Simple and Delicious

        ``Cooking well does not mean cooking fancy``. Julia Child said this  in her book ``With enough butter, anything is good``. For some people, food is just a necessity to satisfy basic needs, but for me food is a pleasure that plays a significant role in my life. I was born in Albania,but when  I was a child, my family and I moved to Italy. Italy it is a beautiful country , and it is home of the most famous structures in the world, like the Colosseum and Tower of Pisa. It is the home of the fashion  mode, including Armani, Gucci, Versace, Prada, but Italy is, perhaps most famous for its cuisine. The best way to describe  the Italian food is simplicity and happiness,  it brings my memory back to when I was in Italy, and it reminds me of my origin, where I come from.       

                What makes Italian cuisine popular  around the world is the variety of the dishes made with a small number of ingredients. Italian cuisine is generally characterized by its simplicity , where many dishes have only two to four ingredients. I miss going at the restaurant and ordering a simple  dish that is called  Pasta al pomodoro,  which in English means Tomato Pasta. There is nothing  better than the flavor of an organic fresh tomato. Moving to a big city like Chicago, tooked me a lot of time to get used to its cuisine.  Chicago has an International cuisine, that means food from all over the world. Mexican`s food like Taco, Burrito for example, is delicious but it took me more than two years to adopt with their ingredients and the way how they mix  some of this ingredients , in one dish. I  had in the beginning difficulty  ordering  from the menu when my husband and me  were at the restaurant,because the menu has a variety of a new ingredients that makes me more confused, and takes my palate away.  Back home everything is different,and for finding one particular dish you need to travel a lot.

                  Italian  geography is separated in twenty regions, and  each of them has its  particular simple dish, so people back home are used to traveling a lot ,tasting  different  dishes and visiting the beautiful places and panorama that different cities have. I used to travel a lot with my friends and family. In my journey I enjoy not only the food, but I had precious time with my friends and family. When my friends and I went to Sicily,  we ate the best dessert ever, called Cannolli. It is  crispy dessert tubs  filled with ricotta cheese, and people  can find it only going in Sicily, making the Italian food more desiderable.  In Chicago, people  just need to drive their car and in a short period of time they  can find, food from all over the world. My husband and I like to go out and eat on the restaurants. I can say that sometimes I felt uncomfortable because on the menu I read names of product that I never heard , but regardless all of this I am curious to tray and explore this new international cuisine.

              Toscany is the region where I grow up. Toscany`s food is based on the idea of Cucina Povera or in English Poor Cuisine. The place where my mom used to shop to buy  all the organic fresh ingredients is called Il Mercato or in English the marke.It is the place where farmers sell their products,is not difficult to shop because they sell only seasonal  products. My mom usually likes cooking from scratch. So, after the shopping at the market she loves to prepare for her family different delicious dishes. I miss those moment because at the end of the day all the  whole  family was sitting in the table and tasting the amazing food and communicate with each other. Food is important because is a union for my family. Since I am living in Chicago I don't like to go at the grocery store. I feel like I am lost when I am inside of it. In the United States everything is big and inside of the store you have a variety of foods. For example, five kind of potato like : ratte,vitelotte,sweet, and fingerling potatoes. All of this variety makes me confused and I don't know what to buy and cook when I come home. Sometimes, I make plans with friend  in Chicago to eat all together, but they prefer more to order food, and this part makes me more and more nostalgic because I feel that I am losing my roots. Sometimes I feel lost in Chicago, in this big,fascinating and amazing city.

              Moving abroad was very difficult and at the same time an important decision for me. I will always talk to my husband and friends  about the simplicity of the Italian cuisine. I will always remember that our dishes taste  better thanks to the organic products that people  cultivate and thanks to the geographic position.The food for me always taste better back home. Even though I miss my family and country a lot, I can say that home is where the heart is. I came to Chicago to start a new family because my husband and my daughter are my everything. Finally, after all the struggles and the difficulty from the beginning, I`m happy to say that I am lucky to live in Chicago and to explore all the diversity of all the international cuisines that this amazing and wonderful city offers. However, I will always be nostalgic for the simplicity of Italian  food,because all the fancy dishes that I have tried here can not be compared to the amazing taste that a simple dishes give to me.