The goods ready for the microwave–glazed donuts with deli ham and Velveeta singles.

Action shot–cue the excitement.

Ready. Pure happiness begins now.

The Rocke kids always looked forward to one particular Sunday–the day that Mom and Dad were in charge of “serving lunch” at church.  This meant that our family was in charge of feeding about 400 people lunch, in the span of about an hour, in between morning and afternoon church.  I have no idea how the tradition started, but the “normal lunch food” consisted of a metal tray filled with a variety of donuts, usually from Casey’s, a platter of ham and cheddar cheese, and sliced white bread.  The average person would have made a sandwich and then had a donut for dessert, but somehow, our family never settled for normal or even socially acceptable.  We thought that we should skip the bread part and just layer our donuts with ham and cheese, and in a sense, kill two birds with one stone.  As if this wasn’t enough, one of us decided to microwave our concoction for a few seconds until the cheese melted–genius.  In the same way that we were green before it was cool, we created the monte cristo concept long before Bennigan’s put it on the menu.  I don’t know when we started eating donuts with toppings, but it was a normal food creation in our house, especially on the Sunday we served lunch, as we got to have it for breakfast, lunch, and all the leftovers we could ingest.

To this day, this is one of my favorite guilty pleasures.  Sometimes I forget that it’s not normal and will mention it in front of other people who crinkle their nose, act crazy, and then the challenge is on for me to make them at least try it.  At my last school, I brought a dozen donuts and meat and cheese in to the lounge and made the teachers try it.  For some reason, I decided to write about this culinary delight as part of my “About Me” poster in the hallway, and my students found it simultaneously disgusting and fascinating.  At the end of the school year, my kids threw me a surprise going away party and—you guessed it.  One student, JT, brought in the goods.  We layered up the donuts, cut them in quarters for tasting convenience and warmed up the donuts to perfection.

I like to think that I improved their culinary world that day–and allowed a Rocke tradition to be planted in the deep South.

Poppi, who taught me to make a mean red sauce and the perfect meatball. He also inspired me to plant about 7 cans of basil. 🙂

“Nona-Mom,” who brought me the most beautiful Gatsby-inspired cosmetic goodies for my birthday! Good taste and a big heart.

The D’Amico food board. 🙂

Atlanta is a special city for me, as it marks the site of my first big move from home and my first “real” job as a teacher; it is the place where I met my soul mate in a coffee shop late one night and the home of his parents, Mom and Poppi, my Italian family.  It only makes sense that Atlanta was our end-game after being in San Antonio for seven years on a work adventure for Nicholas’ career.  Now that we’re back “home” and settled in to our city life, we’re establishing the family time with Mom and Pop that we’ve been missing out on for too long.  We gathered yesterday, for a weekend slumber party of old stories and gut-splitting laughter, great food, and big love.  Poppi is an Italian chef by trade and mom used to own a successful pizza place, so our gatherings begin and end in the kitchen with the in-between time spent around the dinner table.  We show our love in the care we take to prepare wonderful foods for each other, and constantly learn new food tips and recipe ideas; we’re candid about flavors and pairings–we take food as seriously as politics and religion, as it has become our expression, outlet, and way of life.

The menu board sported a dinner spread of sliders, rosemary and bacon mac ‘n cheese, cole slaw, and cantaloupe.  Pretty simple, but Nicholas and I brainstormed ideas to spice up four different sliders: black bean and shallot; bruschetta burger with provolone cheese and pesto mayonnaise; cheddar and bacon with coleslaw; and gorgonzola and cranberry with a strawberry or peach jam.   We served up our platters of food to the accompaniment of Poppi’s stories of growing up in Jersey and Mom’s contagious laughter.  Poppi spun tale after tale about being the errand boy for his Italian family, who often sent him for bags of fresh Italian Ices, or homemade pizza down the block.  The trouble was that he was warned against letting the ices melt or pizza get cold, but failed to recognize chatty Uncle Al who insisted on stopping Poppi to chat about random family ailments. We shared stories long after our plates were empty and only left the table because our cheeks hurt from laughing and we wanted to let Johnny Cash take over the evening entertainment in Walk the Line.

This morning we took Mom to the farmer’s market to get more ingredients for our pizza and scout for white peaches.  The discovery of the day was Anthony, who makes homemade ravioli stuffed with squash and eggplant, so we of course had to take some home to have with our pizza.  Poppi stayed back to have a “red sauce maiden voyage” in our kitchen, which was quite a success, as he has long been the master of a great marinara.  Lunch was magnificent, and the entertainment even better.  There are few things sweeter in life than the combination of genuine, hearty laughter, great love, and good food.

I love being back in Atlanta.   I moved here eleven years ago and was practically a kid.  I had been to college, but was so naïve and was essentially “fresh off the farm” as far as the city goes.  I was looking to reinvent myself, and had no idea what I would find.   What I found was another beautiful family who loves me as much as my own and I’m so thankful for the bonds we’ve formed, the love we share, and the family recipes that bring us together around the table.