divided into four suits: denari (coins), coppe (cups), spade (swords), and bastoni (clubs).

Cards display values between one and seven with four face cards rounding out eight through ten: fante (the knave), which is worth a value of eight; cavallo (the knight) in the Neapolitan-type deck or donna (the queen) in the Milanese-type deck, which are both worth nine; and re (the king), which is worth ten.

Many of these decks, which vary regionally, are richly illustrated and have become collector items. I recently had a chance to see several styles shared by Toronto-based Tony Costa, who took time out with Joseph Cafiso of Woodbridge, Ontario, for a discussion on all things Scopa.

Both are members of Toronto-based Villa Charities, an organization dedicated to enriching lives through experiences and services that honor Italian culture and heritage. Tony serves as vice chair, and Joseph is a member of the Cultural Advisory Group. Both men are Italian-born. Tony emigrated with his parents as a young boy from Calabria, while Joseph came from Ragusa, Sicily. They shared the game's objective with me and how it ties them to their Italian identities.

 

 

How did you start playing Scopa?

Tony: Card playing was part of what my family did when my friends and relatives would visit. It was done mostly in the wintertime, and it wasn't really done throughout the summer because the summer had other activities. Throughout my adolescence, we would play; I only started playing poker and all the other stuff later in life.

But I grew up with Scopa, Briscola, and Tresette. People played for beverages. Whoever won the game would get a glass of wine, for instance, or a bottle of beer. Some people would never win and weren't even allowed to drink water. That was part of the game. You had to win to drink something. So that's how I grew up with it.

Italian cards are similar but yet distinct by region. You can travel throughout Italy and find different types of cards. I've collected 10 regional versions. When I met my wife and started going to her place, for instance, my late father-in-law used to play with the Milanese ones, so I had to learn those cards when we started playing. When I was traveling fairly often, whenever I saw a new set that I hadn't seen, I would purchase it for my collection.

Joseph: I was in my early teens when I learned with my grandparents. We used to have a farm that we'd go to in the summer, and we spent the evening playing by the moonlight in the early '60s.

Later, I played with my friends. I don't play it as often anymore, but it's interesting how I have two boys, and my boys know how to play it, even though they were born and raised in Canada. They played with their friends at school.

I used to be a teacher, and at this particular school, about 20% of the student population was of Italian origin, so we organized Scopa tournaments. I was amazed by the number of people who loved to play, and they used to play just for fun.

Now, if I play, it will be with my peers. We play it at Christmas time, usually when we get together to play Tombola, the Italian version of Bingo, and other card games.

 

What is the objective of the game?

Tony: Basically, you're going for four points. The way you do that is everybody gets three cards, and four cards are put on the table. If you have a card like the four, and there's a four on the table, you can take that card. Once you get through the three cards, you take another three. Or you can do combinations; in other words, if there's a two and a four on the table and you have a six, you can take your six and pick up the two and the four together.

If there happens to be only one card left on the table and you happen to have that card, let's say there's a four on the table and you have a four in your hand, you can take the four, and that becomes a Scopa. That's a point in and of itself. And hence the name of the game, Scopa.

You're trying to accumulate as many of the denari as possible because one of the points goes to the individual who accumulates most of these denari cards. That's one. The second thing you want to do is try to get the seven of denari, which is a point in and of itself. So whoever accumulates that seven gets a second point. The third point goes to the one who has the most cards picked up. The fourth point is something they call a primera, a combination of four cards with an inherent value to each card. You have to put together your four highest cards, one of each suit. You can't have more than one of each suit. And whoever has the highest value in those four cards gets the fourth point.

I've seen some games where you get five or six plus your four points, and the game doesn't last very long because it's up to 11 points.

Joseph: Some people play to 11. I've known people who play up to 15. For some reason, it has to be an odd number.

 

How does Scopa connect you to your culture?

Joseph: It started as part of family recreation, a way to get together and stay together. Nowadays, we have so-called family games, whether it's Monopoly or Risk or other games, and you still have Checkers and so on. Playing cards goes back centuries. But for me personally, it's just a way of being together with friends and family and having a good time because when you play, you also talk about all kinds of things. You talk about food, the weather, and relations. I mean, you joke around, you tease one another. It's a way to connect, be together, and strengthen bonds between friends and family.

Tony: Once in a while, I'll take out the cards. I have three daughters, three sons-in-law, and a bunch of grandkids. My daughters and I have played since they were little, but now I've introduced it to my non-Italian sons-in-law, who enjoy it. And some of my grandchildren are also starting to play it. So it's a way of keeping our culture—one small thing within our culture, but it's an important one, similar to our food. This is one of our pastimes.

 

What advice would you give someone new to the game?

Tony: Enjoy its simplicity because it isn't a very difficult game to play. We had a get-together at Villa Colombo, where some people had never even seen a deck of cards of this nature. Within one session, they understood the game, and they were able to participate. Now, mind you, they needed some help, but by the time that second and third evening came, they needed no more lessons; they were squaring off with the best of us who had played before. So enjoy it as an opportunity to be with other people. Don't take it seriously.

Scopa is a good beginner's game; you can pass hours and hours. People gravitate to this because it doesn't require money. It doesn't require you to buy expensive equipment. You just need a deck of cards. You have hours and hours of fun for a couple of bucks in a day.

Joseph: It's a social game, and it has that way of putting people together, especially for people who live alone or don't have family or too many friends. It is a great way to meet people. And without any pressure, financial or otherwise, you can have a good time and have a few laughs. 

 

 

 

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Looking for a healthier take on a Sicilian cookie classic? Consider this vegan version of cuccidati from Christina Pirello of PBS's Christina Cooks: Back to the Cutting Board. Christina uses olive oil and coconut sugar to replicate traditional shortbread. The result? A guilt-free holiday indulgence to add to your dessert platter. 

 

Christina, who celebrates her birthday on December 22, has fond memories of her mother and nonna baking cuccidati and other Christmas cookies starting the day after Thanksgiving. She shared with me the secret to her twist on tradition, what this cookie means to her, essential Sicilian baking ingredients, and her goal with recipe development. 

 

Describe your cuccidati recipe. How is it different from the traditional recipe?

I love this recipe. It's different in that it's vegan. The original dough is made with eggs and butter to create a shortbread-like dough, whereas mine is made with olive oil and coconut sugar to achieve a tender dough that you can roll. And I don't decorate them with sprinkles, so I guess I break all the rules.

 

Does this recipe have special significance to you?

My whole family loved figs. My nonno had a fig tree that was so abundant that we could not use them fast enough. My husband and I love figs as well, so this is a lovely way to honor my nonno and still make a sweet and healthy dessert.

  

What are the essential ingredients for baking Italian or Sicilian, specifically?

Good flour (in my case, sprouted whole wheat, but in Italy, I use farro flour), extra virgin olive oil, pine nuts, hazelnuts, almond and vanilla extract, and orange water.

 

What is your goal when developing recipes like this?

My goal for baking is the same as my goal for cooking. I want people to think differently about food. I want people to discover the true joy of cooking for themselves and creating dishes that their loved ones can't wait to eat. And most importantly, helping people realize that cooking is simple and easy when you use fresh ingredients. Nothing beats home cooking.

 

With baking, I hope people see how easy it is to create deserts that nourish us, satisfy our sweet tooth, and don't steal our wellness.

 

>>Get Christina's cuccidati recipe here!<<

 

 

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The time has come: the season for baking holiday cookies! If you're looking for a uniquely Sicilian cookie recipe, consider the cuccidati. Also spelled cucidati and sometimes called buccellati, these gooey, chewy cookies are a favorite this time of year and tend to appear on St. Joseph Day altars. Reflecting the Arab influence on Sicily's foods and culture, they are typically filled with dried figs, nuts, and citrus. Their pastry-dough exterior is often covered in icing and topped with rainbow sprinkles for a colorful pop to Italian cookie platters. 

To learn more about making cuccidati, I reached out to Dave Costanza, who won first place in November's twelfth annual Cucidati Contest. The event, organized by the Sons & Daughters of Italy, C. Colombo Lodge 1315, in Pittsburg, California, raises funds for scholarships. Using a blind taste test, judges rate cookies on appearance, texture, filling, and dough. 

While Dave has entered a handful of times, this was his first top-prize win. The Antioch, California, resident was born in Pittsburg, where his Sicilian grandparents emigrated from Isola delle Femmine in the Palermo Province. 

Dave took time from his busy holiday cookie and ravioli preparation to discuss his award-winning recipe and technique with me. We were joined by Zelda LeFrak-Belleci, who not only serves as the chairman of the Cucidati Contest judging committee but also teaches how to bake the classic cookies.

 

 

How did you start making cuccidati?

Dave: I have a cousin who was a cook in the army. One day, I met him at a funeral, and we got to talking. He took me to his house and showed me how to make cuccidati. From there, I put my personal touch on the recipe. 

