Cook With Love, Eat with Gratitude

I have been cooking for the better part of my life.  In fact, my first cooking experience was as early as age 5 or 6 when my mother caught me standing on a kitchen chair by the stove making my own hard-boiled eggs!  My father was a fireman, and his very young son was playing with a gas stove.  Oh boy! Was he upset.  My parents and I all laugh about this now but then, it was probably very upsetting for them.  Hey, I was hungry.  And when you are hungry, you cook for yourself! 

I spent many many hours in the kitchen learning traditional recipes from my grandparents but mostly from my maternal grandmother.  My grandmother was such a good cook that we would say she can make the best soup in the world out of an old shoe if she had too.  My Grandma’s name was Etta.  She worked for many years as a waitress at an upscale steakhouse and then ultimately ended up working for family friends at a typical Chicago-style Italian Beef Stand called Mr. I’s.  Everyone would come to Mr. I’s to buy Etta’s soup of the day.  Chicken and Dumpling was my favorite growing up but there were many others.  I remember one cold morning I was heading to work ,which was located about four doors down from Mr. I’s, and the line was around the corner.  Everyone wanted to buy Etta’s soup in order to eat it at lunch.  There was even a mailman that would buy a thermos full of soup every day during the colder months.  And nearly everyday she would sell out.

So, I was blessed to have some unofficial culinary training as a child.  Between my Italian heritage and my grandma Etta’s cooking, I was cooking early on in life.  My grandmother and I would batch cook together, can together, and even experiment on recipes together.  She always encouraged me to push my culinary limits.  At the age of 12, I had a cousin who landed a job as a busboy at a family-owned Italian restaurant.  So, I ended up working there too.  I then moved on to a second restaurant a few blocks away.  It was at this restaurant, name Frank Aurie’s, that I learned some of the recipes that were made daily and expanded my culinary repertoire.  I also was given the chance to work in the kitchen as a prep chef a few times.  I really enjoyed this time in my life.  Finally, two distant cousins of mine, opened up their own restaurant.  It was my cousin Matty with his sister Cathy.  And they hired my Grandmother first and then me.  So, for the first time, my grandmother and I were able to work in a commercial kitchen side by side.  I loved it.  And my grandmother saw me grow as a chef.   In fact, my grandmother believed in my abilities so much that one day she told my parents that she was willing to pay for me to go to culinary school.  Of course, in the late 80’s (yes, I am a Generation X’er) it was the trend for parents to send their kids to college because it was not necessary a opportunity had by all. The trades, trade schools, culinary schools or anything of the sort was viewed as a falling short of college.  Which is why there is now a huge deficient of trade knowledgeable people. My parents were no different that any other parents during this era. It was the trend then, parents wanted their kids to go to college!  (this is a different article for a different time when we discuss social programming…) but suffice to say, I never went to culinary school.  However, my passion for cooking never stopped.  My grandmother passed on and I was never able to fulfill this dream while she was alive unfortunately.  However, I still have her wooden recipe box and it is filled with her handwritten recipes and now many of mine!

At one point, I wanted to open my own restaurant and even had a partner to join me.  We started off in my home, catering small parties and grew to serving around 50 people at once.  This was fun but it seemed to become more of a hobby then a real career. Around this time I also started grad school and was in a marketing class.  I decided to present and pitch a restaurant idea to my classmates for a school project.  I named my restaurant “Lucia’s Fine Italian Chop House”.  You know, I had three classmates walk up to me after class and offer to invest in my restaurant.  It was an amazing feeling!  However, at that time I was already attached to corporate America and had a vision of where I was going in my career.  So, I chose success over passion.  It seemed right at that time in my life.  And I did hit all of my “Corporate America” goals.  Every single goal I made and not a single thing brought me any closer to happiness. 

So here I am today!  I am retired from Corporate America and now living in Canada.  I have taken back my power and living in my truth and not someone else’s. And through Blue Angel House, we want to work with those who are looking to do the same. Additionally, I have taken my culinary recipes to a new level and very excited to share them with you all here on our Blue Angel House website.  Why? Well, because I have come to a very large epiphany over the last few years.  I am one of the people who has struggled with weight for many years.  I yo-yoed myself up and down with weight most of my life.  I tried it all.  I was vegetarian, vegan, paleo, athlete paleo, gluten free, pills, drinks, south beach, north beach (I may have even done ‘no beach’ and in some cases tried to ‘eat a beach’!) and many other things in between.  And I was never happy with any ‘diet plan’ and certainly had a hard time staying on it.  And after all this, I found out why.  Because I was not meant to be on a diet but needed to change my lifestyle.  But this lifestyle needs more than good food.  It needs to be balanced!  And I was always lacking balance.  I found myself striving for such health at one point, I ended up training for an Ironman in 2012.  And I finished! 

But after 4 years of training and racing, I was beat up and battered.  I was tired of living in constant pain and only felt good after a 3- or 4-hour workout.  Why? This is too much.  I went from sedentary to overactive and no where in between.  I then suffered a traumatic accident in 2016 whereby I nearly needed to have my right foot amputated. Thankfully I had a young and very aggressive trauma surgeon that felt I can do more with my foot than without! But this again swung my life back to a sedentary lifestyle. In fact for nearly one year, it was at a dead stop. But four surgeries, countless in-office procedures, and two skin graphs later, I started physical therapy and had to re-learn how to walk again. I realized I was constantly swinging between two opposites extremes of polarity in my life.  So the first thing was to BREATHE!  I needed to find myself.  Learn to Love and Forgive myself.  This is where the spirituality comes in. I started with a life coach. Next, learned Reiki and became a Reiki Master. Then discovered Delphi University and enrolled into the Metaphysical Healers program. However, too much spirituality is putting a person in a place of no balance as well. Fast forward to today and now living in Canada. Alda and I realized we both need our lives to be flexible and balanced.  I incorporated this into my cooking and called it “Cooking in the Flow”.  I was designing recipes that everyone can eat and offering substitutes for the items that fits as many diets or eating lifestyle as possible.  Alda and I eat Whole Plant Based Food. And it is working for us. 

Alda started posting my meals on Facebook and she came up with “Cook with Love, Eat with Gratitude”.  Because each meal I make is consciously made with love and we eat with such gratitude and gratefulness for every meal.  And with this, we are excited to incorporate this into our website.  Blue Angel House is about Wellness.  Wellness is a well rounded ideal that we all must get our heads around.  We need to feed our mind, body, and spirit. So in one aspect. we need to feed ourselves healthy and nutrient rich sources of foods to fuel our physical bodies.  Because it is our bodies that carry us through this physical world we live in. Whenever possible, we eat from our garden to our table! I also have incorporated my herbal studies into the meals I cook as well. Food is really our medicine as well as our nutrition. However, we also must work on our spirituality and learn to be present everyday.  Live our lives humbly and with gratitude. To learn to control our Ego and live in our hearts with love and forgiveness verses in our mind where we are basing our emotions from fear, anger and uncertainty.  So I am so happy to start this off and say to you all; “Please stay tuned!  There is more to come…”  We will be bringing you recipes that I hope can be made (with the right food substitutions) to all folks of all eating lifestyles.  And if you are not following any specific plan or lifestyle. Well then!  Maybe this is your chance to find one!  It is our intention to also teach you a bit about herbology and how we can incorporate culinary herbs that also have functioned as medicinal herbs for centuries! So keep an eye out and look for our recipes! Something cosmic is coming your way!

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