Jane and I met in September 1965.
I was 20 years old and just out of the 82nd I was 20 years old and just out of the 82nd Airborne and Jane had just graduated Yonkers High School. We met at a birthday party. She was there with her friends of the birthday boy and I was there with his Mom, married sister, her husband and the older brother of the birthday boy. She was in the living room and I was in the kitchen with the older folk. Jim, the birthday boy, came into the kitchen and asked if I would come into the living room and dance with one of the girls so the party would start and everybody would start to dance. I walked into the living room, looked around and saw a pretty young lady sitting in a big lounge chair and asked her to dance. We danced two dances, I asked for her phone number and went back into the kitchen and left the party within ten minutes. By November just two months later I asked her to marry me and the cooking began!
I came from Fowler Ave and Morris Park in the Bronx a huge Italian neighborhood and Jane came from Park Hill in Yonkers another huge Italian neighborhood. We both had large Italian families with over 30 Aunts and Uncles combined. Cooking and eating family recipes and peasant food was just a normal way of life. We both started cooking very young with family, Grandma’s Aunt’s and a whole host of funny loving characters. Within two months of knowing Jane, Saturdays were spent at my family home making and eating Roast Beef or Pot Roast and other homemade goodies. Then Sundays were spent at her home making Ravioli’s, Spinach Fettuccini, Manicotti or homemade cheesecake.
We have been cooking and baking together for 56 years and married almost 54 years. Once married, almost all holidays were spent at our home cooking for dozens of family members. When we moved upstate we started teaching friends to make Italian specialties such as raviolis, gnocchi, desserts, holiday cookies, cakes and pies. We moved to New England for 4 years, from 1976 to 1979 during which I would bring homemade bread, scones, Italian Baked goods to work. In 1980 it was back to upstate Orange County NY and started a Cooking club with two other couples whose husbands did not cook. We would pick a country and one couple would cook the main course, another would cook the appetizers and the last would cook the dessert all from scratch.
About 1985, we went to Jane’s sister’s home in Schenectady, NY for Thanksgiving and worked in a soup kitchen all day. We enjoyed doing that so much that when we returned to Orange County I looked for a Soup Kitchen so we could join. We found one in Middletown NY and I joined first. When I went for the first Saturday meal, I kept quiet about being a cook that could feed hundreds with no problem. The lady in charge that day stated to me she was making Spaghetti with Shrimp sauce. I thought “wow what a meal.” ‘ She dumped plain canned tomatoes in a large pot, put up boiling water and requested that I go up to the freezer and get 4 – 5lb boxes of frozen breaded shrimp. She put the spaghetti in the water, opened the boxes of frozen breaded shrimp and dumped them in the sauce. I am not putting her down for how she was cooking because the homeless ate it all! But that is not what I wanted to do in cooking at a soup kitchen. So I went to Karen the director and said “I will stay a volunteer but that I am a cook that wanted to make fresh food for the homeless and not use government or store surplus or dated food.” I wanted to cook home meals from scratch. She stated that her budget and could afford one home cooked meal a month. All I had to do was tell her what I wanted to make and she would order the fresh meat, fresh vegetables and 50lbs bags of potatoes, rice or whatever I would need.
About five years earlier, when doing the Cooking Club, I purchased a vanity plate from NYS with DIDYAEAT. “DIDYAEAT”, comes from growing up in the Bronx. When I would see a friend around dinner time I would say (with the Bronx slang) DIDYAEAT and they would reply NODIDYOU and they would come up to my house to eat. Within a year the patrons of the soup kitchen would learn that when they saw the DIDYAEAT plate they knew home cooked meal would be on the menu that day. From the second floor where the kitchen was you could see them going around town notifying all that DIDYAEAT was there cooking. Now the soup kitchen used only old bread donated by bread companies and stores in Middletown but I was not going to cook a homemade meal and serve day old bread. So there is an Italian Bakery in Middletown, Carmines and we would buy a dozen loaves of seeded Italian Bread to serve with the meal. We did that for 12 years and it was a blast. There is nothing like cooking good food for people that really enjoy eating it! That is how DIDYAEAT started.
In 1990 I was working for Orange County, NY in the Information Services Department. The county Executive had a picnic for about 700 employees that year. It cost her a fortune. So the following year I suggested that we could cook for 700 people using the Home and Infirmary Kitchen and just a few volunteer employees. So for two years we cooked and fed 700 people a smorgasbord of Sausages and Peppers with onions and mushrooms, Baked Ziti Lasagna with Ricotta and Mozzarella, Meatballs, Sausages, Asian Chicken and Broccoli with Roast Pork Fried Rice. When I met with the volunteers the first time they asked how difficult this would be and I stated that logistically it is like a WAR and thus began the FOOD WARRRIORS. I had hats with Food Warriors on them for all volunteers. After that I started writing a food column for the employee newsletter called DIDYAEAT? I would put a family recipe with all instructions and my phone number encouraging employees to make the meals and if they had a problem they could call the house for help and they did. I did that for another 10 years.
Around that same time, even though we both had full time jobs, we wanted to start a catering business to expand our cooking skills. We went out one night for a drink and designed a folded business card with the occasions we could cater for on one side and a little poem on the other side of the card stating that we used all fresh food and cooked from scratch. A friend of ours, Paula, designed the front of the card with a chef and “Didya Eat?”, on his hat. We developed a menu list with descriptions of all the Italian and other nationality specialties, main courses, appetizers and desserts that we made from scratch. Since money and fame were not our intensions we should have been called Robin Hood Catering because the well off would pay a high price for good home cooked fare and for friends and family we would do the same just for the cost of the food.
We have been called Gourmet Chefs, people have been intimidated to have us to their home to eat because they had thought we only ate gourmet food but over time all have learned that we LOVE to COOK, SERVE and TEACH and we love ‘OP” food. “OP” means for Other Peoples food.
I am 76 years old and Jane is 73 years old. Our 51 year old son bought us this movie camera and wanted us to film the recipes he and the entire family have eaten for decades so we could always cook together even after we are gone. We have three sons and six grand adults who all cook from scratch. Later he stated he wanted to put them on YouTube for the world to see. It had been a battle since we live on opposite sides of the USA learning how to use the Cannon M50 camera, down loading the SD cards with the recipes, downloading to a common drive so he can piece the films together, writing up the menu, stories and keeping our sanity.
He also told us about people doing this that have made a fortune. But we are not interested in doing this for money we are doing this for the love of cooking and serving people for over a half a century. I guarantee that you will laugh your head off watching us create our family recipes because they are hysterical in places trying to film and cook at the same time. Just think of your Grandparents trying to do the same.
So enjoy and have fun, anybody can learn to cook. God only knows how many years we have left and how many recipes we can get done. It will be fun for us to keep cooking, teaching and making people laugh!
Love Jane & Vince