 

Zelda: You have to learn from somebody; like when I married into the family, my mother-in-law taught me in her kitchen how to do cuccidati. And she brought me over to show me how to make ravioli. That's how it's done.

 

I decided I would have a cuccidati cooking class. So, for the past three contests, I've offered a cooking class in my kitchen a month ahead of time.

 

What are the key ingredients?

Dave: Raisins, some kind of nuts, lots of figs. The local store here has bulk dates; when you buy them in the package, they add something, so I only used dried bulk ingredients. I add whiskey and rum and let the filling sit in the refrigerator for months at a time. 

 

What is the secret to a winning cookie?

Dave: Grind the filling up just right. I use a food-grade caulking gun. I load up the caulking gun with the filling and draw a perfect bead down the center.

 

What memories do you have of cuccidati?

Dave: I remember them lying around at Christmas time. But I wasn't a big fan until I started making them because my grandmother never made them really well. I was never a big sweets person, but I came around. 

 

Dave Costanza's award-winning cuccidati. 

 

What do you hope to share with the next generation?

Dave: My daughter-in-law helped us make them for the contest. It is a family tradition to make the ravioli and the cuccidati together. We start horsing around once we get through making the cuccidati and the ravioli.

 

Zelda: It is an opportunity to share Italian culture and come together over food. It's a family event that happens to raise money to help young people expand their horizons and give them an opportunity to go to college. 

 

 

 

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Opened in 1996 by the late Giovanni and Carolina Scordato, Scordato Bakery is one of the few Milwaukee bakeries serving specialties like Sicilian cookies, cannoli, bread, and sfinciuni. 

But it wasn't always that way.

"When we first opened the bakery, there were so many Italian bakeries," says Scordato Bakery Vice President Antonella Scordato-Lorenz. "Now, there are hardly any left. It is hard work, and it's not easy. So, I'm not surprised that there are not a ton of traditional bakeries left in Milwaukee, but we are proud that we're one of them."

I recently had the opportunity to chat with Antonella and her brother, Alessandro Scordato, who serves as the bakery's president. The siblings shared their background, what goes into a typical day at Scordato, their favorite menu items, ways they ensure authenticity, advice for those interested in running a bakery, and more. 

 

Your family is from Sicily. Tell us how Scordato got its start in Milwaukee.

Alessandro: Our parents married in Bagheria. Our dad came first in his early twenties. He started working at his uncle's bakery, Peter Sciortino Bakery. Our mom came a few years later, and they were here until 1980. We moved back to Italy for a few years, between 1985 and 1987. But they decided to move back to Milwaukee, and our dad and his friend decided to open up their own bakery called Roma Bakery in the Bay View neighborhood.

They had that for a few years. Then, our dad sold his partnership to his partner, Sal, and decided to open his own place with our mom in 1996. That's how we ended up with Scordato Bakery at our current location. We've been there ever since. 

 

Antonella Scordato-Lorenz and Alessandro Scordato

What kind of influence did your Sicilian upbringing have on you?

Antonella: I think it was just more about our parents' work ethic than anything. I guess it's just making sure we're keeping the tradition alive and keeping the roots of the types of things that we grew up with, the pastries, food, and things like that.

 

Tell us about your experience taking over the bakery in 2019.

Antonella: Our mom passed away in 2000, and then it was the three of us, my brother and I, with our dad. My brother's son, Giovanni, came to work at the bakery when he was old enough, and later, our stepmom, Irina, joined us. Our dad kind of retired even though he was there almost every day. 

It was hard to keep him at home. He worked his whole life and enjoyed what he did, speaking to customers and having a presence in the store. And he lived just a few blocks away, so he was never the type to just stay at home and watch TV. He was always hands-on. 

Alessandro: Before our dad actually got sick, his body was starting to age, telling him, "No," but he still wanted to be there. So he would come in, not work as much as he did before, but he was around. But my sister and I took over.

We worked there pretty much our whole lives, and I did some other work when I was a teenager, but I always helped out in the store, so I got used to the hours and the work and everything little by little. Over time, it was just part of both of our lives, so it wasn't that difficult. 

Our dad was always there to point us in the right direction if need be. So, once he was gone, I think our main focus was always to maintain the work ethic he instilled in us, keep quality a top priority, and just keep the legacy going. And it felt good to be able to do that and keep going in that direction.

Antonella: After he passed in 2019, it was almost like it lit a fire under us. I remember that for years, our dad always talked about how we should remodel the store and make improvements to the business. And we're just like, "Yeah, that's a good idea."

Then, after he passed, both of us decided we were going to remodel the store. We're going to not reinvent things because we wanted to keep everything the same, but it was really nice just to kind of execute that vision that he had of redoing the store and making it look so much nicer. And it actually really helped grow our business even more, which was crazy how much just remodeling the store would've made a difference. But we've just been busy and steady ever since with just our regular customers.

Alessandro: We have a really good customer base. They're really loyal, and they've always supported us year after year, so they've been a big part of our success.

 

What's a typical day at Scordato Bakery?

Alessandro: I start around one or two in the morning and do all the bread and roll orders for the store and delivery.

Antonella: We have the wholesale accounts that we bake for and different restaurants in the area, and then we have to make bread and rolls for the store, of course. 

Alessandro: After that, I just start on whatever cookies we need to make for that day and other items like banana bread or pizza crust or calzone, stuff like that. So I get done around 11. Then, my sister works in the afternoon, and she closes and takes care of any cakes or other pastries.

Antonella: We do a lot of weddings, especially in the summer and September into the fall. We do a lot of sweet tables, wedding cakes, and regular cakes. Those are things that I take care of along with the hiring and payroll. We do the inventory, making sure everything is stocked.

We're really lucky. We have really great employees. We're so lucky to have so many of our employees with us for over two decades. We're in a really good community. We're more like a close family.

 

Alessandro: The work is ongoing; it never stops. You never really get to punch out when you run your own business. So if we're not at the bakery, we're going to Sam's Club or getting inventory or Restaurant Depot. There are always certain things to take care of other than at the bakery. So it keeps us busy.

Antonella: Our busiest time of year is the holidays and then a little bit into January. So we try to close for a week or so sometime in January when we're finally caught up, and things are slowing down so we can give everybody a well-deserved break. 

Next year, we'll be closed for two weeks in the summer so we can spend some time with our family in Sicily. It's really hard for either of us to get away unless the bakery's actually closed. It's not like a company where we can just punch out, and I can't relax or even think about enjoying a vacation if the store's open. So it's like we've got to close in order to relax and enjoy ourselves.

 

Scordato cookies are a holiday favorite.

What are your favorite items on the bakery's menu and why?

Antonella: I still obsess over cookies, especially the more traditional ones like the tutu and the Sicilian rainbow cookies. Our cannoli, especially the chocolate, are always so good. 

Alessandro: We'll always have cannoli when we're feeling a little nostalgic or homesick for Sicily.

 

Antonella: Or the sfinciuni; I still eat that on the regular. We make it every day. We'll just cut it up and put it in the back so everybody can munch on it. 

When we're on vacation and closed, I always miss our bread and rolls. You won't be able to find that nice crispy bread that we have. I look forward to coming back, making another batch, and having a nice hot sandwich on bread right out of the oven.

 

Alessandro: One of my favorites is what our dad used to do: a mini Italian loaf right out of the oven, still hot. You just slice it down the middle. You add some extra virgin olive oil, some Romano cheese, and maybe a little bit of tomato. I eat it right out of the oven, and the texture when you first bite it, with that crispiness on the crust, is just one of a kind.

 

Tell us more about your sfinciuni.

Antonella: It's a traditional sfinciuni outside of the fact that the one we make for the store doesn't have anchovies. We make it without anchovies because it's not as popular here. 

Ours has a traditional thick, spongy crust. It has tomato sauce, oregano, grated Romano cheese, and spices. It's just like a meatless room-temperature pizza. 

We do make it with anchovies on order, but we don't typically sell it in the store. Even though it's traditional, it's not as popular that way.

 

Alessandro: It's a tradition in Sicily. Each family makes its own sauce with caramelized onions. Some people use the traditional primo sale cheese.

Antonella: It's what you put into the dough before you bake it in the oven. Before you put your sauce on, you make the dough, you lay it out, and then you push the primo sale into the dough. We don't make it that way for the store because it's expensive and hard to find here.

Alessandro: We've had to change it up a little bit. But the way that we make it turns out really good, especially with the Romano cheese mixed in with the breadcrumbs and the olive oil on top. 

I prefer it the day after in the toaster oven, or I just throw a slice from the day before directly on the oven shelf and crisp it up. It gets this really nice crunchy taste on the outside, but it still has that sponginess on the inside.

