My Gelato filled hot summer childhood memories

The first thing I thought of when trying to think about what foods came to mind as summer foods that revisit childhood memories was Gelato.



 So it was nice to see that something from our childhood still remains the same.  On hot days or on the odd occasion during the summer one of my friends dad would pile a bunch of us kids into the car and drive us to Nino D'Aversa Bakery for some Gelato.  We didn't wait for an ice cream truck because we lived on a main street that Ice Cream trucks couldn't stop on.   So when we wanted ice cream we either got it from the convenience or grocery store or we got the good stuff once in a while at the Bakery.  That was the fastest way to make a bunch of kids happy and quiet.  As long as we were stuffing our faces full of Gelato we were content.  I think that's still true to this day for me.  I think my all time favourite food is Italian Food because not only does it remind me of hanging out at my friends houses when I was a kid but it's made with simple, fresh ingredients that bring out the purest flavours of the foods.
Ice Cream or Gelato is still one of my favourite foods to this day.  
For this post I stopped into  
Nino D'Aversa Bakery to get a Gelato and contemplate why I love it so much and appreciate that the place I went to as a kid is still the same as it was as I was a kid.  They did a little expansion a few years ago but it's basically still the same.
When I was a kid i think I used to get the lemon and chocolate flavours, but now I have switched from chocolate to coffee flavoured.  This Gelato is pure flavour.  The lemon tastes like a freshed squeezed lemon with a bit of sugar and the coffee flavour just tastes like you put a cappuccino in the freezer.
It's interesting that so many years later my friend's daughter now works at another Nino D'Aversa location.  Her grandfather is the one who drove us to get the Gelato's all summer long.  I hope that one day she carries on the tradition of taking a bunch of kids there for Gelato.   I don't have any kids to take there but if I did I most certainly would.

Food Resolutions 2012

Every year we make New Year's Resolutions..right? And do we keep them? Not so much. Guilty as charged. Here are a list of New Year's resolutions that might be easier to keep in small changes that create big changes later.

1. Cut out as much processed food as possible.
If it comes in a box that has to be frozen it might not be so good for you.

2. Drink water and cut out pop and juices and fancy coffees. I am guilty of the fancy coffee one. Water does not add calories and will hydrate you and make your internal organs function properly. Yeah I like those flavoured drinks too but skip the liquid calories and save them for some tasty food.

3. Eat a variety of fruits and vegetables. Try buying new vegetables you have never made before and find a great recipe and try adding it to your cooking repetoire. The more variety of vegetables the better the health benefits. And the added bonus will be that you won't get bored from eating the same vegetables every week.

4. White stuff. Cut down or cut out white foods such as Sugar, White Flour, Salt. Yeah they all make food taste good but we have increased our consumption of these things so much that they are killing us. Use Stevia or Agave in place of Sugar when you need to. Use other types of flours if you can substitute, like quinoa or rice flours or even whole wheat is a bit better. Salt.. use fresh herbs to bump up the flavour or use small amounts of things like parmesan cheese to get that salty taste.

5. Fried Food... BAD, BAD, BAD... but tastes GOOD, GOOD, GOOD. yes I love me some fried food. They say everything tastes better when it's fried and put it on a stick and then you have a fried party on a stick. But frying things changes their molecular structure and also adds a ton of extra fat calories. So I will try and limit or eliminate fried foods.

6. Red Meat... limit or eliminate this if you can. I know it's hard to give up your steaks and hamburgers but it's better for you and the environment. I am going to try and limit my consumption of red meat for health reasons and I am sure it couldn't hurt financially.

7. Salmon is your friend. If you like fish then Wild Salmon or Sardines will be your best friend when making food resolutions. Salmon and Sardines are high in Omega 3 Fatty Acids which are great for things like depression, healthy hair, nails and even bones. Your body will thank you and people will notice how much better you look. Make sure you look for WILD Salmon instead of farmed salmon for the healthiest option.

