From Griffin - The Mean Old Lady That Made Me Cook

The Mean Old Lady That Made Me Cook🍳

I walked up the steps of an apartment building in Florence with my family and a nice person who was Canadian! After a worker opened the door, we walked inside a large kitchen and a lady came up to us. She looked like she was in her 50’s with a big black chefs apron and crocs with exotic fruits on them.

She said “This way to the cooking class.” She walked us to our designated spots around a large table with eggs, flour, cheeses, fresh ingredients from Sardinia and Florence, and a pasta maker.

“My victims we will be making ravioli with a cheese sauce and gnocchi with onions, cilantro and other ingredients,” she said with a heavy Italian accent.

“Would you like to use garlic?”

“What do you think,” my dad said?

“Oh, I hate it, but you can use it,” we started laughing and said okay.

It took about an hour to make the two dishes. It all was hard, from softening dough to making cheese filling. We laughed a lot because our cook would yell the occasional comment of “I will kill you if you fail!” and “Good job parents, you get wine. Kids no wine.” After we finally finished, we felt accomplished (and hungry). We then saw five other people walk into the room and take a seat at the dinner table.

“Are we cooking for them?” I asked.

“Of course not! You are eating your food with them. They eat my food,” the chef exclaimed.

So 30 minutes later, we were talking to a bunch of different people when the waiter gave them their food and set the food that we cooked in front of us. It was really good, and after we ate and ate, the waiter brought desert out and the chef came out to talk.

She said “Good?” And all of us said “very.” She started talking about how she travels and how she hates San Francisco but loves Asia and New York. And she kept on sticking her tongue out at us and making weird faces. We started recording her and she walked up to my sister’s phone and made a weird face. We ended up going to bed happy and full of funny memories of an old Italian lady yelling at us to make better ravioli.