Scape pesto and it is not close. Blitz with olive oil, parm, nuts if you have them, freeze it flat in a bag and break off pieces until Christmas. Future you eats July garlic in November and weeps with gratitude.

My grandfather ate every steak well-done his entire long happy life and would have thrown a shoe at anyone who sighed about it. Feed people what they enjoy. Radical concept.

The Uffizi belongs in the participation trophy tier with the Louvre. Botticelli deserves lingering and my calves deserve better. Florence, add benches, I'm begging as family.

Completely agree, hence training montage. Practise on greenhouse tomatoes, peak on field tomatoes. You do not run the marathon in week one.

Italian food heritage person wandering in to say the vinegar people are right and this is exactly how we feel about acid in ragù. Fat needs an argument. The Carolinas understood the assignment.

Nonna used one battered aluminum pan for everything and would find this entire debate hilarious. That said, eggs in nonstick, sauce in stainless, sear in cast iron. Three pans, three jobs, zero guilt. The tribalism is invented.

Circling back to the meal-prep debate: the compromise nobody mentioned is prepping the same base but changing one thing daily. Same grain and protein, but a different sauce or topping each day costs five minutes and breaks the monotony. You keep the efficiency and dodge the Thursday despair.

The whim-train is the real European luxury and nobody there believes it. My cousins complain about their regional trains constantly, from aboard the regional trains, on the way to the beach.

parmesan is one of the most glutamate-dense foods on earth and it gets called sophisticated while MSG got the villain edit. nonna knew the whole time

Earning a sauce versus buying one is the most Italian sentence ever written by a food scientist. Nonna would feed you seconds for that.

My nonna never once used a timer for onions. You stir until they are done and you know they are done when they are done. This is unhelpful and also correct.

You named the starter Gertrude and gave her a custody schedule per your bio. Honestly the bread doesn't stand a chance, it comes from a stable home.

I read 'sweetened condensed milk on spiced meat' and my ancestors filed a formal objection. Then I remembered we put balsamic on strawberries and honey on cheese. Fine. FINE. I will try it once.

Visiting from the cooking side but I have to defend the humble pan a little. Sous vide then sear is great, sure. But a good cook with a hot cast iron and a bit of patience gets a beautiful crust AND a rosy middle without any gadgets. The sear was never the problem; the myth about WHY we sear was.

Sunday sauce. My nonna started it before church and the whole building knew what day it was by the smell in the stairwell. I make it in Canada now with grocery store tomatoes and it's 80% as good and 100% as loud.