We don't use pizza dough; we use bread dough, and that's the only way you can get that really thick spongy size on the crust. If you use regular pizza dough, then you're just going to end up with a thinner, denser crust. So if you want that nice, thick kind of pan style, you use the bread dough. 

 

How do you ensure the authenticity of your Sicilian recipes?

Alessandro: We use simple ingredients in all of our products, especially the cookies and the bread. We don't use preservatives. Our dad always tried to keep the same recipe from Sicily that he grew up with, and our uncle taught him that. "Keep it the same. Don't do anything fancy; just keep it original."

It shows, and it makes a difference in the taste. Quality has always been our number one priority, and we ensure that the process stays the same and that the steps from start to finish remain the same every time we do something. That's helped us stay well-known with all of our customers.

Antonella: Whenever we go to Sicily, we'll bring back ingredients that we need. We get our anise oil, which we use for anise cookies. 

We try to make sure we don't ever change anything or compromise just to save a few pennies. There are cheaper ways that we can do things, but that's really not how our dad did it.

Alessandro: One example is the butter. We always emphasize using a hundred percent butter. Some places do a half-and-half, half margarine and half butter. You can taste the oily difference. Things like that compromise the product, and we don't want to go down that route.

 

Antonella: Even when we make our cannoli cream…. I've seen recipes that are just cheap cream cheese. We use simple ricotta and sugar and chocolate chips. We make everything the way our dad did. We're not trying to save a few pennies.

 

You're also known for your cakes. Can you share a memorable cake order?

Antonella: One that stands out was one of my very first wedding cakes. We've been making cakes for a long time, but this one was probably one of my favorites. It was one of those ones where when you're done with it, you step back and really admire it.

It's one of our most duplicated cakes; brides will come in, see it, and want that exact same one. It's a three-tiered cake with calla lilies that are cascading down. It's simple. There's not much to it outside of the beautiful calla lilies, but it's just one of those cakes that is just really memorable. 

Then there was one other cake that I made… I don't remember the cake at all, but it sticks in my mind because as I was finishing it, the bride showed up. I was still putting it together, and she started crying because she was so happy about it. 

I don't remember what the cake looked like at all. I don't even know if I still have a picture of it, but I just felt the emotion of her being so overjoyed.

 

What advice would you give to someone who wants to start their own bakery or pursue a career in baking?

Antonella: Find a good staff, find good people that you can rely on. We wouldn't be able to do any of the things we do without our staff. 

Alessandro: It's kind of a load off knowing that we can rely on them when needed. So that helps out a lot when you can trust your employees to take the next step whenever you need them to.

Antonella: Alessandro's son, Giovanni, who was named after our father, works at the bakery, and he's an incredible help. He is such a hard worker, and he definitely helps with a ton of things: a lot of what our mom showed me how to do, like our lasagna that we make on weekends or different things, like our homemade sauce and meatballs that I used to make. 

Now, I spend most of my time just making cakes and pastries, and he's able to pick up that tradition and help me with those types of things, and he's great at it. So, it's great to have him be a part of our bakery and our legacy and help us.

You have to get good employees that you can trust and rely on, and you have to make sure that you're willing to give the best customer service and always put that first. I feel like that's so important. Every time I see another good review, another five-star review on Google, I'm just like, "Well, they were impressed with our customer service." I feel like that's so important nowadays. 

Alessandro: It's hard to go into a place and actually talk to the owner or someone that's part of the business. Our dad said, "It's easy to open up a business. It's difficult to keep it successful year after year after year." 

It takes a lot of work, dedication, and sacrifice, and you have to focus on these things. Otherwise, you won't be successful.

Antonella: You're always kind of on call if something happens; it kind of never ends. You have got to be willing to part with time and be as dedicated as possible.

 

What do you hope customers will take away?

Alessandro: I'm hoping that whoever reads this understands that we're a small family business, and we hope that they appreciate all the hard work and the products that we've put out. It's difficult to find local businesses nowadays. We hope to continue the tradition for another 30 years, hopefully, and God willing. We're happy with what we do, and we're hoping to continue the legacy of our parents.

 

 

 

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly redefining how we interact with data and has permeated most aspects of our digital world—and in more ways than we are even aware of.

 

How we safely and effectively navigate that new information highway is one of the questions Datacom Director of Artificial Intelligence Lou Compagnone helps answer.

 

She has her work cut out for her, but then again, as a Sicilian Australian, she says a solid work ethic is in her blood. 

Lou shared with me her connection to Sicily, how she got started working in AI, what excites her about AI's future, and how she plans to drive innovation.

 

 

What is your connection to Sicily?

My main connection is my father. He was born in Sicily and moved to Australia from Santa Vittoria Domenica when he was about five years old, but he and his family still very much lived like they were in Sicily. The town I grew up in, Donnybrook, in the southwest of Western Australia, is basically the Little Sicily of Australia.

 

During the fifties, there was a mass migration of Sicilians because of the war. A lot of them ended up in Perth and Fremantle, in particular. A huge number of them actually migrated to Donnybrook.

 

They almost recreated Sicily in Donnybrook to the point where even their houses looked Italian. They really shaped the landscape. They even grew prickly pears.

 

So, without even knowing it, I formed a connection with Sicily to the point where when I first visited, when I was in my twenties, I had a sense of déjà vu. I felt like I'd been there before because it looked so much like Donnybrook, and I just really felt at home there.

 

Sometimes, there's a really inexplicable feeling where you just have a sense of belonging even though it's not somewhere you've been before. When I met my aunt, who lives in Sicily, she said you just feel at home when somewhere is in your blood. 

 

Lou's father was 6'7" and lived in the town's smallest house.

 

How did your Sicilian roots shape you personally and professionally?

Work ethic is a big thing. So my nonno worked until he was in his nineties. We tried to stop him from working because he was getting a bit too frail to be on our family farm, and we worried he might have a fall. He was always climbing ladders and doing all sorts of things. So we decided one day that we just weren't going to pick him up to take him to work. And then he just started walking on his own. He found a four-wheeler motorbike and just hooned along the road with no license. So we realized we were just going to have to let him work.

 

My dad was the same. He had that same work ethic and worked harder than anyone I've ever known. He'd always be up at four in the morning and back when it was dark. He worked as an accountant and on our family farm. Even now, he's nearly 80 and retired, but he still does people's tax returns and manages property and stuff like that. So I guess a bit of that has rubbed off on me where I push myself hard in the work that I do, and part of it is because I am passionate about it, and part of it is just this drive that I have just to finish things and do things well. And so that is a bit of a Sicilian thing. Sicilians are sort of battlers. They push through things, and they do it well.

 

How did you get started working with AI?

I've worked in the tech industry for about 17 years, but my background was actually in service design and futurism. And that might seem like a weird background for AI, but it's helpful. And there are a few reasons for that. If you think of a service as something that helps people to do something, I always think of artificial intelligence as closing the gap between humans and technology more than any technology before. So, it makes it easier for someone to do something. I almost describe it as a beeline. It beelines you between the thing you want, the information you want, or the action you want, and then getting that. Naturally, I always think about closing the distance. Futurism is thinking about what's coming tomorrow and how you prepare for it.

 

The combination of that—helping people work out what their service needs to be in the future and futurism—probably makes me perfectly placed for it. Artificial intelligence is only as good as the problem that it solves. There's a figure from Harvard Business Review that 80% of AI projects fail. A big part of that is because they haven't actually done service design.

 

I sort of sweep in and work out what the actual problem is, the real problem to solve. And that works really well with AI. 

 

Describe your role and the group you lead at Datacom.

I'm the director of artificial intelligence for Datacom. I'm mostly an individual contributor because it's basically changing everything that we do. My role is really about operationalizing AI for both our business and customers. The best way of describing it is that a lot of our customers will go to AI summits, or they'll have these tech vendors talking about AI, and they'll be talking about generative AI and context windows and tokens and all this really abstract stuff. And they walk away and go, "What does this mean for my business, and what do I do?"

 

My role is to help people work out what to do and where to start. I'm doing that for Datacom in terms of working out how we reimagine our services and our solutions, how we build our internal capabilities, how we govern AI (because that's a really important part of making sure that you're doing things safely), and how we have our own innovation pipeline. Then, I help customers do the same. We're very transparent about our own learning journey with AI because it's such a new and changing field. If anyone claims to be an AI expert, I'm like, "Is anyone really?" because the field is changing so quickly.

 

What challenges do organizations face when integrating AI, and how do you help them overcome them?

We recently did a survey of 200 business leaders in New Zealand. One of the biggest things that came out is that although there's really been an increase, even from last year, in sentiment towards AI and adoption of AI, there's still low governance. Few people have been able to find specific use cases for it. So, the biggest challenge is finding the right problem to solve and the right use case that will have tangible benefits. On the flip side, many people just buy a tool, like they'll buy Copilot, and go, "It's not working." That's because they've just bought this tool without actually working out the use case and the problem to solve.

