By senior year, I had created a small rotation of easily prepped meals and began creating time to bake to keep me sane. As graduation came and I moved in with my sister, she all too willingly handed over the baton for being the house chef. Working 3 12 hour shifts a week was actually a welcomed schedule change and gave me some much-needed free time to spend in the kitchen.

So here I am, a young 20 something pipsqueak, like 30 minutes into my nursing career, bopping around the kitchen making things up as I go. I cook in a manner my sister likes to call “Grams-ing it up” which basically is the highest compliment regarding my Grams and her cooking skills.

Grams learned to cook Italian food old school style: no written recipes and little to no measuring- a measure with your heart kind of approach. She taught my mom how to cook with these same very precise measurements like “pinches” and “handfuls” and “I don’t know, just until it looks right”. So that’s how my mom cooked for us growing up (just with a lot less butter), and she cooked for us from scratch every day.

And I am ever so grateful for the smallest little bit of that gene that has trickled down to me. This brings me back to “Grams-ing it up”, and why I started a for-fun Instagram to keep a record of my learning and progression. In the last year, however, I have had more people asking for recipes (mostly requests to just deliver it, rather than make it themselves, but still) and that has led me to this.