Meet Marisa

Marisa is a first-generation Italian American and a native speaker of the Italian language. Through her cooking, her garden, and her writing, she keeps the traditions she was raised with alive — and passes them on.

Those traditions came to Ohio with her family and never left. Every September, her grandfather Ernesto and her mother Brigida would order cases of grapes, and the family would press, barrel, and store their own wine and vinegar for the year. That harvest rhythm — la vendemmia — still shapes her kitchen calendar.

Her garden is a working one. She plants garlic in the fall to dig up at the end of May, puts up olives the Sicilian way, and cans tomatoes by the tableful. A good deal of what turns up in her recipes started in her own backyard.

Each month she films a new lesson for her YouTube channel — bread and pizza dough, eggplant parmesan, struffoli at Christmas, braided Easter bread with eggs colored the old way, without dye. And each month she writes about the Italian calendar: the feast days, the festivals, the sayings, and a handful of words worth carrying with you.

When she isn't in the kitchen or the garden, Marisa is with her family — her four adult children, her three granddaughters and her grandson, with another grandchild on the way, and her husband Dan. She also loves dancing and reading. She has lived in Cleveland, Ohio for more than twenty years.

"La cucina è l'arte di trasformare la storia in cibo."

— Cooking is the art of transforming history into food

Marisa is also the author of Marisella, a memoir of growing up Italian American in Cleveland. Want to say hello? Write to her.