The Moth Radio Hour: Delicious! Stories of Food & Feelings

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That's helloalma.com. This is the Moth Radio Hour, and I'm your host, Suzanne Rust.

I live in a household with an Italian husband,

where while we're eating breakfast, we're thinking about lunch.

And at lunch, we're planning dinner.

It's a family trait that we've passed down to our son and daughter.

We definitely live to eat, because a good meal brings such joy.

But beyond sustenance, food is a magical vessel. It transports us back to our childhoods, back to memories of meals shared with friends and family, back to road trips and vacations.
And through it, so many stories are born, nurtured, and remembered over the years. Sometimes food is what you do for a living.
Our first story comes from Chef Arlene Stewart, who told it at a show in East Hampton, New York, where Guildhall was our venue and partner. Here's Arlene, live at the Moth.
It's late spring, early summer, 1997, New York City, Hudson River. It's the reopening and rebranding of an acclaimed New York City chef's restaurant.
We have to learn his style, his techniques. We have to take his ideas, his palate, and put it on a plate.
But for some reason, when the chef met me me he decided to make me his personal punching bag. No matter what I did I could not please him.
Day after day after day he would relentlessly abuse me. He would say things like, would you eat that? Would that be something you'd serve your mother? There would be plates held.
You know when you throw a stone and it ripples on the water? He would throw the plate across the path and it would literally ripple across to me. Day after day, we're getting ready for opening night at the restaurant.
And he is riding me and riding me. It's opening night.
And the runners are running in and out of the kitchen, the wait staff, the kitchen staff is getting their stations ready, and my dish is the first dish on the station to go out. Now, the who's who of New York is coming to this event.
So there is, like, an added excitement in this. It's not friends and family night.
It is the night. One of the things that's coming off my station is his tuna grab locks.
Now, I know how to make grab locks because my previous restaurant was a Scandinavian restaurant. Now, grab locks is a beautiful fish, usually with salmon.
And you take the perfect amount of salt and sugar, and it has to be balanced. Because if you put too much salt, it will take away the fat, which is so important, to give it that smooth, silky, buttery, sexy taste in your mouth.
You put a little bit of dill, and it just opens up in your your palate but this chef wants to speed up the process he's using tuna and vodka to make this grab locks he's not happy with my grab locks he's on me on me so it's about 5 30 5 5 30 in the evening and guests are about about to arrive, and he is still riding me, riding me, and I decided, you know what? Fuck this. I'm out, and I walk off the line.
Now, I'm walking down the West Side Highway on the river, and I am sobbing. I am crying.
And I have no rights to be walking off a job. You see, I've been couch surfing, and my visa's about to run out, so I really need this job.
But I'm walking, and I'm crying, and I'm sobbing, as I said, and he is right behind me. And he is yelling and screaming at me, you don't have it.
You don't have what it takes to make it in this business. You'll never make it in this business.
And it's one of those beautiful evenings in New York City when you know the sky gets that purple, orange color. And I'm just sobbing.
And in my vision, to my right is the Statue of Liberty, and to my left, it's the Empire State Building. And I am walking and crying and sobbing.
And I remember, this is my love. You see, when I was eight years old, my grandmother's friend came back from missionary in Africa, and she asked me if I knew how to cook.
And I'm like, I'm eight years old.

And she says to me, she's going to set up the coal pot. We're cooking in the backyard.
She's going to set up the coal pot, and that I need to go to the kitchen coop, get a chicken, clean it, kill it, clean it, season it, and bring it back to her. Now, I knew how to do that.
So in cleaning the chicken, it's a principle of you have to wash the chicken with lemon or vinegar. Otherwise, in a Caribbean house, they don't consider it clean.
And I have to make this green seasoning. Now, green seasoning is in every Trinidad household.
It is a combination of shadow benny, thyme, onions, garlic,

and you either blend it or you mortar it.

So I do all those things and I bring it back to her.

She said we're going to make stewed chicken, lentils, and rice.

Another staple.

Now, the beautiful thing,

if you've ever been to the Caribbean

and you get a stewed chicken,

it's this beautiful caramel.

