If you’ve known me in real life for longer than five minutes, then you’ve probably heard the origin story of Mr. Marie and I. I can’t help but tell everyone the story. We both worked for the same theater company, but had never met because we worked in separate locations. Then one day, we were cast in the same traveling show. I walked into the venue, and he was introduced to me as the man who would play my boyfriend in the matinee. I don’t know if it was love at first sight, per se, but I was immediately smitten. A big part of the show was between acts, where we had to improvise with the audience while food was being served. We started bantering and fake fighting across the table. He was quick and funny…a deadly combination. I just remember looking across the table at him while fighting and thinking in my head “Oh no…I am going to fall for this guy”.
Within 24 hours we were inseparable. The first day after we met we stayed on the phone for over 5 hours just talking and getting to know one another. In that phone conversation I told him everything that I thought were the worst things about me and he said “Okay.” And when he told me what he felt were the worst things about him in return, I laughed and said “Is that all?” I thought he was holding back, but he wasn’t, and we haven’t stopped talking since. Our mutual friends all said “Oh that makes sense” when we finally started telling people we were dating. We were one of those couples that nobody actively thought of, but made total sense after the fact.
Our first actual date was at Amoeba Records in Hollywood – the old Sunset location. I remember just being so happy that day. Walking along, reading out stars on the Walk of Fame and just laughing SO HARD. As we walked by a little trattoria, he turned to me and said “I’m hungry, do you want to eat here? It’s Italian.” I said sure and we were seated. We did the usual blushing and hemming and hawing associated with the first time eating together. Then he asked me what I wanted to eat. I picked a panini, it seemed pretty safe. RIGHT HERE is where the story changes. Because this man, who I was already attracted to, who made me laugh like a hyena, who was somehow just as quick-witted as I was, who had the most beautiful big brown eyes I had ever seen, ORDERED FOR ME IN ITALIAN. Then he proceeded to have a short conversation with our server…again, IN ITALIAN. I was a lost cause. He didn’t know it yet but I was going to marry him. I had heard my entire life that when it’s right you just know. I never believed it. Suddenly there was Steve (and yes, for all those who wondering, Mr. Marie does have a real name).
I had a ton of questions. He mentioned he was Sicilian, but I assumed he meant it the same way I do when I say I’m Scottish. Meaning, it’s tossed into my genes somewhere and I happen to have a Scottish last name. But this guy was for real. He told me his Mom was a first generation Sicilain American and his grandma, who helped raise him, was from a little fishing village in Sicily. He even rattled off a few family names that sounded like nothing I had ever heard before, nor would I ever have the jaw strength to pronounce. He told me they have Sunday dinner together and his mom makes “gravy”. Which after a few confusing minutes I realized that is what they called “sauce”, not the white sausage kind I grew up eating. As we got to know each other better and better and even began to fall in love, I was obsessed about knowing everything about the Italian culture I could. It was genuinely a foreign concept to me.
Then I finally met his Mom. Connie. A beautiful woman with beautiful big brown eyes and a smile that seemed larger than her face when she was truly happy. But just like how I met Steve, the way I met Connie was anything but conventional. Mr. Marie was in rehearsal for a play, but I had driven over an hour to surprise him without knowing his schedule. He told me to just hang out and relax at the house and he would be home in a couple hours. So I proceed to do just that. I hunkered down in his room, watched “LA Story”, had a shower…you know, girlfriend type stuff. But as I was doing my hair and makeup, I heard a knock and immediately froze. Then there was another knock. Then this quasi-Brooklyn accent rang out from the other side of the door – “Beth? It’s Connie, Steve’s Mom. Wanna have dinner?” I had completely forgotten she lived next door and did what any rational person would. I yelled back in my slightly Southern twang “Yeah sure. Let me get dressed.” And that is how I found myself at another Italian restaurant, splitting two pitchers of beer, learning all about my boyfriend from the much more amusing lens of his mother. And just like whenever I hung out with Mr. Marie, we just kept laughing. We even bonded over the kitschy pictures of Sylvester Stallone as Rocky hanging on the walls. (I have an obsession. Don’t @ me).
When we got back, she invited me over to hang out. So Mr. Marie, who had told me I can just stay put and relax, goes to his Mom’s to see us on parallel couches watching QVC with half a buzz on and cracking up. I can see the shock that was on his face to this day.
Later on, Steve went to college in Chicago, and she and I became roommates. We were almost as inseparable as Mr. Marie and I! We spent almost every meal together, we would go to the Greek Festival every year and we even had a standing date for sushi every Friday night. As her son and I were falling madly in love with each other across the country, she and I were becoming inseparable right next door. I slowly learned how to flip people off in Italian, how to drop the last syllable of prosciutt(o) and past(a). And, I finally found out that the Sunday Gravy story was a hoax. Something he had borrowed to make himself sound more Italian and impress me. He didn’t need to geld the lily like that, but it definitely worked. I also learned about his grandma, who was a gifted seamstress. She cooked big Italian meals for the family when she wasn’t playing Bingo.
Years later, I was hooked on all things Italian. We would take family trips to the local deli for the major holidays. I learned what “gabagool” actually is. I can finally say “Sfogliatella”. I can eat a pepper shooter with the best of them. But the COOKIES y’all. They were amazing. Not at all the super sweet confections I grew up loving. They were almost savory, with just enough sweetness to make you want to pound 10 more. And instead of eating them with milk, you had a fresh poured espresso that just made them taste that much better.
