Marinara Sauce Recipe

marinara sauce recipeThis is a quick and easy recipe for marinara sauce. In fact, it is so easy that it was one of the first sauces my Mother taught me at an early age, twelve to be precise. The ingredients are few and found on most pantry shelves. It works as an excellent base for other tomato sauce dishes. For example, just by adding meatballs and simmering for half an hour to an hour, you have a delicious spaghetti sauce. To make my sauce even meatier, I often add, along with the meatballs, Italian link sausage, that I brown first and then add to the sauce. Also, sliced mushrooms are another addition.

Easy Chicken Cacciatore

italian chicken cacciatore recipeChicken cacciatore is a simple recipe to prepare and uses just one pot (jump to recipe). I enjoy preparing this recipe as I can make it in advance and heat it up for dinner or refrigerate overnight, heat in the microwave and serve with cooked spaghetti or rice. You just need to add a salad and you have a complete meal to impress family and friends.

Italian Chicken Fingers Recipe

italian chicken fingers recipeIt’s unusual to find anyone who doesn’t enjoy fried chicken, especially children. I have been frying chicken for years and went through all the stages of learning how not to get the frying oil too hot, how not to over-crowd the chicken in the frying pan as it will lower the temperature of the oil, and being careful not to get burned by splattering oil.

Mother’s Day Message – A Tribute To “Ma”

mothers day messageMy Mother passed away seven years ago, just two months before her 92nd birthday and to this day I still miss her very much.

My Mother, I called her “Ma”, was born to immigrant parents from Italy on March 20th, 1910. She grew up in Hell’s Kitchen on Manhattan’s west side, a melting pot of immigrants at the turn of the century. I loved to hear her tell stories of those days growing up in New York City with gaslights, trolley cars, and food vendors pushing their carts on every street corner. Those were my bedtime stories that I fondly recall to this day.

Footloose Musical – Still Has Lessons Today


What a show and what a refreshing, lively group of young singers and dancers! This is the 10th anniversary tour of Footloose the musical. This musical debuted at the Richard Rogers Theater on Broadway in October, 1998 and closed in July, 2000. It was nominated for four Tony Awards and was revised for this tour in Connecticut in December, 2008.

I had seen the original Broadway show ten years ago and fell in love with it. It’s a lively production with great choreography and show stopping tunes. The story is about a high school senior, Ren, from Chicago who goes to live in a small town in the Bible Belt with his Mother. To his surprise, this is a town with strict and unusual local laws and a ban on dancing.