You put the oil in the pot and you add the sugar.

Now, if you let the sugar go too far, it will burn and give you this bitter taste in your mouth.

So we make the stewed chicken, the lentils, and the rice.

I'm so excited.

I go back to my home and I tell my grandmother.

I'm like, you wouldn't believe what I did.

And she sees my excitement and she decides that she's going to take me on in the kitchen.

Now, I am excited to be in the kitchen with my grandmother because it's just her and I. This is our time together.
Every time we're cooking together, it's just she and I. My grandmother was an excellent cook.
She had sweet hands. That's what we call it, sweet hand, when everything you cook just tastes good.
And she taught me how to make Callaloo and macaroni pie and bakes and cakes and sweetbreads. And I just enjoy the opportunity to just spend time with her and learn how to cook.
So my future, I'm here in New York and I'm working through my field and I'm looking for work now since I walked off the job. And I'm going door to door.
I'm looking through the village voice and I'm looking for work now, since I walked off the job. And I'm going door to door, I'm looking through the Village Voice, and I'm looking for work, and I'm looking for work, and I'm being told things like, we don't hire women.
And now, you have to remember, this is before becoming a chef was glamorous. This is when someone told me when I said I was going to be a chef that, oh, I'll pray for you.
This is before the beer. So I'm looking at chefs, they're saying, we don't hire women, you don't have what it takes to work here, and on and on.
So I'm on the M10 bus going up Central Park West, if any of you know New York, going up Central Park West, and I look and I said to a friend, I said, you know what, if I tell God I want to work there he'll let me work there there was John George just opened up it's actually was something so I called up and I asked if they were hiring and they said yes bring your resume and come so I put my resume and I came I am nervous I remember standing there in the kitchen, and my heart is beating.

And I just can't believe that I'm actually here.

I'm looking around, and I'm like,

I didn't go to Culinary Institute of America.

I didn't go to Johnson and Wales.

I don't really have what it takes to be here.

But guess what?

He looks at my resume.

He thought it was great enough and he hires me i'm excited to be here it is an amazing place to work there is camaraderie there is love there's ideas. I'm learning so much.
I'm learning the importance of salt and pepper and just what acid does to a dish and how it brings depth of flavor and just what fat does to a dish. And it's just like a love fest.
It just takes me back to my beginnings when I learned how to cook with my grandmother.

And I can't believe this, that I am now here in this three-star Michelin restaurant working.

One day we're having an event, and I'm getting my station ready.

One of the dishes I have to make on my station is the garlic soup and frog legs, if any of you have ever been to John George. That's one of our staples.
And I'm making my dish, and I'm getting it ready, and I'm putting it up on the pass, and I look up. And who do I see? My old chef.
And our eyes connect. And you know, he turns to his sous chef and he's talking to his sous chef.
And you know when someone's talking about you. So I can tell that he's talking about me.
And I'm probably sure he's wondering, is that her? Is she here? And I remember just standing up and just looking at him like, yeah, I'm here. I've since gone on to cook for presidents and kings, and I can stand and say, I do have what it takes.
That was Chef Arlene Stewart. Arlene is the founder and owner of Cocosine Wellness Retreats and the personal chef to Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos.
She has worked in the kitchens of notable chefs like Marcus Samuelson and the late Patrick Clark of Tavern on the Green. But the vibrant flavors that often inspire her come from her Trinidadian roots and her childhood memories.
Full disclosure, Arlene and I have been friends for over 20 years, and I have been lucky enough to have been fed by her many times. I knew that she had lots of stories in her, so I was thrilled when she finally agreed to share one at the Moth.
Here's a little more from Arlene.

You talk about this term, which I love, called sweet hands.

And I wonder, are sweet hands something you're born with?

Are sweet hands something you can grow into?

No, you have to be born with it.

Every culture actually has a terminology in which they use,

and it's from the hands.

Because you can go to the best culinary school and still not become a good cook you know that's why some people can watch a recipe or what come up and make something that tastes better than you may have in a restaurant or you just make better than someone who spent their life dedicated to cooking because they just didn't have that thing. Yeah.
You know what I mean?