When Steven asked if he could become Mr. Marie, he proposed with his Grandmother’s engagement ring that his grandpa had bought her a little less than a century ago. With just my parents and his mom with us at our favorite place. We knew we were going to get married. We’d planned it for years. But that moment was incredible. The people I loved most there. We immediately went to the trattoria right by where we got engaged and drank a bottle of champagne while consistently toasting to “la familglia” and “cent’anni”.
When it came time to actually plan the wedding I KNEW I wanted a giant platter of Italian cookies. After all, in what is now my family too, that’s tradition. Connie, Steve, and I scoured Chicago to find the best authentic Italian Wedding cookie platters and tasted so many different types of cookies. We had a very small wedding. Only 14 guests. But we had what seemed like hundreds of cookies. And we danced and danced. The mother-son dance was in Italian and we played at least 3 tarantellas. Don’t get me wrong. There was also a good amount of mason jars and Bluegrass. And the father-daughter dance was appropriately Pulp Fiction themed. Not culturally relevant, but definitely very us. It was a beautiful day of just combining all of us into one big family. I truly remember it being the most beautiful day of my life. Marrying the man I loved deeply for 10 years and making Connie officially my family.
Unfortunately, we lost Connie very suddenly six months later. It’s a big deep hurt that I still am not over. She was such a beautiful soul. I only got to know her for 10 years but I am so grateful for every second we spent together and for raising her amazing son single handedly into such an incredible man. I try not to dwell on her being gone. I try to always picture her at her only son’s wedding, drinking champagne, dancing, and eating sesame cookies. I miss you so much Connie. Almost 6 years later I still can’t believe you are gone. I just hope you can somehow see what I am doing. That I’m carrying on your legacy and your family’s legacy along with mine. I miss you, Ma.
Soooo, wow. This was a blog and a half. Or maybe it was more of a memory dump? I don’t know, this episode shook a lot of things loose for me. But I guess if there was a point to bring it all together, it’s that family can be a real modern day miracle. You don’t get to choose the family you’re born with, and you can’t always predict the family you find along the way. But no matter how they come to be, I think your family has a way of making your world a little larger and your life a little more meaningful. And if you’re lucky, you end up with a head full of memories that you just want to slap together on a baking website and share with people you’ve never even met on the internet.
Yeah, that works.
Buccelate (Sicilian Fig Cookies)
½ cup (1 stick) of butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 ½ teaspoon honey
2 eggs, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon orange extract
¼ cup whole milk, room temperature
3 ½ cup flour
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 jar of fig preserves or 1 batch of fig filling (recipe below)
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
In a bowl combine the flour, salt, and baking powder. Set aside.
In the bowl of a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter, sugar, and honey until combined and creamy.
Add eggs one at a time until combined. Then add vanilla.
With the mixer on low, add the whole milk. Then slowly add the flour mixture. Mix on low until just combined and the dough begins to detach from the bowl. Move dough to plastic wrap and wrap tightly. Chill in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour.
Remove from the refrigerator and place on a floured surface. Roll into a large rectangle. Fill with your fig filling.
Start at the end closest to you, roll the dough tightly to cover the filling. Cut the dough to remove the remaining filled but unrolled dough. Then cut into cookie size pieces. Place on a sheet pan with parchment.
Bake at 375 degrees F for 15 minutes. Let cool completely.
Just before serving, sprinkle the cookies with powdered sugar.
Sicilian Fig Filling
2 cups dried figs, stems removed
1 ½ cup almonds, chopped and toasted
2 tablespoons coffee liquor
¼ cup brewed espresso, unsweetened
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
½ cup chocolate chips
1 ¼ cup orange marmalade
2 tablespoons diced candied orange peels
½ cup raisins
In the bowl of a food processor, add the figs, almonds, coffee liquor, espresso, cocoa, & chocolate chips. Process until well blended. Remove from the food processor and put fig mixture into a separate bowl.
Fold in the marmalade, candied orange zest, and raisins. Set aside until used to fill the cookies.
Sesame Seed Cookies (Esse Cookies)
½ cup (1 stick) butter, melted and cooled to room temperature
½ cup sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 tablespoon whole milk
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 ½ teaspoon baking powder
1 ¾ cup to 2 cups flour
For topping:1 shallow bowl with whole milk (approximately 1 cup)
1 shallow bowl with sesame seeds, untoasted (approximately 1 cup)
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
In the bowl of a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar until combined and creamy.
Add the egg and mix on low until combined. Then add milk, vanilla, then baking powder. Mix to combine.
With the mixer on low, add 1 ¾ cup of flour. If the dough is still wet, add the remaining ¼ cup of flour 1 teaspoon at a time until it’s soft and doughy.
Remove from the mixer and knead gently.
Cover and let sit for 15 minutes in the refrigerator.
Prepare topping if you have not already.
Break off a walnut size piece of dough. Roll it in your palm until malleable. Shape into a ball or a letter, if you choose. Dunk it into the milk then into the sesame seeds to cover the cookie. Place on a sheet pan lined with parchment.
Bake cookies for 15 minutes. The bottom should be brown with the top slightly tan.
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