Hi my name is Donna and I am a foodie. My love affair with food is luscious, breathtaking and heart warming; we have a bond that will never be broken; until death do we part.
When I was a kid, while my friends were having peanut butter and jelly after school, I was having jewish rye bread and sweet butter. It's hard to find rye like that nowadays and hand cut sweet butter, oh the memories.
I'm from a large family, 5 brothers and 3 sisters and my mom made dinner every night, as do I, never frozen and never packaged. Meatballs and spaghetti, stuffed pork chops that she had the butcher cut a pocket in special just for her, lamb with rosemary, stewed tomatoes and the best macaroni and cheese till this day. I was at my mom's a couple of weeks ago with my sister and brother. God, it was hot but she was making mac and cheese and we sat there; in the heat waiting for it to get done like it was a rare bottle of champagne that you just had to taste.
I cook, bake, experiment, develop recipes as well as compulsively read and buy cookbooks. I read cookbooks like people read best selling novels. I am interested and excited about any and everything that has to do with food, cocktails and entertaining.
You know how when you are dating a guy and you think he's special but you just aren't sure. You don't want to make the first move and get disappointed. Then you figure, what the hell and you say I love you first, and low and behold he feels the same way. That's me and food. I always knew I wanted to spend my professional life devoted to food, but I was not sure if food would love me back. It loves me back and our relationship gets better and better as the years go by.
When I was a kid, my father worked the grill in a restaurant and my mother catered. Sometimes they worked together. So I have been around food all my life and got my basic skills and knowledge from my mother... but some I inherited from my grandmother. I was named after my grandmother and with her name God blessed me with the ability to cook and bake. Like me and my mother, my grandmother also cooked dinner every night. She was a cook for a Jewish family and when she had to work late, her boss would say make double and send half to your family so you can stay. So my mother had a larger spectrum of food then most and she was able to pass that on to me. She tells me all the time that I cook beyond her wildest dream. She never thought that by giving me such basic skills I would have turned out to be the cook and baker I am today.
Thanks Mom!
