http://lidiasitaly.com/ I also love Giada DiLorentis for different reasons- but Lidia is just a great cook-not a So-Cal movie ikon heiress sex symbol who pays as much attention to her hair as her dishes- she's just authentic-and authentically Italian, and comes complete with a real Italian grandmother who sings old Italian songs with her in the Kitchen.
She is the best advertisement for Catholic Charities that I know of. Catholic charities should find ten such life stories and put together a documentary on what they do and people would leave all the bishops alone.
Interspersed with her cooking techniques (I am going to remake her apple strudel soon) she shows old photographs of her life as a teenager in Italy.
The Italians, recall were on the wrong side of WWII officially, while the population was divided in loyalties. Lidia's family found themselves after WWII in a part of Italy that was divided and sectioned off and given as part of Tito's Yugoslavia. Her father, not wanting to raise this devotedly religious family under the Godless communists (they suppressed language, religion and worship) took himself, her mother and herself and escaped with nothing but the clothes on their backs to Italy near Trieste. There they were housed as refugees, these Italians who were involuntarily expatriated as Yugoslavs- in a building that previously served the Germans as a concentration camp during the war. She lived in this horror house building for two years. There she learned to cook for large numbers of people as the Sous Chef to the Nuns who ran the refugee center.
The family waited on restrictions loosening for immigrants to come to America. They were penniless. It took until Eisenhower was in office for this to happen.
Catholic Charities paid all their passage to America, they relocated them to New Jersey, they found the father a real job eventually and the family eventually got on their feet financially, brought other relatives from Italy -even grandma, who makes a mean Gnocci.
Now, don't you want to know more about what Catholic Charities does in the world? Don't you want to go get her cookbook?
If as much PR went into explaining what fantastic things Catholic Charities actually does, people would understand better what the church means and is in the world.
Can I get an Amen?
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