 

Many people tell me they feel there's a lot of interest within the organization in people using AI, but it's just happening in lots of different pockets. They describe it as almost out of control as if it is a runaway horse. One of the biggest challenges is how you govern it. How do you coordinate it so that people are doing it in a safe and ethical way, in a scalable way, and in a way where you can actually measure the benefits?

 

It's not just having a tool for its sake. In the end, AI does use a lot of data. It drives a lot of cloud consumption, so you actually have to do it in a worthwhile way. And sometimes, AI might not be the answer for everything. If you're doing it in a more strategic and governed way, you can have better visibility of whether it's working.

 

I think security and data readiness are also challenges—making sure people have the data they need to really live up to the ambitions of the solutions they want to build. AI is only as good as the data that it consumes.

 

We help people with getting their data ready, ensuring that they actually have what they need, and then making sure that they have the security guardrails in place. A big thing with large language models is what happens to your data when using it, where it goes, and what that actually means. I describe to people who are using public AI that they need to understand that anything they type in is going into the big soup of the world. You need to really be cautious about that. And for businesses, it's thinking about actually using enterprise solutions so that you can keep your data close to you.

 

AI-generated illustration of Sicily

 

What excites you about the future of AI?

The Institute for the Future recently reported about the different horizons of what's coming with AI. What we see at the moment in Australia and New Zealand (the U.S. is probably quite different) is the first horizon of AI, which has some capabilities but some key limitations. The limitations often include things like truth. We know that AI can hallucinate; if it doesn't actually know the answer, it can just make it up.

A lot of the AI we're seeing can't actually reason. It is really just an elaborate spreadsheet in lots of ways. A very, very good one, a super-smart search. Where it gets interesting and where we'll see those exciting developments is more on horizons two and three. So, on horizon two, we're seeing in places like the U.S. and especially China, an ecosystem of multiple AI models interacting with each other. What you describe as agentic AI is where things can become really special.

 

It is even more interesting to go beyond the digital to the physical, to interact with the real world through robotics, autonomous vehicles, and neurotechnology.

 

I monitor signals of what's changing. I'm very obsessed with Neuralink and following how that's going with people who are paralyzed being able to play Mario Kart with their minds. I'm really interested in seeing where that technology will go.

 

I recently saw something about a talking pet collar, which I thought was hilarious. It's a chatbot for dogs, and it's voice-activated, so it basically gives pets the ability to talk to you.

 

Then, there's an AI MRI machine that Japanese scientists have invented that records your dreams and gives you the ability to talk to other people in your dreams. I also saw something recently about a scientist who connected a mushroom to a robot body, and it taught itself to walk.

 

Things like that are interesting to me. If we go back to that thing about the beeline, this goes beyond a shorter distance between two places. This is actually going to unlock things that previously have been behind locked doors. And that's fascinating, whether it's realizing the capabilities of mushrooms—that they might walk if given the right technology—or unlocking the language of pets and what they say to us. The question is whether we should be unlocking that stuff in some cases, but whether we should or not, it gives us the ability to unlock things.

 

What are your long-term goals for the AI initiatives at Datacom?

I want to build our own internal capabilities. This is a big thing. We already have some amazing people at Datacom. We've got about 7,000 people, and a lot of them are developers with AI skills. Some of the stuff that they come up with is just incredible. Someone's building an evolutionary algorithm at the moment using AI that becomes smarter as time goes on.

 

I want us to be at the forefront of capabilities because the role that I want us to play with the customers is to help them build their capabilities as well. And in some ways, that's a terrible business model. I want us to help people become independent and make ourselves redundant so that we can simultaneously play a development or tech partner role and a sort of education role.

 

Part of that is that I want us to learn with our clients. But then the other ambition for me is all around making sure that we play that role in ensuring that AI is safe and ethical and that it's done in a scalable way. And part of that is sustainable because how we design it is really important.

 

I think in some of the bigger tech companies, the driver is data consumption. You need data to do AI, but the way you design it is key so that it's done where you're actually using data where you need to, and it's all in how you architect it. Playing a role in AI for the good is pretty important to me.

 

How do you plan to drive innovation and make a lasting impact in your field?

I want to innovate in a human-centered way. I've seen a lot of people talking about how they want to create an AI-driven future. I want to create a human-driven future that's supported by AI. A big part of what I want to do is help humans have agency in the direction this is going and shape the direction. Part of that is actually that you need to lean into it. You need to test the capabilities, and you need to start thinking at a longer horizon.

 

In futurism, we think about a 10-year horizon. If we start thinking about where things are going, we need to think about the stuff that we both want to enable and are excited about. We want to capitalize on our competitive advantage, but we also want to prevent some of the stuff that we actually don't want to be part of our futures. My plan is to help organizations work out and enable the futures they want and prevent the ones they don't want.

 

 

 

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It's the quintessentially Sicilian image: A brightly colored wooden cart pulled by a donkey. While the Sicilian cart is largely a thing of the past, the plight of donkeys throughout Europe remains a pressing issue. Once vital to agriculture and transportation, these animals face hardships ranging from overwork in tourism to neglect due to misunderstandings about their needs.

 

Enter Il Rifugio degli Asinelli. With a mission of educating the public, improving donkey welfare, and healing physical and emotional scars, this Italian subsidiary of UK-based The Donkey Sanctuary serves as a lifeline for donkeys from across Europe facing neglect, abuse, and misunderstanding.

 

I recently caught up with Il Rifugio degli Asinelli Communications & FR Officer Ilaria Ruzza, who shared more about this important organization and the threats donkeys face. She additionally shed light on surprising donkey facts and how the public can get involved in caring and advocating for this equine species. 

 

 

What inspired the establishment of Il Rifugio degli Asinelli?

Il Rifugio is the Italian subsidiary of the international animal welfare charity The Donkey Sanctuary, founded in 1969 in the UK by Dr. Elisabeth Svendsen MBE. Our location in Italy puts us in a good position geographically to welcome donkeys from different countries across Europe. Over the years, we have welcomed animals from Greece, Romania, France, Switzerland, and, of course, Italy.

 

What are some of the key threats donkeys face?

While some donkeys suffer from neglect and abuse, poor welfare is often because of misunderstanding and a lack of knowledge about how to care for them. Sometimes, they are considered "small horses," but donkeys are very different in their behavior and physical needs. In places popular with tourists, donkeys are still used to generate income, and this means they can be overworked or kept in poor conditions, as is also the case for animals involved in the milk and breeding industry.

 

Can you share some success stories of donkeys rehabilitated at the refuge?

Ardito was born in 2003 and comes from the Oropa Valley, a few kilometers from Il Rifugio. He lived for over a year, locked in a stable, without ever seeing the light of day because his elderly owner was no longer able to properly care for him. When we went to retrieve him in 2016, he was underweight, with long hooves and covered in parasites, but he already had a wonderful character: the only thing that hasn't changed, so much so that he was renamed the "Gentle Giant." He constantly seeks the attention of humans and loves to be scratched on the withers. Living inside a closed environment and without the necessary air circulation for a prolonged period of time led him to develop a respiratory condition comparable to human asthma. Animals affected by this pathology require greater precautions (stable beds made of dust-free wood chips and not straw, administration of specific high-quality feed). He has created strong bonds of friendship with Lucio and Galileo, his stablemates, but he still has a good balance with all the other animals in the group in which he lives.

 

Ardito was rescued from a state of neglect.

 

In 2013, we rescued 34 animals coming from Italy's biggest-ever equine seizure in Colleferro, near Rome. This included 14 mules and hinnies and 12 pregnant jennies, leading to another 12 foals over the following year. It was February, and we had heavy snow. All our staff worked very hard to enlarge our quarantine area, as we were not used to welcoming so many animals at a time. Before arriving at Il Rifugio, they were completely abandoned. Sadly, many animals were already dead or died during the seizure because of starvation or severe, untreated wounds—with no trust at all towards humans. We've been rebuilding that bond every single day since they arrived, healing both physical and emotional wounds. There's still a long way to go, but when they approach to receive a scratch, we know we're going in the right direction.

 

What are your main challenges in caring for over 100 animals from various countries?

We currently have 106 resident animals (93 donkeys, 12 mules and hinnies, and one pony). They all come from different backgrounds. They can't tell us about what they have been through, so we have to get to know and understand every single animal in his or her behavior and character, besides their specific physical needs (diet, conditions, etc.).

 

How do you ensure well-being and health at the refuge?

Our qualified, experienced and trained staff care for our animals every single day, while our veterinarian is on site three days a week and in case of emergency as well. Our farm schedule includes periodic visits, dental checks, vaccines, hooves trimming and grooming, and weighing on a monthly basis. Individual diets are reviewed each month to ensure welfare and avoid possible conditions stemming from a wrong alimentation. Animals with behavioral problems are followed through specific sessions by trained personnel so that they can be more comfortable during health checks.