8. Alcohol. While I don't drink much I am not going to tell you to give up your social drinking forever. Just think about what you are drinking and slow it down. A glass of red wine with dinner is a good thing. Cooking with Wine is a good thing. Drinking a whole bottle of wine without dinner and home alone is not such a good thing. Maybe limit your drinking to once a week and one or 2 drinks to celebrate occasions with friends. The average drink is roughly 100 calories. Think of a 6 pack of beer ...if you pass on the 6 pack of beer maybe you can get the 6 pack abs instead.

9. Cooking utensils. Go through your inventory of pots and pans and toss out all your old Teflon frying pans and invest in a cast iron skillet or grill pan. It will last forever if you take care of it and will add iron instead of toxic substances into your food when you cook with it.

10. Cooking methods. Try poaching, steaming, baking and broiling your foods. These are the best methods for keeping your food healthy. People say RAW is better. Buy a juicer if you prefer to drink your fruits and vegetables. Puree your soups and take them with you in a thermos if you need to. Think outside the cooking box.

I know it's hard to make these changes. I have struggled and been successful at some of these things. I recently had a party and made almost an equal assortment of healthy and not as healthy options. Unfortunately the healthy options were the less popular choice and the higher fat options were the things that were eaten the most. It's a work in progress. I am trying to find recipes that taste like high fat foods but aren't. I did make a healthier chocolate chip cookie that people liked so there is hope.
Don't give up. Try to do as many of these things as you can and even if you only take on 1 of these and carry it through 2012 you will have made a huge change in your health by the end of the Year.
I will try and take my own advice this year and hopefully make as many healthy changes as I can in 2012.

I have done it before and I know I can do it again. This is the year to make a change and stick to it.

Have a HAPPY NEW YEAR and a Healthier New Year too.

CHEERS!

Food memories of childhood

It was so hot today I thought I was going to melt and no amount of water was going to help. The only thing that was going to make me feel a little better was Gelato.

I didn't just have any gelato I had gelato from the Bakery I went to when I was a kid. In about a week I will be moving and out of the neighbourhood I lived in most of my life. I have been busy purging and packing up things in the house and needed an ice cream break today so I decided to go to Nino D'Aversa Bakery to get some Gelato. I used to go there all the time because my mother only wanted bread from there but when they started opening bigger grocery stores closer to home the bread came from there instead. But there is nothing like the smell of freshly baked bread when you walk into the bakery that makes it in the back of the store. Nino D'Aversa is an old school italian bakery/cafe where you can get fresh bread, pizza and hot table, gelato and other italian foods along with a cappuccino or whatever else you fancy.

Today's mission was to get some Gelato to cool off from the humidity on a sticky hot day. What was interesting was that as soon as I walked in the bakery and got a whif of the baked bread smell it instantly brought me back to childhood memories. When I was a kid my dad used to go to get bread at that bakery and most of the time I would go in to get it. It was also the place that my friends dad brought a bunch of us kids from our street for gelato to keep us out of trouble and happy. 4 or 5 of us kids would pile into his car and drive over to the bakery to load up on yummy gelato and for a little while we were quiet and happy. Now everytime I go into that bakery it reminds me of those days. Life was a lot simpler then. You want bread or ice cream you go to the bakery, not to one of a bunch of grocery stores. Grocery stores don't really have that same sense memory because most of the time nothing is made in store anymore so you don't have the smell of fresh food when you walk in unless it's artificially created to entice you to buy something.

I bet everyone has at least one sense memory of a smell or taste or sight of some sort of food that reminds them of their childhood. I guess bread and ice cream does it for me.... I guess that's why I am a sugar and carb addict. It just feels like home when I eat it. I can't imagine life without it.

What are your food memories from childhood? What does the food memory trigger in you?

Like I always say, Food is the thing that connects everyone and the thing that lives in our memories from the time we are born until we die. Tastes may change as we get older but the memories of the foods we loved when we were kids never changes or goes away.

What triggers your childhood food memories?