My All Around Kitchen

03/13/2024

First Reel is up! A recipe for Italian Tuna Salad. It was inspired by a day at sea off the coast of Sicily I experienced with my husband while on our honeymoon. Story and Recipe here:

Tuna Salad-you either love it or hate it. My husband (who doesn’t like fish) loves it. I (who loves fish) am extremely particular about it. Our four year old loves it on hollowed out cucumber boats with the tuna recipe I’m sharing today. I adapted this recipe from a tuna fish dish that my hus

09/12/2023

Picture of the greatest cat to ever live, Miko born 9/11/01 hanging with the greatest guy who ever lived, Sal, my Dad, who died one year ago today, 9/11/23. Grief is a tricky battle, a deeply personal battle that will last a lifetime. But that’s the thing, we’re still here so we all must find comfort and will and happiness in the little things. I’ve been so sad and angry that life hasn’t panned out like we expected but on this day of all days when so many lives were cut short, I have to try and find the positives. No matter the day, no matter the time that goes by, if you’re grieving it means you love and you were loved. I hope these two are feasting on lobster tonight with Tiger 🦞💔🦞💔🦞

09/04/2023

Last night we had our last meal at my table. I bought it twelve years ago when I moved into my own apartment without a roommate. It symbolized my independence and it realized my dream of being an adult her threw lavish dinner parties. It was a work table, a supper club table, the table my daughter learned to eat at, the table I woo’d my husband at, a table where I fed my friends and family, a table that I cried at, laughed at and cried from laughing at. It’s one of those inanimate objects that almost comes to life in your heart. A lot of people feel that way with a car, I felt this way with this table. So long, friend-you served me well!

07/03/2023

First week of “summer vacation” in the books, and it was a doozy! A little photo dump: Liana’s fever was so high for so long that we had our first stint at the ER, you can see she was not phased by it! Our week home together was loooong though…on the last day we had indoor picnics to pass the time…then she finally got to go to camp! Then we had a always fun time at our Stuytown Pride celebration…then we got to go to our favorite Mexican restaurant in LIC-Casa Enrique. So good. We’ll see what this next week has in store. Not pictured: I’m over the air quality situation!

06/29/2023

Lisa’s Ultimate Chicken Salad! It’s all about the balance of flavors and textures: tender, crunchy, sweet, herby, creamy, salty, fatty and citrusy: it’s all there! Read Up: Link in bio.

06/23/2023

First Day Vs. Last Day. Liana didn’t get to go to school today, sadly. But we stopped by to take a last day of school pic on the way to the doctor. She had the best year 🥰🥰🥰

04/30/2023

Dad always saved his important bottles of wine to share with us, his kids-it was very him to not feel he can enjoy something without us. Over the years we have had some not so great bottles of Dom Perignon that we should have opened sooner. We humans have this strange tendency to save things when we should just be enjoying them. Yesterday we visited Dad at the cemetery and toasted his birthday with the best bottle of Dom we’ve drank together, a 96. It was, woah. It was a cold, dreary, rainy day and we couldn’t gather around his headstone like we had planned, we just hunkered in the car, my brother and I squashed in the trunk-not the first time this has happened, but boy we could feel it more than when we were younger. Either way, it felt very Commisso to be drinking Dom for Dad in this manner. When we were teenagers and Dad got into making wine, his first really good batch was made in 1997. I was only 17, but we were Italian so, I was part of the tasting and being impressed with it. He later learned that 1997 happened to be a great year for a lot of wines, particularly in California where he got his grapes from. So he would sometimes acquire wines from that year and naturally he saved a lot of them. We did drink them over the years, but Mom found this magnum of 1997 Ruffino (good Ruffino) that he brought home from Italy once. We opened it at the restaurant and enjoyed it all together as he always wanted. What a lousy bummer he wasn’t there. I think as humans we need to find balance between saving and enjoying. Saving and letting go. We don’t know how long we’ll be here, but we do hope it’s for a long time. Burn that candle you’ve been saving. Wear those shoes you’ve been saving. Open that wine when you find yourself with your favorite group of people you don’t always get to see. Enjoy life, enjoy the moments, be silly.

04/27/2023

Today is my Dad’s birthday. I wanted to write something about him and I was drawn to Florida, 💭📝💬 check my bio for the full post. We’ve spent a lot of time down in Florida and while it’s one of my happy places, it’s a bittersweet happiness. The first time I went down there after my Dad passed away, I woke up on the couch late one night and just had this groggy, dreadfully sad feeling come over me. He’s gone. After all this time, after his being so sick, it can sometimes still feel like a gut punch. That next day I couldn’t shake that feeling and I was in a terrible mood. Then in the late afternoon, though it had not rained, there was this rainbow in the sky. I took it for a visit, a message of peace and love from Dad, a warm glowing hug that gave me comfort. As does writing about him and thinking of all those childhood memories. Happy birthday, Dad. I’m making a big bowl of Carbonara just for you later. ❤️🍝🎉🍷😘🎂🍝❤️

03/25/2023

Latest blog post is about Spam Fried Rice. I even wrote a recipe! Link in bio…An excerpt: When the pandemic began, Darin bought some cans as a staple when we didn’t know what was going on or what was going to happen with food shortages. I know we all started doing things at the beginning of the pandemic that we thought we would never do and then those things kind of stuck around way longer than we thought at first. Spam became one of those things…

03/23/2023

Greek Salad Night! My family has always been Greek salad fans, and I missed it for years after I started shacking up with someone who is lactose intolerant. Now that you can get decent vegan feta, I love to make Greek Salad variations. I feel like you always need feta, olives, cucumbers, crunchy lettuce and quality oregano tossed together with salt, pepper, good olive oil and red wine vinegar. We aren’t big on raw onion for our tummies but of course add tomatoes and raw onion if you’re not my husband. If you’re using plant based feta, then you have a crowd pleasing plant based dinner salad or side if in need of a pot luck idea for a crowd with varying allergies and preferences. Tonight I added Dolmas (stuffed grape leaves) and it hit the spot.

02/08/2023

Actually wrote and posted on my website! A little Valentine’s themed ode to the meatball: it’s mildly bittersweet, but it’s mostly my personal and staunch opinions on what makes a good meatball. I made these heart shaped meatballs Valentine’s Day 2021-we didn’t know at the time that this would be our last Sunday dinner with my Dad before he got sick. In hindsight I wish I had more pictures of that day, but also-meatballs made in the same vein as my Nonna’s meatballs was a poetic finish. Link in bio.

02/01/2023

Lions Mane “Chicken” Tenders! The other day asked my husband to bring home some sh*taki mushrooms and when he got home, I found myself face to face with a lions mane mushroom the size of my head. I had only cooked with lions mane one other time and at first I was like what am I going to do with this thing? I did a really quick search and saw that people do pan fry it or make vegan crab cakes with it. I decided to go with ‘tenders’ and pair it with a quick vegan kale pesto aioli (Trader Joe’s vegan kale pesto mixed with vegan mayo). I cannot believe how beautifully these beauties fried up, nor how amazing they tasted. No grease, and they held up really nicely!