Cooking with Nonna: Eat, Fight Pray On Tomato Day

Ciao! I am the editor of the Shelby-Utica Patch. Most of you know me by now, but you may not know my secret weapon in my life: Girolama Badalamenti.

My 84-year-old grandmother, or as I call her Nonna (which means Grandmother in Italian) is a source of great joy to me.

For the past 27 years, Nonna has been feeding my belly with the best homemade food on earth, and my soul by teaching me valuable life lessons through Sicilian proverbs that were told to her as a girl.

Really, she's the best grandmother a girl could ask for: kind, caring, sweet and comforting. OK, I know I may be a bit partial on this one, but I am not the only on who has said this. Most people who have met her have said they consider her like their own grandmother, or the grandmother they never had.

I consider myself extremely fortunate to have my Nonna in my life, and I want to share her with my readers.

My grandmother has hundreds of delicious traditional Italian and Sicilian recipes in her head that I have been trying to get her to write down for years.

Since, I am beginning to think that it’s not going to happen, I will just have to catch the magic in motion.

Once a month, I will publish a column chronicling my cooking lessons with Nonna.

The first video was shot in mid-September as my Nonna, along with mother and several family members, rolled up their sleeves for their annual tomato sauce canning day, where they jarred more than 150 bottles of fresh tomato sauce to use throughout the winter.

Warning: this video was shot off my iPhone in between carrying heavy bushels of tomatoes and cleaning jars.

Enjoy and Buon Appetito!