Remember Grandma's kitchen? It was all about comfort food, fixing meals from family recipes and trying out new ones, baking together and wearing hand-embroidered gingham aprons. Sometimes, those “trials” were not so successful. My friend, Dawn & I made our first homemade cake from “scratch:” an almond joy cake. We set it out on the front porch to cool while we went ice skating on the pond in front of my house. When we came back inside to ice the cake we discovered a big piece missing, the rest of it nailed to the wall, hard as a rock. True story. (My dad had a great sense of humor ...!)Sigh. This collection begins with the Italian dishes ... adding more soon ...