About Me

Ciao, I’m Clara! The Creator of Glorious Gals.

As a woman of a mature age, I experience plenty of physiological and mental issues women all go through. Ninety-five percent of my health issues I manage through food and physical activity based on the information and research I have accessed from the National Institute of Health, Mayo Clinic, and American Dietetic Association.

I grew up in an American Italian home and was was the fifth child with four older brothers, 2-3 years between each of us. My oldest brother is 10 years my senior. My father’s family emigrated from Northern Italy, in the Genoa coastal area and my mother was from Lecce, the very south of Italy and what she often referred to as “the heel of the boot!” When I was little girl, my mom knew that a shoe reference would capture my attention and to this day, I still love my shoes.

Both my parents were fabulous cooks–my mom being an amazing baker–and made fantastic mouthwatering marinara sauce. We would enjoy homemade pork sausage, where my dad ground his own pork products. He would season the sausage, stuff it into a sheep casing and dry it with each of us six kids helping. He often cooked pieces of pork or beef right in the marinara sauce. The healthiest meal may have been herbs and aromatics stuffed flank steak, known as Bracoile which was braised and cooked in the marinara sauce.

Their meatballs were a classic combination of beef, pork and lamb. After combining the ingredients, using only their hands, they would consistently form big baseball sized meatballs. Each meatball was rolled between the hands and then dropped in the marina sauce to cook. Heavy in saturated fat, but so tasty. We knew nothing about nutrition. In fact, I recall my mother justifying her youngest sister having diabetes, because she liked to eat cake.

My mother, our resident baker, created amazing baked goods. Every day, from the day after Thanksgiving to the day before Christmas Eve, my mother baked. Of course, we all helped. From watching the oven, cleaning cookie sheets, and mixing tools­–my favorite–to forming intricate star shaped cookies and small crescent roll nut filled cookies to classic Italian lemon wedding cookies (Tarallucci), also known as, Italian lemon knot cookies. She also made sweet dough bread which was used for nut and poppy seed rolls. For the nut roll, she only used walnuts that were cooked in butter and sugar and then spread over sugar sweetened dough, which was rolled and then baked. Oh! I almost forgot about the Pizzelle cookies, but only with anise. By the end of the holidays, there had to be 15-20 boxes lined with aluminim foil containing dozens of different cookies and pastries which were stored in a lower portion of our attic with a custom built locked door that my dad made and only my parents held the keys for.

In summer, we picked wild blackberries and blueberries, so my mother could make pies. From a food perspective, I grew up in nirvana. I remember Crisco being used for the pie crusts– flaky and yummy–and can only imagine that lard was likely used before the convenience in vegetable shortening that stayed solid at room temperature. All possible through hydrogenation or what we know as Tran Fat.

As a culinary graduate, I learned that lard creates prizewinning flakey pie crusts. My education also taught me, like most trained chefs were taught to flavor foods by simply using fat, salt, and sugar. Since I like a healthy body and enjoy a challenge, today I flavor my foods with fresh as possibile herbs and spices, giving it a burst of flavor.