That thing in the hand that you can just, you know how much soul to put.

You know how much of everything that would make it a perfect balance.

It's a hard hand connection soul thing.

Beautiful.

I want to know what keeps you in this business. I know it's been rough in so many ways being a woman, a woman of color,

but you persevered. And I wonder what drives you? What's your driving force in staying? I love it.
You know, the truth is it's satisfying. It fills me.
It fills all of me. You know what I mean? Like I feel like I get to use all of my senses.
I get to use my brain besides, you know, because your mind and your, and your eyes and your palate actually creates the dish before it goes on the plate or before you would start to cook it. It's your mind starts working.
Hmm. I wonder if I take this and that and that and that, and how would that, and it, it starts there.
And then when you see the final product the final product which is you know when you present it on the plate and you're like wow that actually

tasted how it tasted in my mind's eye that's what keeps me is that I'm still learning and growing

and it still brings me lots of joy and satisfaction.

That was Chef Arlene Stewart.

To see a photo of her lovely face, go to themoth.org.

In a moment, hot pot techniques and crimes of passion, when the Moth Radio Hour continues. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
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This is the Moth Radio Hour, and I'm your host, Suzanne Rust. Being the only child at a dinner table full of adults gives you a unique point of you.
Dee Zhao shared this next story at a New York City slam where WNYC is a media partner of The Moth. Here's Dee.
When I was six, my parents took me to a restaurant. Now, I had been to restaurants before, but this night was special for a few reasons.
Firstly, I was going to be the only kid amongst a sea of adults. This meant that, obviously, they're recognizing me as a peer in all of my maturity.
And also, my mom wouldn't be gatekeeping my table manners because she would be too distracted talking with the grown-ups around her. Furthermore, this was a hot pot restaurant.
Now if you have never had hot pot, you need to know that it's basically a build-your-own-dinner adventure. You start with a savory soup base in the middle of a lazy Susan that's simmering away, and you order these plates of raw things like sliced lamb, beef, fish cakes, cabbage.
By the way, I've never seen anyone eat cabbage at the hot pot, so you don't have to order it.

Now, we go into this restaurant, and we sit down.

Everything is moving according to plan. My little head is bobbing at a lower angle than all of the rest of the adults.

I'm feeling in my element.

The pot starts simmering, and I hiss at my mom to order me my quail eggs. If you've never had quail eggs, you need to know.
They are hands down the best thing to order at a hot pot. There's just something that comes together with the yolk and the soup base when it hits your tongue.
The creamy factor is... Also, they're the size and shape of a large marble, so they're nearly

impossible to pick up with chopsticks, especially in teeny six-year-old hands. So when the eggs

come by in front of me, I do give it the good college try for a whole minute, and I try to pick

it up with both chopsticks. Doesn't work, so I decide to spear through one instead with a single

I'm watching it fall into the pot, this primal joy takes over me, and I start stabbing holes into every single piece of potato in front of me. I get really methodical about this.

None of the other adults have holes in their food.

This has become my brand, my legacy.

This is the sign that I own these contents of the pot.

