The Taste of my Childhood

I spent the first 12 years of my life growing up in Mount Greenwood, which is a south side neighborhood of Chicago.  This neighborhood is best known for being the home of the now cancelled South Side Irish parade, home to many of Chicago's finest fireman and police officers, and also to Da Bears super fans.  But for me, it was just home.  But my home wasn't just a cute cape cod with an extra long driveway to roller skate on, it also extended to a restaurant called DiGuido's, also known as the Pizza House to many in my family.

This wasn't just a restaurant.  It was the place my parents met and went from co-worker to friend to a budding romance to "I do's".  My mom's best friend Carol was one of the owners of the place, and they both had daughters around the same time; Carol had Tricia and Gina and mom had me. 

I have so many memories of spending weekends sitting with Tricia and Gina in the office next to the kitchen watching cartoons as my mom and Carol worked on prepping food for the restaurant that week.   Sometimes it was sauce, but mostly I remember them making the raviolis.  Sheets and sheets of dough, covered in small rounds of filling to be covered and pinched and cut, all by hand, so the patrons of this great place could have ravioli's for the week.  My favorite was after they would cook a batch, and I'd get to sample one fresh out of the boiling water.  Yum! 

This place was our family meeting place.  I think just about every Saturday night we'd head there for dinner, and usually without fail, my aunts, uncles and cousins would be there too.  We'd take up about half the restaurant being our loud selves, and because my parents worked there from their teenage years and were best friends with the owners we did get some privileges.  My favorite was when Carol would just hand us all a salad bowl and an ice cream scooper to head down to the cooler in the basement and scoop whatever we wanted for dessert.  We also had fun going to the bar and getting the cherries from the garnish trays as an extra treat as well.  Sara spent most of her time at the jukebox pressing all the buttons whether she had money to put in it or not.  The rest of us kids usually colored on our paper place mats, or played some sort of game while the adults spent a lot of time laughing.

I think this is the place that started my love affair with food.  It was where I met my first best friends, who I saw so much I thought they were my cousins, and it was my Saturday night for pretty much the first decade of my life.

Sadly, life happens and DiGuidos is no more.  It's now a parking lot for the US Postal Service.  It still makes me sad on the infrequent occasion that I drive by that it is no longer there with it's stain glass window, red booths, tiffany lamps, and the best Italian food and pizza ever.

So, why this long soliloquy about this place?  Well, Carol came to my wedding shower in May, and gave me one of the best gifts.  She gave me the secret recipe to the ravioli from DiGuidos along with a pasta roller so I could make these from scratch, just like her and mom did so many years ago. 

Needless to say, I was pretty excited, and so was my mom!  So, months later, my mom, sister and I finally got a date on the calendar to make a big batch of those childhood raviolis and that night was last night.

Now, I can't give out the recipe for these awesome, flavorful raviolis that I mention.  It's just not my recipe to give - it's a family recipe and I'm just lucky enough to be part of that restaurant family.  But I can show you the fun we had making them!

We decided we were going to make a full batch of them, which consists of about 15 pounds of meat and countless batches of dough.  Before everyone arrived at my house they had taken on some prep duty.  Sara made the meat mixture, and mom and I made a bunch of dough.  Mom also made her famous sauce, and Sara picked up some Italian sausage as well.

So, we started out trying out my pasta roller to get nice thin sheets of pasta.  I have never made homemade pasta before, so this was a little scary.

I started with reading the directions.  :) 

And I did it, I rolled my first batch of dough

Michael jumped in to help as the dough got longer and thinner.  (Also, notice the giant bowl of filling there in front...yea, that's a lot of filling!)

Once the dough was rolled out, Sara and Mom got to work placing the filling on the dough to make the raviolis

Then they covered them, pinched them, and mom came in with the cutter, so they were ready to cook.

Dad's job was then to boil them so we could get them cooled down and individually packed for the freezer. 

Everyone had their job.  Teddy was our runner and photographer throughout the process.  He'd go get more flour, or eggs, or take out the garbage or move trays of ravioli's outside to cool down faster.  So, he was the behind the scenes guy who didn't have any pictures taken of him.  But he was working hard with the rest of us.

So, Michael and I continued to roll out dough

Sara and mom kept filling

And Dad kept cooking

Until we had made about 400 raviolis (yes, that's right, 400) and were only about halfway through the meat mix.  So, we decided to stop so we could split the meat mix to use in other recipes like cannelloni, or lasagna, or stuffed shells, or stuffed banana peppers, or...yum.

It was an awesome time.  But my favorite moment had to be this.

Pulling that first batch of raviolis out of the water, and getting to taste them.  I was immediately transported to that kitchen in Mount Greenwood, watching Carol and Mom working away on huge sheets of pasta and asking to taste one.  I turned to Teddy and said, you have to try this.  This is what my childhood tastes like. 

Mom agreed, it tasted just as she remembered too.  We enjoyed the rest of the day finishing up the rav's, packaging them up to stock our freezers for that taste of childhood anytime we wanted it for the next year.  But, of course, we did make some for ourselves for dinner last night too.  That was the ultimate reward for the hard work, getting to sit down and share those raviolis together.

Super Yum!!!

So, thanks Mom, for giving me such amazing memories growing up in DiGuidos.  I'll always remember it as my second home. 

And a big thank you to Carol for giving up that sacred recipe, so we could walk down memory lane and taste a little bit of our past.  We had a great time making it together.

I was very excited to be able to share this part of my history with Teddy.  And I can't have this whole blog without one picture of my amazing hubby.  So, I have to give him props for our delicious dessert that he baked earlier that morning.

He made chocolate chip cookies, and chocolate cookies with peanut butter chips.  They were delish!

So, that was my Saturday night, just another Saturday night at DiGuido's, like old times.