 

What might people be surprised to learn about donkeys?

Donkeys are incredibly smart and intelligent animals and, like other equines, have a keen fight-or-flight nervous system response. However, compared with horses, the donkey's fight-defense mechanism is more easily engaged and can be seen in donkeys displaying behavior in the range of standing their ground when faced with a threat. Donkeys may also freeze when faced with a threat, which can be mistaken for them being stubborn when, in fact, they may just be reacting to a novel situation. Their varied behavioral responses demonstrate how donkeys need to be treated differently from horses and not just seen as a smaller, longer-eared version of a horse. They create strong and long-lasting (even lifelong) bonds with other donkeys, usually in a pair but sometimes in groups of three or four. When we move a donkey from one stable to another for a vet visit, we always keep them with their bonded friend(s); otherwise, they can be scared, deeply stressed, or even become aggressive. Bonded friends stay close to each other during any activity: grazing, eating, running, scratching, etc.

 

What kind of training and education programs do you offer?

On occasion, we offer public courses, both online and on-site, facilitated by our Training and Educational department, completely free of charge, focusing on the basic information and knowledge for donkeys' welfare. We also offer courses on a wide range of subjects through The Donkey Academy, which is a collaborative online learning platform and knowledge exchange developed and run by our own experts at The Donkey Sanctuary. The self-paced courses are designed to teach new skills or enhance existing ones. They cover basic welfare and wellbeing, behavior and nutrition for donkey owners and guardians, right through to specialist courses that include donkey behavior for veterinary professionals, clinical examination, and dental and farriery care.

The Donkey Academy is also free of charge and offers courses in English and Spanish, both to professionals (e.g., veterinarians, dental technicians, vet nurses, paraveterinarians, and farriers) and to laypeople (i.e., donkey owners, guardians, people interested in donkey care and welfare). The virtual learning environment also hosts training pathways for The Donkey Sanctuary employees, designed to ensure that all of our donkeys will benefit from a consistent and predictable approach to their care. The Donkey Sanctuary is also involved in collaboration with different Universities, Colleges, and professional associations in several countries, offering tailored education programs to students and professionals.

Recently, two courses in Italian have been launched: one is dedicated to our Il Rifugio employees, while the other is open to the public, offering owners, perspective owners, guardians, and other interested people all the information needed to properly care for donkeys and enhance their welfare and well-being.

 

What key activities and facilities are available at the refuge?

Upon appointment, we welcome groups, both children and adults, for guided tours, which last approximately a couple of hours: we explain our mission, the needs of a healthy donkey, and what he looks like so that people may be able to recognize a donkey in distress and report it to authorities if they ever see one. Three different groups of vulnerable and disabled people come once a week to benefit from our free DAA (Donkey Assisted Activities) program. They spend some time in our paddocks with our animals (who are never tied and always free to move around), shadowed by our qualified staff. We have an Info Point where visitors can ask questions, make a donation, and adopt a donkey.

 

Can you explain the process of adopting or fostering a donkey or mule?

Distance adoption is a symbolic way to help all donkeys. With a yearly donation of 36,00 EUR, you will contribute to the well-being of all animals living at Il Rifugio. Our program includes seven donkeys (Alin, Ardito, Agostino, Clementina, Filippo, Galileo, and Ombra) and one mule (Marco). Adopters will receive a special certificate with a picture of the adopted donkey, a welcome letter, and the donkey's ID with all their information. We then send three newsletters a year (Spring, Summer, and Christmas) where we provide updates on the adoption scheme animals, which can be seen during our open days to the public.

 

We currently have 43 donkeys living in Guardian Homes. People interested in joining our Guardian Scheme are invited to read the terms and conditions first. Donkeys are very sociable creatures who make fantastic companion animals. However, they do require a great deal of time, space, resources, and, of course, attention. Our Guardian donkeys are selected carefully so we can maximize the chances of our donkeys and their foster owners. Guardians have a happy and long-lasting life together. They are always fostered in pairs, given how important it is for them to have a bonded companion. Our Welfare Department commits to a visit once a year to check everything is running smoothly and that all welfare standards are respected.

 

What do you hope people take away from your work?

To better understand and deeply respect this animal, who enormously contributed for centuries to human needs and activities while being so often neglected and mistreated. We want a world where every donkey has a good quality of life, a path that starts with education, knowledge, advocacy, and sensibility. We're trying to achieve it each day, to build awareness, to let people see and experience how wonderful donkeys are in every respect.

 

 

 

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Prized for its bulbs, leaves, and even seeds, fennel is the ultimate zero-waste food. It's also rich in fiber, potassium, vitamin C, and manganese. 

 

To explore the origins and uses of fennel, I reached out to "I Love Fruit & Veg from Europe," a global initiative that promotes the mindful consumption of high-quality European fruits and vegetables both within Italy and abroad. Their purview includes organic produce and products with PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) and PGI (Protected Geographical Indication) certifications, advocating for healthier, safer, and more sustainable diets. The initiative is supported by Italian producer organizations such as Agritalia, A.O.A., La Deliziosa, Meridia, and Terra Orti and is co-funded by the European Commission.

"I Love Fruit & Veg from Europe" Campaign Manager and Coordinator Manuela Barzan shared more about this flavorful vegetable.

 

 

Where does fennel come from originally?

Common fennel (F. vulgare) or finochietto is native to Southern Europe and countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea but has become naturalized worldwide. To the ancient Greeks, fennel was a symbol of victory, known as "marathon," lending its name to the Battle of Marathon (490 BC), where legend has it the battle unfolded in a fennel field. The Romans, too, embraced fennel as a symbol of achievement, fashioning its leaves into wreaths to crown champions in their games.

 

Florence fennel, or finocchio (Foeniculum vulgare var. azoricum), is a cultivated variety from the same family as wild fennel. Developed in 17th-century Italy, it resembles wild fennel at the top with similar stalks, fronds, and flowers, but at the base, it forms a white, layered structure often called a "crown." Although commonly referred to as a bulb, it's not a true bulb—its layers are crisp and carry a mild anise flavor.

 

Where and how is fennel typically grown?

India is the largest producer of fennel, which is grown for its seeds and is widely used in cooking and traditional medicine. Spanish missionaries brought fennel to North America, cultivating it in their medicinal gardens. In California, it is now commonly referred to as wild anise and grows abundantly along roadsides and in pastures across the U.S., where it is often regarded as a weed.

Bulb fennel (finocchio) is grown globally but thrives in warm, moist environments. Various cultivars can be harvested at different times based on their growing location, with the general harvest season in Italy spanning from spring to fall.

In the U.S., fennel is considered a cool-weather crop and is typically available from fall through early spring, although grocery stores stock it year-round. However, since fennel is a relatively minor crop in the U.S., any out-of-season supply not sourced from California or Arizona usually comes from a greater distance.

 

What parts of the fennel plant are used and how?

Every part can be used in some way! Bulb fennel is grown for its seeds, essential oil, fronds (leaves), and swollen leaf base, which is consumed as a vegetable. While the stalks can be tough and somewhat stringy, they are often used to flavor stocks. The fronds can serve as a garnish or be incorporated into marinades and sauces.

Common fennel is primarily cultivated for its seeds, which possess a more aromatic quality than those of cultivated fennel and have a robust flavor reminiscent of licorice.

 

What are the nutritional benefits of fennel?

Fennel is a nutrient-dense, low-calorie food that offers several health benefits, including:

• Rich in antioxidants: Fennel is abundant in various antioxidant compounds that help shield cells from damage caused by free radicals, potentially lowering the risk of chronic diseases such as cancer and heart disease.
• Colic relief: Colic, a frequent issue for newborns, can be effectively alleviated with fennel, whether used alone or combined with other herbs. Fennel seeds are commonly included in gripe water, a well-known remedy for this condition.
• Menstrual pain relief: Research indicates that fennel might lower the production of oxytocin and prostaglandin, hormones linked to painful periods.
• Enhanced digestion: Traditionally, fennel is consumed after meals in many cultures to support digestion and minimize gas. Studies suggest that fennel may help by reducing inflammation in the intestines and decreasing the levels of gas-producing bacteria. Additionally, fennel oil has been found to alleviate symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome.

 

What are some favorite Sicilian recipes that feature fennel?

• Sicilian sausage: Known as salsiccia, these sausages are made from coarsely chopped pork mixed with fennel seeds. They are typically sold in coils on skewers, weighed by the pound.
• Pasta con le Sarde: This dish is a staple in Sicilian cuisine. According to legend, when Euphemius of Messina returned from exile in Tunisia to lead a military campaign in 827, his Arab cooks created this recipe using the first ingredients they found upon landing at Mazara's harbor. The combination included wild fennel, raisins, pine nuts, and the freshest sardines available.
• Pork and fennel ragù: For this dish, start by removing the casing from Sicilian sausages, squeezing out the pork, and cutting it into pieces. Sauté shallots in a bit of wine, then add the sausage and combine it with tomato sauce and a teaspoon of fennel seeds. For a twist, you can substitute the tomato sauce with fresh ricotta. This ragù pairs beautifully with casarecce, a short, twisted pasta native to Sicily.
  