I dump all of my holy stuff in, and as I'm waiting for it to cook I envision in a few minutes my mom turning towards me in slow motion and seeing a bowl of steaming whole-filled vegetables in front of me and her eyes welling up as she realizes that I'm now capable of serving myself food, and I'm probably going to leave her soon. And I like this fantasy so much that I play it a couple of times in my head until I snap back to reality and decide it is time for the harvest.
So I take the communal ladle, and I start rooting around in the pot, and there's nothing. There's worse than nothing.
There's just cabbage. There's no quail egg.
There's no potato. And I sink back down into my seat, and I realize with horror that I had violated the cardinal sin of hot pot I had let the food melt before getting it out of the pot and I'm staring into the bubbles from the pot which seemed to be made of shame and none of the other adults notice my sadness.
In fact, the man sitting across from me is laughing uproariously about something with the lady next to him. And he picks up his bowl and deftly lifts a quail like a with his chopsticks.
And right before it disappears into his mouth, I notice a small hole in the egg. Time slows down as he chews, he swallows, he picks up more potato slices out of his bowl, potato slices also with holes in them.
I suddenly feel my smallness. I thought I was an adult.
I thought I was sitting amongst my peers. But this man took my quail leg.
He took my potato slices. He saw the holes and he ignored the holes.
Well, I am not an adult. I'm a child.
And this cold, harsh desire for vengeance and this clear child logic overtakes me. I am not going to let this grown man, this family friend, this university professor get away with this.
If I don't eat, he doesn't eat. So I start watching very closely whenever he puts anything into the pot.
And it turns out he really likes quail eggs and potato slices too. In goes some eggs.
I wait for him to look away, and I ladle it out immediately. In goes some veggies.
I'm eating the egg. I wait for him to look away and I ladle it out immediately.

In goes some veggies. I'm eating the egg while I wait for him to look away and I ladle it out immediately.
He drops in another egg. I wait and then he looks down and the egg is on my plate.
In, out, in, out. I am taking him to the cleaners.
after a free

romance of hide

and In, out, in, out. I am taking him to the cleaners.
After a free round of hide and eat, he is becoming visibly agitated as he roots around, and he is getting nothing but cabbage. Finally, he dumps all of the remaining quail eggs in all at once, and I immediately reach over to take them out, noticing too late that this time he has not looked away.
And his eyes move from the pot up to my arm, down to my plate that's brimming with uneaten eggs. And for the first time that night, our eyes meet.
And I slowly eat the eggs as he drinks his 120-proof bai tiu while we're staring at each other all the while. I'd like to think that his silence for the rest of the evening was caused by extreme self-reflection and deep regret over what he's done, while I, on the other hand, have a wonderful night, and I managed to harvest more vegetables and eggs from my hot pot.
So I did not become an adult that night but I did get to relish being a kid.

As it turns out, a dash of pettiness adds a ton of flavor to a hot pie.

That was Dee Zhao.

Dee spends her weekdays talking to companies about sustainability and her weekends being enthusiastic about food. After her daughter recovered successfully from recent surgery, Dee and her husband celebrated by ordering pizza, Indian takeout, and McDonald's, all in the same evening.
I asked Dee if her favorite hot pot ingredients had changed,

but she let me know that she was still Team Quail Eggs all the way.

To see a photo of Dee and her fabulous hot pot spread, go to themoth.org. When I was a little girl growing up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, there was an Italian restaurant called Tony's Kitchen, where I used to go with my parents.
I loved their desserts, specifically these ice cream wonders that were exotic to me with fun names like Tortoni and Spumoni. All this to say, our next story, told by Josephine Ferraro, took me back to those happy days.
She shared it at a slam in New York City. Here's Josephine.
So when I was seven years old, my best friend Rosalyn and I used to love to go to Ferraro's Bakery on Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn. And we would wait all day and crave their spumoni.
And if you've never had spumoni before, it's like Italian gelato, but mixed with different flavors. And it's scooped up and molded into these little white cups and we just we loved it it was the best part of our day and every morning my mother would give us money so we could get the Spumoni but one day she forgot to give us the money and we were standing there in front of Ferrara's bakery and we and we were just staring into the window.
We could see Frankie scooping up the Spumoni and putting it into little white cups. And I knew that I could wait until my mother came to pick us up, and she would buy us the Spumoni.
But I didn't want to wait. I wanted it now.
So I said to Rosalyn, I have an idea. I know how we can get money for the Spumoni.
And I said, we will just wait for people to pass by and we'll tell them we're collecting for charity and we'll buy our Spumoni and then what's ever left over, we'll put in the poor box at St. Lucie's Church.

