All about My Runaway Kitchen!

I was advised to have a photo shoot for this blog, but instead I’m going to use real photos of me living my life.  Some of them will be great, like this one: my food idols (Lidia and Tania Bastianich and my own ought-to-be-a-celebrity-chef mother) together in one of my favorite settings: the grocery store.  That’s me on the right.

I am the “chef” in My Runaway Kitchen.  Although I work full time outside my kitchen and run marathons in my “free time,” my true love is cooking for my family and friends, many of whom I hope you will see on these pages.  My mom will be seen a lot here and is present in everything I do: my kitchen runs away because of her.  I am the youngest of five children in an Italian household… I learned to cook with my mom, who cooked to feed hungry mobs of all sorts.  Back in the day, actual bus loads of football players, boy scouts, marching bands (and nowadays, entire families) would show up at my mother’s kitchen, and no one has ever left hungry.  My mother taught me how to keep a well stocked pantry and how to “cook and eat for what’s ahead of you, not what’s behind you.”  Now I have two busy teenagers in my life and a fantastic husband with wild work hours, so my pantry, two fridges and cooking philosophy get a real workout!  Everything you will see here are things I make and feed my family and friends.  I cook in large quantities so I don’t have to cook every night, so please keep in mind that you might want to halve the recipes here if you prefer to keep your kitchen on a leash.  Message me and I’ll help you think through the quantities.  

Finally, welcome to “My Runaway Kitchen,” and thank you for sharing this adventure with me!  Sometimes I may fill a grocery cart with zucchini and try to figure how many ways I can use it. I might become fixated on creating cheddar cheese and bacon ice cream. Or I might see a recipe that looks good, swap two or three ingredients, add a step, skip a step and triple the batch… More often than not, I set out to make one thing and end up covering every surface area in the kitchen with soup, sauce, cookies, quiche and pie, and call my neighbor friends to come over and bring their tupperware. We will go, culinarily, where the spirit moves us, and before you know it, the 32 quart pot and the stand mixer are in charge, and I’m just trying to keep up. So, tie on your apron, sharpen your knives and throw the rules out the window— let’s let our kitchens run away together!