  

How do you recommend preparing fennel to bring out its best flavors?

Fennel bulbs can be prepared in various ways, including steaming, grilling, roasting, or braising. They are often served with olive oil or butter. They offer a sweet, subtly anise-like flavor that pairs especially well with fish.

To enhance the flavor of Florence fennel when using it raw in salads, slice the bulb and let it soak in ice water for an hour in the refrigerator.

Antonio Carluccio said in Complete Italian Food, "Fennel has such a sweet taste and pleasant aroma that it was often served at the end of a meal as a dessert in Italy. It is delicious in every form, raw or cooked, and indispensable in pinzimonio [tender spring vegetables served sliced and raw to dip in newly pressed olive oil with a little salt and pepper]." 

 

Can you share any tips for selecting the best fennel?

When selecting fennel bulbs, look for those that are white or pale green, firm, and heavy. Steer clear of any that appear yellowing, dry, or starting to shrivel. The fronds should be vibrant and crisp, not wilted.

As fennel ages, it becomes drier and tougher, with a more intense anise flavor. However, removing the outer layers will make the inner part less tough.

 

How do you store fennel?

Sturdy fennel bulbs and stalks can be stored in the refrigerator for an extended period. However, the fronds may lose their crispness, so it's advisable to detach them, wrap them in a paper towel or newspaper, and place them in a container in the fridge. Keeping the fronds dry can help extend their freshness.

 

What other ingredients complement fennel in recipes?

Fennel pairs especially well with fish.

The chopped young leaves can enhance the flavor of salads and various dishes, and they are commonly enjoyed alongside oranges.

 

Why should people try fennel?

Fennel is a highly versatile vegetable that can be enjoyed raw or cooked. It is easy to incorporate into various dishes without generating waste. It is rich in fiber, low in calories, and boasts numerous health benefits. 

Here are some common ways to include fennel in your meals:

• Sip fennel tea, a soothing herbal infusion made by steeping fennel seeds in hot water. This traditional remedy is often utilized to promote digestion and reduce bloating and gas. You can find it in tea bags or make it by steeping whole fennel seeds.
• Incorporate fennel into salads for an extra crunch.
• Substitute fennel stalks for celery in soups or stews.
• Wrap fennel with other root vegetables in foil and roast in the oven until tender.
• Use the bulb, stalks, and fronds as a flavorful base when roasting chicken or pork.
• For a tasty side dish, roast fennel wedges seasoned with salt, pepper, and butter.

 

 

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Drawing on the more than 1,000-year tradition of Sicilian hand embroidery, Palermo-based luxury lifestyle brand Manima offers such exclusive, high-end products as home decor, linens, resort wear, and wearable art, all crafted using traditional techniques.

With a beautiful atelier in the city's historic center, Manima, which takes its name from Mani + Anima, meaning hands and soul, was founded by the husband-and-wife team of CEO Carolina Guthmann and Executive President Piero di Pasquale. The company focuses on combining female artisanship with technology and social impact with a platform to connect embroiderers across villages to Manima headquarters, allowing women to be included remotely while maintaining control over the quality, deadlines, and design.

Carolina recently took time out of her busy schedule to share more about Manima and the Sicilian hand-embroidery tradition. 

 

 

Tell us about Manima and how it started.

It was born from the desire my husband and I had to do something meaningful in the second part of our lives, after a long and successful career in multinational corporate companies and RAI Television on my husband's side.

We left our careers, studied and researched for over a year, and then found the project that would satisfy our wish to generate social impact, work with high-end artisans, and preserve a cultural heritage. That was hand embroidery because it has a market that never dies out; it is typically female in Italy and had a very important social role in the past until globalization hit local artisanship. It is also a form of artistic handicraft that can be done in groups and even large groups; it creates strong social bonds and can be re-interpreted endlessly. 

 

What is your background?

I have a degree in macro-economy and worked for many years in top management roles in multinational companies, such as Procter & Gamble, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Merck.

 

My husband is a former TV journalist and was, among other things, an anchorman in the U.S. for RAI public TV. He has a background in political sciences and international relations and was the Director of RAI News worldwide.

 

What are the unique characteristics of Sicilian hand embroidery featured in your products?

Sicilian hand embroidery is rich and diverse, reflecting the island's history of 26 different conquests, each leaving its mark on local craftsmanship. This eclectic mix of influences has shaped a wide range of styles and techniques, making Sicilian embroidery truly one of a kind.

 

One of the standout techniques is pulled thread embroidery, a traditional Sicilian method that we incorporate in a modern and distinctive way. For instance, this technique is central to our Saline resort line, as well as our collection of colorful and vibrant table linens, giving a fresh twist to classic craftsmanship.

 

Moreover, throughout Sicily, many small villages have preserved and perfected unique embroidery methods over generations. We have carefully selected and partnered with some of these master artisans, integrating their extraordinary skills into our project. Their expertise ensures that each piece carries the authentic spirit of Sicilian heritage while embracing contemporary design.

 

When and how did the tradition of embroidery as part of a dowry originate in Sicily?

The tradition of embroidery as part of a Sicilian dowry is a reflection of the island's rich and diverse history. It evolved through centuries of cultural exchange and was a testament to the bride's skills, her family's status, and the importance of craftsmanship in Sicilian life.

 

This practice likely originated during the Middle Ages, influenced by the various cultures that conquered and ruled Sicily, including the Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, and Spanish, each contributing to local customs and aesthetics.

 

Already under Byzantine influence, Sicily saw the rise of luxurious and intricate embroidery, especially with aristocratic families, and embroidery was a way to showcase wealth and status, becoming an important element of bridal trousseaus prepared for marriage.

 

This further evolved under Arab influence and later in the Norman and Spanish periods. It was in later periods that embroidery flourished within Sicilian noble families and started to spread among middle-class families. 

 

Dowries had of course also a social role as a reflection of a family's social status or as a symbolic value featuring religious or protective motifs intended to bring good fortune, fertility, and protection to the marriage. 

 

What do the various motifs and patterns in Sicilian embroidery represent?

Apart from religious motifs like crosses, sacred hearts, and others, the rich nature in Sicily has inspired many motifs. 

• Flowers and Leaves: Floral patterns are very common in Sicilian embroidery, often symbolizing beauty, fertility, and growth. Flowers like roses or pomegranates may represent love, life, and renewal.
• Wheat: Sicily has a strong agricultural tradition, and wheat is often a symbol of abundance, prosperity, and good harvests. Wheat motifs in embroidery might also evoke wishes for the family's financial success and stability.
• Olive Branches: The olive tree is a symbol of peace and longevity, as well as a representation of Sicilian heritage and the importance of agriculture.
  
  

How is the tradition of embroidery passed down through generations in Sicilian families?

In the past, embroidery was part of a girl's upbringing and traditionally regarded as an essential skill for women, particularly in rural Sicilian communities, where it was a reflection of a girl's domestic ability, patience, and creativity.

 

Furthermore, in some Sicilian villages, embroidery was not just confined to the family but extended to a whole community of women across generations, and many villages are known for their specialization in specific embroidery techniques. Families in these villages would take great pride in perfecting these methods and passing them down, ensuring that unique regional styles were preserved and celebrated across generations. 

 

What efforts are being made to preserve and promote the tradition of Sicilian embroidery today?

Locally, in some places there are efforts by small groups of embroiderers, sponsored by mayors or churches. There are many little museums in Sicily, but they are almost unknown and rarely visited. As of my knowledge, there is no other project like ours that uses advanced technology to preserve an ancient tradition.

  

 

 

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Potatoes are not commonly used in Sicilian cooking. For my nonna, there were two exceptions: her insalata vastasa and a main dish called gattò di patate. 

The name gattò comes from gâteau, the French word for cake. The rich dish was created in the late 18th century by French chefs who served at the Bourbon court. These so-called monsieurs or monzù were brought to the Kingdom of Naples by Queen Maria Carolina of Habsburg, wife of King Ferdinand IV of Bourbon and Marie Antoinette's sister.

 

I recently stumbled on a recipe for a gattò created by Letizia Mattiacci, a Rome-based food writer, cookbook author, and Madonna del Piatto cooking class instructor. While Letizia uses ham, this potato cake can easily be made vegetarian by substituting spinach.

 

Letizia and I spoke about her winding path from entomologist, a biologist who studies insects, to agriturismo owner and then cooking class instructor. She told me about her gattò recipe and shared tips and tricks for achieving the perfect gattò structure.