And she thought it was a great idea. So we got our spumoni and it never tasted as good as it did that day.
And when my mother came, I couldn't wait to tell her my great idea. So I told her and she just said, oh no, you have to go to church on Saturday and confess what you did.
And I just cried all the way home because I didn't know I had done anything wrong. And I was also annoyed with Rosalyn because she wasn't Catholic.
And so she didn't have to go to confession. So for the next three days until Saturday, I prayed every night, dear God, please don't let it be Monsignor Genoa.
Let it be any other priest that I confess to, and I will never do a bad thing again. So that Saturday, the reason why was because he gave out the worst penances.
He was very strict, and all the kids dreaded going to confession with him. So that Saturday, I went to St.
Lucie's Church with my mother, and when we got in, I put the money in the poor box, what was left over, you know, after the spumoni. And I waited my turn to go to confession.
I was really scared. And my mother went into the confessional box first.
and when she came out, she just looked at

me and she said, mm-hmm.

And I knew that that meant it was Monsignor Genoa and that I was going to get it.

So I was very nervous and I was tempted to run away, but I had been raised to believe

that if I had died with a mortal sin on my soul that I was going to be going straight

to hell.

I'm going to be going straight to hell. And I was more afraid of that than I was of Monsignor Genoa.
So I waited my turn. I went into the confessional box.
And the confessional box is very small, right? There's only like a little door between you and the priest. And my heart was pounding, and finally he opened a little door, and I said very fast, Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.
It's been one week since my last confession. And I was trying to think of other sins that I may have committed that week, but I couldn't think of any.
So I had to tell him right away about the Spumoni incident. And I told him, and usually they're kind of like profile.
You're looking at them in the profile. And he just turned around and he looked at me.
And he just, in a booming voice, he said, You lied, you cheated, and you stole. And my heart was pounding, and he said, you will put the remaining money in the poor box, and you will say 20 Owl Fathers and 20 Hail Marys as your penance.
I walked out, and I didn't look at anybody because I knew that they had heard, you know, the Monsignor yelling at me. And I walked to the altar and kneeled down on the marble step, and I said my confession.
I said my penance. And it took me a long time.
But after that, I never begged for Spumoni money again. That was Josephine Ferraro.
Josephine is a psychotherapist in private practice in New York City.

In her spare time, she loves writing for her psychotherapy blog,

telling stories, and doing improv with her team, Sunday Best.

Sadly, she hasn't had a good spumoni in a long, long time.

To see a photo of Josephine and her mother, taken around the time of the Spumoni caper, go to themoth.org.

In a moment, two men remember their grandmothers through recipes when the Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Is there anything more electric than standing in a packed stadium, chanting for an artist to come back out on the stage for one more song? Well, actually, there is when your cash comes back for an encore.
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You're listening to the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Suzanne Rust.
And in this episode, we are sharing stories about food and the memories it can evoke. Our last two stories pay tribute to grandmothers and their loving recipes which live on even after they have left us Michael Ember told this story at a Grand Slam in New York City where WNYC is a media partner of the moth Here's Michael That's that A simple recipe Hershey's cocoa, sugar, vanilla extract, K-Rose syrup, a pinch of salt, heated to perfection, poured into a pan, and then cooled in an ice water bath.
This was my grandmother Millie's recipe for fudge. Fights would break out at family gatherings in St.
Louis if anybody dared to take more than their fair share. This was no ordinary recipe.
When the grandchildren all left for college, Nana would make batches of fudge and package them up in old Russell Stover candy boxes and mail them to us.

And the recipient of the latest batch of fudge would lay claim to the title, The Real Angel Boy or The Real Angel Girl, which was her nickname for all of us.

But we held it as the moniker for the most favored grandchild. I was always close to my grandmother, but all the more so after my father passed when I was 10 years old.
And she was just a rock for my mother and for my siblings and me.

