One Amazing Family On My Life's Journey

I was raised by a single parent father. He didn't know how to cook.  My mother died when I was 13 years old.  My father  would leave monies, each morning on the kitchen table, for me to buy lunch and dinner, breakfast conisted of a bowl cornflakes and milk.



Yes, I took Home Economics in school.  All  I remember from the cooking classes, was how to boil an egg, slice it in half, scoop out the yolk mix in a little mayonaise, slap the mixture mayo &  yolk back into the white part of the egg and serve it on a lettuce leaf. 



I never learnt to cook, till I rented a basement apartment at the age of 18.  The family was Italian. The landlady always invited me to their family sunday dinners, which of course included her many good lookin' brothers..



They had two wee children.  Flavio was the eldest  and Anthony was the baby.  One saturday, my landlady  offered me a deal. She said " I will teach you to cook,  if you will babysit on Saturday evenings . I accepted the offer.



Now the real test to her weekly night teachings, she told me,  was I had to make what ever she taught during the week, to her family for Sunday dinner.  They will be the judges of your cooking skills,  when they taste your cooking. Yikes, I thought but did the cooking for sunday meals there after. I lived in the basement suite for 5 years.



We all became good friends. There was a volcano in her home town in Northern Italy. She had to go back and search for her parents, relatives and inlaws.. This would take a lot of money.  She and her husband told me, they had to put their house up for sale. I really hated to see the for sale sign, plastered with SOLD. I rented a new apartment and sadly said goodbye to a dear friend and all her family. I never seen them again.



I will never forget their kindness, nor what a great cook taught me!