Back Home

16 Finch Street, circa. 1971. Paul, Elisa & Mom, Cindy.

Growing up, 'back home' always meant Friuli, the beautiful province in Northern Italy my father comes from. Even my mother, a Canadian girl from Saskatchewan with French/Scotch/Irish heritage, came to think of Friuli as 'back home". We spent every second summer there, and my mother made it her mission to learn the culture, the unique Friulano language and – in a soulful, natural, as-though-I’ve-been-doing-this-all-my-life sort of way – the cooking from my Nonna, Adriana.

Back home in Northern BC, she recreated not just the delicious dishes, but also the warm ambiance inside the walls of our little yellow house on Finch Street. No matter how high the snow bank outside, inside my parents filled our home with good friends, good food, hilarious arguments and endless funny stories. It was Little Friuli – a million miles away.

Now, when I talk about ‘back home’, that is where my mind is, not in the original Friuli of my father, but in the Little Friuli my mother and father created on the Pacific Coast. It was true fusion long before California chefs had ever adopted the term – Italian foods with Pacific Northwest ingredients; an adopted extended family of people who had all landed there from different parts of the world; and a warm and gracious way of living in a beautiful, rugged northern rainforest.