When I left for college, I made a point of calling her every Sunday night. When I moved to New York, I continued that tradition and I was so happy that she was able to walk down the aisle at my wedding.
In the winter before Nana's 79th birthday, she suffered a transient ischemic attack, a mini stroke. And the emergency room doctor said it was so mild, there was nothing they could do.
They just told her, go home and rest. And my brother Doug and my cousin Teddy were with her at the time, and they drove her back to her apartment.
They arrived about midnight, and Nana said, I'm wide awake. What do we do now? And the boys looked at each other, and they said, Nana, make fudge.
And so she did. The next day, my brother calls me and he tells me about Nana's health scare and the story of the fudge.
And while he wished Nana many more years of life, he did remark that he and Teddy easily could have had the last batch of fudge and lay claim to the title Angel Boy forever. About a month later, I get in the mail a package in the size and shape of that familiar Russell Stover candy box, postmarked from St.
Louis, but no return address. When I opened it up, of course there is my grandmother's celebrated fudge.
And I called her to thank her and she said, what fudge? That was an odd response, but it gave me an idea. Rather than eat the fudge, I wrapped the box in a plastic garbage bag, sealed it tight, and I stuck it in the back of my freezer with the prayer that it would be many years before I would defrost it to realize my visionary plan.
What nobody realized is that Nana was suffering a series of mini strokes that spring, and that explained why she couldn't remember that she had sent me the fudge. That August, my grandmother suffered a massive stroke, and it sent her to the hospital just as my wife and I were getting ready to leave on a California vacation.
My mother said, take the trip, and I was warned, do not show up in St. Louis for fear that it would frighten Nana that her condition was serious.
The day after we arrived in San Francisco, we got word that my grandmother had passed. And I was devastated.
And as if that were not enough, I had another problem. the last batch of fudge was in Brooklyn, and we had to fly from San Francisco straight to St.
Louis for the funeral. Undaunted, I took my key and I FedExed it to a friend in New York who went to our apartment, got the fudge, and FedExed it to me in St.
Louis.

On the second day of Shiva, my package arrived.

As I walked into the living room where the family had gathered, and everybody saw I had

the Russell Stover candy box, you could hear a pin drop.

This was much more than a recipe. And as I shared the last batch of fudge, the tears turned to smiles and everybody began to tell their fudge stories.
Someone remarked, Nana's catering her own Shiva. Nothing could have been sweeter.

And as for the title,

Angel Boy?

Immortality. I love you, Nana.
I miss you. Thank you.
That was Michael Imber. He lives in Connecticut with Nancy, his bride of 35 years.
This father of two sons loves to cook for his family and celebrate the stories they share over meals. I asked Michael how strong his fudge game was, and he said that while he's made the recipe many times over the years, it's never as good as Nana's.
He suspects that being a grandmother is actually the secret ingredient to a great batch of fudge. To see a photo of Michael and his grandmother, Ms.
Millie Shachowicz, and her legendary recipe, head to themoth.org. These stories remind us how food and memory are intertwined.
So I asked a few people in my life about the meals they remember most and why. Here's my friend Kim Van Dorn talking about summers spent in Shreveport, Louisiana.
My grandfather was a chef, and when I would stay with my grandparents for the summer, he would make breakfast for me before he left for work. Bacon, eggs, toast.
I'd wake up to the smell of bacon, right? What's better than that? And while the food was basic, it was well-seasoned, it was made with love, and it just taught me that cooking for someone is a gesture of love. And to this day, when I go to a restaurant or I smell bacon, I think of him.
Here's another food memory from another dear friend, Meryl Salzinger. One of my most memorable meals was my godmother's fried chicken.
We used to call it Betty's Southern Fried Chicken, and when I was little, I think I thought she had some kind of patent on it. Anyway, she used to take the chicken and shake it in a paper bag with flour and salt and pepper.

And she had this amazing old high ceiling department in Harlem.

And sometimes me and my sisters were lucky enough to go up there and have it there.

And then we would have Malamars for dessert.

I have unbelievably fond memories of that.

And while she gave my mom the recipe and my mom made it at our house, it was never as good. And we told my mother so.
My friend Venkatesh Tadmiri is a wonderful chef. And I love hearing any stories he has related to food while he was growing up in India.
He shared this one with me. And now I know, finally, the origins of one of his famous sauces.
When I was six, I took a trip with my dad to a small village to see my grand-aunt, where he cooked a meal of hot rice and fresh coconut chutney with cilantro and green chilies. I ate this with fresh yogurt from my grand-aunt.
This in memory is the most delicious meal ever because of the special time with my dad. A favorite memory of mine involves fruitcake.
Okay, not the dry, tasteless bricks that so many people joke about. I'm talking about a rich, moist, rum-infused treat.
Around the holidays I have vivid memories of my grandmother Yuna and her sisters Doris and Petrona, women with Jamaican and Panamanian roots, in the kitchen for hours churning the large amounts of dried fruit studded dough by hand in these giant repurposed metal potato chip tins.