 

 

What is your background?

I was born in Perugia, but my mother was from Librizzi, Sicily. She moved to Perugia in the 1960s for work, and there, she met my father, who was a local in Umbria. So, I spent my youth there. 

 

Then, I started a Ph.D. program in insect ecology. I didn't speak a word of English, and I had never been anywhere. In the second year of my Ph.D. program, I took a plane for the first time to move to the United States for six months of lab work. And that was the first big adventure of my life.

 

I worked in a couple of labs in Washington, D.C. I worked in Beltsville, Maryland, at the USDA lab, and then I worked at Texas A&M University. I loved it so much that I went back in the second summer to finish some of the experimental work I had done there. 

After that, I started traveling for work. I found my first postdoc in the Netherlands. I met a lovely, tall, and skinny Dutch guy who, at some point later, I married. He's also an entomologist. 

We worked as scientists in the Netherlands for three years and did some field work in Zimbabwe. I worked with the United Nations in Vienna and then got a job as an associate professor in Switzerland.

By then, we both had jobs in Switzerland and spent five years there. But then we discovered that an academic career with all the politics involved was not really our calling. So we did the romantic thing: We bought a farmhouse back in Umbria, in a beautiful place above the hills of Assisi. 

We bought this place in '97, and it took us five years of hard work in Switzerland to finance the renovation. Then we went back to Umbria, had our baby, whose name is Tea, and started the adventure of innkeeping and cooking classes. 

We had friends everywhere, and I've always loved to cook. I discovered that people always ask you for a recipe when you are Italian. 

I always cooked with my mom or with my family. My Sicilian family mostly lived in Perugia, so we always had big Sicilian parties.

 

We had an agriturismo for more than 22 years, and it was marvelous, but we had to stop for many reasons. We sold it, and we moved it to Rome. 

 

Tell me about your gattò recipe.

In the south of Italy, you won't find many recipes with potatoes. The original gattò was made with some sausage there, probably some salami. But my mother made it with cheese and ham because when we grew up in the 1960s, the concept that you should have had lighter food started to come in slowly. By the mid-70s and 80s, food had probably started to be less oily and less rich, while between the 1960s and the 1970s, it was very rich. 

My mother made this lovely potato puree. She cooked the potatoes and then riced them with a vegetable mouli. She then added eggs, a bit of olive oil, and quite a bit of Parmigiano. She then layered it in an oil pan with breadcrumbs and put some cheese and some ham in it. When you cut it in the middle, you have this sort of melting cheese that comes out of it.

My daughter is also very fond of the dish, so this is a tradition. I probably make it once every three weeks or so in the winter. 

 

Can you speak to the 18th-century history of this dish?

In that period, a lot of things happened. There is a dish called sartu, a rice dish. This is another dish that comes from French chefs and has been adopted in southern cooking. For a very long time, rice was not especially popular in Italy, and it was considered a food for the sick. 

Then, the French cooks at the Bourbon court elaborated on these exotic ingredients. They realized they had to offer them in a way that reflected the local tradition. Most likely, the French wouldn't have made a rice casserole with tomato sauce, but they put tomato sauce in it, which made it more palatable for the local court.

What are some other Sicilian potato recipes you would recommend?

While in the past, potatoes were indeed not common in Sicilian cuisine, there are a handful of recipes that might be nice to consider. My grandmother Rosaria made whole-baked potatoes stuffed with meat and cheese.

 

Here are a couple more examples:

• Patate Vastase from Trapani
• Patate apparecchiate from Siracusa

 

What are some important tricks for achieving the right gattò structure?

It's important to cook the potatoes just right so they don't absorb too much water, and it's important to have good-quality potatoes. Your equivalent in the U.S. would be Yukon Gold potatoes. If you have floury potatoes, they will absorb too much water, and your gattò will not have the right texture because you want it to be fluffy. In recent years, I have microwaved the potatoes because they do not absorb any humidity except their own.

If you boil your potatoes, do so with the peel on so they don't absorb too much moisture. If you feel they've gotten a little bit overcooked, you could put them in the oven and dry them a bit after that. 

It's important to do a good job with the ricing. Just smashing will not give you a good structure. The easiest way is actually using a vegetable mouli. 

Then, you beat the eggs in there quite soon while the potatoes are still warm. You beat all the ingredients together, but what matters is the eggs because they will hold it together.

After that, you can just put it in a bowl so it doesn't stick and let it cool off. This is the most important part. It's also important to taste it for seasoning because it has to be sweet. If you use ham, it is sweet; if you use some melting cheese, it is also sweet. If you don't give it a little bit of salt and pepper and maybe a dash of nutmeg to contrast, then you will have something that is a bit bland.

  

The rest is very easy. Oil or butter your pan and sprinkle it with breadcrumbs—good breadcrumbs, not store-bought. [Get Letizia's breadcrumbs recipe here.]

To keep the shell whole, take two spoons and spoon the potato all over the top. Then, wet one of the spoons and very lightly push it down. If you start moving your potatoes around, the crust will break.

For my recipe, I normally make three layers of potatoes, so you also have to decide how many potatoes to use for that size of pan. I like to use a Pyrex circular pan, but it works in many different pans. 

 

Then, I layer my cheese and ham. I like to use Scamorza, but it's not easy to find in the United States. A good-quality cow's milk cheese that melts easily without becoming watery is ideal. 

I make two layers and then sprinkle again with breadcrumbs, a little bit of Parmigiano, and a few dots of butter. 

 

What do you hope at-home cooks will take away from your gattò recipe?

This is an easy family food. It is good the day you make it and gives you good leftovers. You can make it for a party. It is a very easy, practical, and inexpensive dish to make nowadays. And it makes children very happy.

After a certain age, we worry about calories and blah blah. But it is good food; I don't know anybody who doesn't like it.

 

>>Get Letizia's gattò recipe here!<<

 

 

 

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Oriana Lamarca creates vibrant jewelry, channeling over 100 hues and dozens of motifs inspired by her Sicilian heritage. Her brands, Oriana Lamarca Designs and My Sicilian Love Affair, have together served as a colorful beacon that kept her going even through the lowest points in her health and personal life. 

"My hashtag is #addictedtoarmcandy, and I love to say that my addiction to designing these bracelets and this passion that I have for what I do truly did save my life," says Oriana. "And through it all, I've just had so many amazing experiences."

Oriana shared with me her deep connection with her Sicilian roots and how that shapes her designs, how she got started, her passion for color, how she balances the trendy and the timeless, and more. 

What is your connection to Sicily?

My parents were both born and raised in Sicily. They both came over as teenagers. My mom's from Castellammare del Golfo; we still have the house she was born and raised in, and we recently did some renovations. And so she and I went back and forth.

My dad is from Agrigento, so a little farther south. My grandparents, up until pre-COVID lived there from September to June. So, growing up, I always would spend a couple weeks at a time staying with them and spending time in Sicily. I have beautiful memories of that and continuing the Sicilian traditions through everything we do, including holidays and food.

 

What role does your Sicilian heritage play in your designs?

Pretty much everything revolves around that. I have another website dedicated to my love for Sicily, which is called MySicilianLoveAffair.com. And there's also an Instagram attached to it. My Sicilian heritage is the basis of everything I do and design and my storytelling.

 

I was actually married. I got married in Taormina, Sicily, in 2014, when social media started to kick off. So people saw that I was going back so often, and I found myself planning trips for people every summer. And I said to myself, "I need a reference point to be able to send these people so I don't have to just keep repeating myself." So that's kind of how the idea for My Sicilian Love Affair was born, as a reference point for everything from where to go, where to stay, what to eat, traditions, travel, and fashion.

 

That ties into Oriana Lamarca Designs. I'm designing my collections and storytelling and translating my life experiences, values, and roots, all through my designs and creations. I have a My Sicilian Love Affair collection in which I incorporate pieces of ceramics handmade in Sicily. The ceramics I've selected highlight Sicilian culture, whether it's the cassata cake, a traditional Sicilian dessert, or the carretto Siciliano, the wheel of the cart. I have teste di moro, of which there's a male and a female. It's a traditional Sicilian legend. And so I've utilized these ceramics to highlight little bits and pieces of our culture and all the stories that go along with it. 

 

How did you start Oriana Lamarca Designs?

My parents have a tile and stone design center, so I grew up working for them. I went to college, graduated, and decided to stay and help them. I was designing kitchens and bathrooms and working with stones, but I always loved fashion a little bit more. My grandmother was a seamstress for Ralph Lauren and Halston, so it kind of runs in my veins.

I would go to work for my parents during the day, and at night, I would go shopping. I came across these beaded bracelets and thought, "I'm not going to spend a hundred dollars on one. I can make it for myself." So, I started ordering beads. I taught myself how to tie the knot.