The scent was intoxicating and the cake even more so.

I finally learned to make the cake about 15 years ago. And that first bite always reminds me of them and their warm, inviting kitchen.

Our final story comes from James Galicchio,

who learns firsthand about the unifying powers of a great recipe.

James told this story at an open mic story slam competition

in Melbourne, Australia,

where we partnered with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, ABCRN.

Here's James, live with the moth. So my nonna used to make the best bolognese sauce.
And coming from an Italian family, food is the way that you show people that you love them. We used to have these big family lunches every Sunday.

Everyone would be there and everyone loved Nonna's sauce.

We always used to tell Nonna,

can you show us the recipe for your sauce?

And I don't know if any of you know any Nonna's,

but they never tell you their recipes.

Because they think that if you can cook their food as good as they can,

you'll stop coming to visit them.

So Nonna used to always say to us,

I can't tell you the recipe, but you can come over anytime you like and I'll cook it for you. As I got older, my family dynamic changed quite a bit.
My parents got divorced and my mum developed quite a severe mental illness. And growing up for me was really hard.
My mum could barely take care of herself, let alone raise me, and I felt like I was taking care of her as well as raising myself. And I started to really resent my family.
They stopped inviting her to the family lunches because my parents were divorced. But I felt like they were abandoning her, and I felt in a way they were abandoning me.
And they didn't know the true extent of what was happening for me at home, but I started to really hate them, and I started arguing with them and being angry at them. Eventually, the weekly family lunches went to monthly family lunches, went to Easter and Christmas.
Eventually, my nonna died, and she took a recipe for bolognese with her. As I got older when I was in my 20s, on the rare times that I did see my family, it dredged up so many awful memories from my childhood, and I started getting such bad anxiety every time I would see them.
I would spend most of our family lunches in the bathroom trying not to have a panic attack, and I couldn't tell my family that they gave me anxiety. I couldn't tell them they were giving me panic attacks, so I didn't tell them anything, and they thought I was just an asshole.
They thought that I hated them. They thought that I was too good for them, and I was stuck stuck up and they thought that I was a bad son, a bad brother, a bad nephew, a bad grandson.
And I just had so much guilt about this. And the guilt got so bad that as weird as it sounds, three years ago, almost to the day, I packed a bag and I left.
I left Melbourne, I left Australia, and I just started traveling. I realized that when I was traveling, I could be anybody that I wanted.
I didn't have to carry my family with me. I didn't have to have this guilt anymore.
And for the first time in years, I felt free. After three years of that, I decided I probably wanted to settle down somewhere, and I decided I wanted to live in Europe.
I was eligible to get my Italian citizenship through my non-less family. And there's two ways you can get citizenship for Italy.
You can come back to Australia and try to get it for the consulate here, which takes about two years, or you can go to Italy, to your ancestral home, live there for about two months, and get it in person. So that's how I found myself on a four-hour bus ride up a mountain from Naples, going to the tiny hundred-person town on the top of the mountain where my nonna was born.
And I had emailed the one family member I knew of in Italy named Vittoria, and she was my nonna's niece. And I'd never met this woman, I'd never seen a photo of this woman, but as soon as I got off the bus, I knew exactly who she was because she looked exactly like my nonna.
And she came running up to me and she gave me a big nonna hug. And she took me to her house.
And when I opened the door, there were 20 people waiting inside. And she had organized a surprise party for me.
And everybody in there were my relatives from all over southern Italy. And they had come two or three hours each just to come and meet me.
And they'd never heard of me before, but I was family and they wanted to meet me. they bought me presents they had photos of my family to show me they wanted to hear stories from me we had this big family lunch and I smelt something coming from the kitchen and it was this really nostalgic smell and I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was and Vittoria comes out looking just like my nonna holding this big pot and I realised it was nonna's sauce.
And I lost her. I started crying.
And everyone else started crying, and I think they thought I was just really, like, emotional about pasta. Which in a way I am.
And so I lived in Grumento Nova for six weeks, and my family did so much for me there. And these are people who didn't know me at all.
They knew nothing about me. And I didn't know them.
I just some random Australian who emailed them. And they took me in.
And it was the first time I felt family for decades. The day that I got my Italian citizenship, that should have been the beginning.
That should have been the beginning of my life in Europe. That should have been the beginning of my emancipation.
But when I held that passport on my hand, all I could feel was that it was the end. It was the end of me running from my childhood.
It was the end of me running from my family. It was the end of me trying to live without people in my life who cared about me.
And that was the day I booked a flight back to Australia. I got back to Australia three or four months ago

and people in my life who cared about me. And that was the day I booked a flight back to Australia.

I got back to Australia three or four months ago.

And when I got back, I was really anxious about how I was going to try to start rekindling my relationship with my family.

And I sent them a message and I said, I just got back from Europe

and I spent a few months in Grumentanova.

And you won't believe it, they taught me how to make nonna sauce. And they responded straight away and they said, oh my god, you have to tell us the recipe.
And I said, I can't tell you the recipe but you can come over anytime you like and I'll cook it for you. Thank you.
James Galicchio This is an app developer from Melbourne, Australia, where he lives with his wife and twin daughters. His story takes place in Grumento Nova, a tiny mountain town in southern Italy.
James is still in touch with his Italian relatives and has been back to visit them several times, and they stay connected on WhatsApp. I asked James if he ever shares his Nonna's recipe.
He said, nope, I'm stubborn like that. So you won't find it on our website, but you can see a photo of James with his daughters, hopefully future sauce makers, on themoth.org.
Hearing James's story, I couldn't help but think of Marissa, my wonderful Italian mother-in-law who passed away very recently. Her Sunday lunches were epic, pasta of ricotta and spinach, followed by a perfect roast and vegetables of some kind, and always a homemade dessert.
I would always compliment her on the delicious meal, and she would humbly say, Oh, it's really nothing special. But it was.
And I'm very fortunate that my husband Marco inherited his mother's skills in the kitchen. Dinners at our home are also very special.
So I asked Marco if he had any particular food memory to share. Well, my mom cooked a lot of delicious foods.
You know, pasta with chickpeas, lasagnas, a lot of interesting stuff. But one of my fondest memories is when I was a little kid, coming back from school.
She would make me rosetta bread with olive oil, salt and vinegar. And it was delicious.
It made me feel loved. That was my husband, Marco Calo.
To see a photo of Nona and Marco sitting at her dining room table in Rome, head to our extras at themoth.org. I'd like to thank all of the tellers for sharing these moments with us.
And I'd like to thank the people in our lives who nourish us with love and delicious things to eat.

That's it for this episode of the Moth Radio Hour.

We hope you'll join us next time.

And that's the story from the Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, and Suzanne Rust, who also hosted the show. Co-producer is Vicki Merrick, associate producer Emily Couch.
The stories were directed by Sarah Austin Janess and Michelle Jalowski, with additional Grand Slam coaching by Chloe Salmon. The rest of the Moss leadership team include Sarah Haberman, Christina Norman, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Marina Cluche, Leanne Gully, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Aldi Caza.
Moss stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift.
Other music in this hour from Beppe Gambetta, Carlo Aonzo, and David Grissman, Luis Bakalov, Luis Bonfa, Bruno Bertoli, Cora Jazz Trio, and Ernest Wranglin. We receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Moth Radio Hour

is produced by Atlantic Public

Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Special thanks to

our friends at Odyssey, including

executive producer Leah Reese Dennis.

For more about our podcast,

for information on pitching us

your own story, and everything else,

go to our website, themoth.org.