 

I started selling to friends and family from 2013 to 2014. I took a break because I had planned a wedding overseas. Once I got back, six months after I was married, I was diagnosed with Bell's Palsy. And so I was home for three months. During that time, I built my website and solidified the concept for the collections and the idea for the brand. Once I got better and started going out again, I did a lot of pop-up shops, like home shopping parties.

 

The website was picking up a little traction. In January 2016, I decided to leave work for my parents to pursue this full-time job for about three years. It was kind of still just a thing that was keeping me busy. I was growing this brand, which I love, but at the same time, I was a wife, and I thought I'd be starting a family. And so it wasn't as serious, I'll say, as it is now.

In 2019, I went through a divorce right before COVID. Again, at this low point in my life, my business gave me the strength and focus to pull through, and I dedicated every second of my life to making it work and bringing it to where it is today.

Color plays a huge role in your work. Share with us the story behind the various shades.

I love color. Actually, that stems from both my mother and working at the tile store, where my mother is one to have always really worn a lot of black and just beige and neutral colors, as well as designing kitchens and bathrooms. Everybody wanted just neutral colors, and I just loved color.

Color plays a huge role in our everyday life, mood, confidence, and so much else. With these bracelets, the idea was to effortlessly add color to your outfit, whether you're wearing all black but want to add a pop of color without it being too much or you don't want to wear a strong-colored top. You can add a little bit of color with your accessories—not just the bracelets, but the earrings, the necklaces, and the bags to complement the entire look.

 

At this point, I have over a hundred different colored gemstones, which allow people to mix and match and create their own "arm party," as I like to call it, to compliment your outfit or add color. I like to wear a lot of color, so I will often compliment all the colors I'm wearing and kind of wrap that all up in one little storyboard in my arm party. Or if I'm wearing just my classic Sicilian black lace go-to type of outfit, I'll accessorize with colorful bracelets to give it a pop of color and fun.

 

When I started with six or seven signature collections, each of which was created during the time that I was sick, my brain organized the colors together into six collections inspired by different destinations I had traveled to.

 

So I live in New York, which has more of an edgier vibe with metallics, white, and black. Everybody wears black in New York. The Miami collection has a lot of brighter colors, like the neons—the lime green and the bright magenta pink, which reminds me of Miami Vice. The Greek collection was inspired by my honeymoon. I had been to Greece, and there were a lot of white houses, blue roofs, and blue water in the Mediterranean. So that was what inspired that collection. But basically, I organized the colors—over a hundred of them—through these signature collections, through the culture of that destination I had been to.

 

How do you source the materials and stones for your collections?

I do a lot of research online. I order from all over the world. The ceramics are made in Sicily. A lot of the beads come from India, some from Greece. My suppliers are based in the U.S., but it depends on where the stones originate. But that's as far as the beads.

 

As far as the other products, a lot of the collection I'm now moving more toward is made in Italy. We just got a new collection called the Gaia bag, a beautiful leather bag made in Tuscany. A lot of our other bags are made in Florence or Italy. Also, the beaded bags are made in India. I pay attention to where I'm sourcing my material and make sure I give my client a product that is not only affordable but quality as well. We make our bracelets in-house in my studio in New Jersey.

How do you balance creating trendy pieces with maintaining a timeless appeal?

A lot of the collections that I've developed, aside from the signature collections, are collections that I like to tell a story through to represent something. These trendier pieces may have a little more of a timeline to them, but I like to incorporate the classic pieces that I use throughout the signature collections, even when designing the trendier collections. Because color is so important in what I do, even when sourcing the charms, I want people to be able to mix and match the bracelets without any reservations. That's why the focus of the bracelet is on the color. So the charm doesn't hinder whether you can pair it with another bracelet or not. It's really just the color of the stone that will stand out.

 

But then I do have another collection called the Expressions Collection, in which there are over a hundred charms that are more specific to a theme or a way to express yourself with something you like. For example, I have a lipstick charm if you're in the beauty industry. Or if you're a hairdresser, I have a pair of scissors charm. So that's where I focus more on the charms. But as far as the other collections I design are concerned, I always try to portray style, class, and elegance through whatever I'm designing.

 

What are your future plans?

One of them, which is coming into fruition in 2025, is focusing more on bridging the gap between Sicily and New York and some travel planning, which I started through my other website, My Sicilian Love Affair, and sourcing products that are not just made in Italy, but also more specifically in Sicily. Because Sicily is such a rich island of culture, we have so many stories to tell and beautiful products to choose from. One product that was just brought to my attention is from a woman who designed a collection of bags using prickly pear leaves, which is really innovative and different. And so I want to bring all of these unique pieces Sicily has to offer here stateside. Along with the bracelets and the jewelry, it is a lifestyle brand, so I'm incorporating more food, travel, and fashion altogether. 

 

What do you hope your customers take away?

I want my customers to feel fashionable, confident, part of a community, and just good when they wear these bracelets and know that they are wearing a bracelet that has a purpose, a bracelet that represents them, and a bracelet that, for the woman who doesn't feel like getting decked out head to toe daily, she can throw this on and feel like she has a fashionable look effortlessly.

I have a collection called Armcandy for a Cause. It's the philanthropic side of what I do, which I started about 10 years ago. I design a bracelet dedicated to a certain organization. I design the color and the charm to represent that organization, and then I donate the proceeds back to that organization. So, through all of it, we're also making a difference together and helping our community. 

 

 

 

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My Sicilian mother always says that a meal isn't complete without a side salad. Her green bean, tomato, and potato salad remains one of my favorites. The recipe was inspired by my nonna's own insalata vastasa. 

 

In true Sicilian tradition, you worked with what you had; if you didn't have potatoes, you could still enjoy a green bean and tomato salad. Sometimes, we'd have it with just potatoes and beans. 

 

The recipe was so popular at family gatherings that I included a mention of it in my first novel. 

 

I was delighted to find a similar insalata vastasa recipe on A Quaint Life, a blog run by Roxanna Shadd. Roxanna and I recently chatted about her version of this classic Sicilian salad. She shared the right way to cook green beans and potatoes, her preferred potatoes, and what she hopes readers will take away from this recipe.

 

 

Tell us about your background.

I am not Italian; I am more of an Italiophile. Their lifestyle, food, and culture speak to me. Ethnically, I have a mixed background of Puerto Rican, Mexican, and caucasian descent. All of which have influenced me in different ways. But it was my travels to Italy some years back that woke something up in me. The slower-paced lifestyle and love for simplicity and food felt sacred in its own way. I brought back that feeling and decided to embrace it in my home, my work, and my lifestyle as much as a born-and-raised Californian can.

 

I am a full-time blogger and YouTuber who shares a simple life, is approachable in cooking from scratch, and loves homemaking. Life is beautiful; every day, there is an opportunity to engage with it. I want to share ways to fall in love with life, food, and the beauty of creating a home that feeds the soul.

 

How did you discover this recipe?

I like to cook authentically because, frankly, I want the real thing. Not the American made-up versions. So, I scour the internet for those wonderful nonnas who share what they are making and the history behind it. Once I feel inspired by something, I write my own version of it, making sure to include the traditional ingredients and not take away from its authenticity. This one I came across after trying to find a non-American mayo-based potato salad and found one that used only potatoes,  green beans, and olive oil, which caught my eye.

 

What makes this recipe Sicilian?

This is insalata vistasa, or an "eye-catching" salad, and that it very much is. It is a classic Sicilian potato salad that is made all over Sicily. I have seen slight differences in other recipes. Some call for anchovies, while others serve quite a plain version of potatoes, green beans, and olive oil. 

 

You recommend Yukon Gold potatoes. Why?

They have a nice creamy texture that works well with being dressed in olive oil. As a bonus, the peels are fine to keep on if you don't feel like peeling the potatoes. 

 

How do you ensure the potatoes and green beans are cooked perfectly for this salad?

Well, using potatoes that are about the same size helps for an even cooking time. You want to cook them until they are just done, not until falling apart. The green beans turn bright green and are ready fast, so I put them in to blanch last at the tail end of cooking the potatoes and make sure I don't walk away. Otherwise, they can overcook and lose the crisp texture that is so good in this salad.

 

What Sicilian meals would you pair with this salad?

This salad is so versatile that you could pair it with just about anything. A crisp, pounded-out chicken cutlet or a Sicilian salt-baked whole fish would work wonderfully. 

 

How and when do you typically serve it?

I like serving it at room temperature. Allowing it to sit a little after making it allows the flavors to develop. It is a great recipe whenever I am asked to bring a dish to a luncheon. 

 

What do you hope at-home cooks will take away from this recipe?

This recipe perfectly represents my food philosophy. Good cooking is about fresh, quality ingredients put together in a simple manner. They make the very best dishes. I think we need to remove the home cook's misperception that cooking from scratch is difficult or complicated. 

 

>>Get Roxanna's recipe here!<<

 

 

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