Mo Rocca, host of "My Grandmother's Ravioli" says: "When life gives you lemons, make limoncello! Not My Mother's Kitchen is a funny, loving, and oh so useful manual on food, family and survival when your mom is a terrible cook." Serving up a tale that is part memoir and part cookbook, acclaimed foodie Rob Chirico shares his culinary journey after growing up with an Italian-American mother who was hopeless in the kitchen. Rob Chirico learned to cook as a defense against his mother’s awful meals. After discover-ing that there was more to real food than canned ravioli and frozen vegetables, he decided to try his hand in the kitchen. His memoir offers recipes, cooking techniques, and tips he has cultivated over decades. He blends his expert experience with an engaging and humorous narrative on growing up with suspect meals. "I was howling with laughter and shedding tears of nostalgia at the sensitive portraits of family and culture of the times." -- Linda Pelaccio, Culinary Historian and host of "A Taste of the Past" "... no mere cookbook. It is a personal story that lovingly and humorously describes the author's culinary coming of age. It is a family's history and it also is American cultural history..." -- Michael Stern, author of Roadfood, Chili Nation, American Gourmet “A heartwarming story of growing up in an Italian-American household where there was no dearth of love, but not much in the way of good food. Thrown in for good measure are plenty of recipes, cook’s tips, and historical anecdotes. It’s a keeper.” —Julia della Croce, writer, journalist, and cookbook author

The unexpected collection of my parent’s ashes from the crematorium opened the door to a new adventure in dealing my parents death that I personally found very liberating for my soul. It marked the beginning of a personal pilgrimage of faith I had no intention of taking, I thought I was dealing with my parents remains. As time passed I realized I had no choice but to take this path – this journey was the only way forward for me. Surprisingly for me it actually strengthened my faith in God and his ways as taught in the Christian faith and it’s hard to describe how. Once I committed myself to the task I had to take action. I plunged my hands into their ashes that first day even though for me it was like plunging my hands into my parent’s dead bodies. It was irksome and revolting to me the first time.

Most Jews will feel intimately familiar with and attached to the figure of the ‘Jewish mother’, yet few have questioned representations of mothers and motherhood in Jewish culture. This volume aims to fill this gap by bringing to the fore the vast network of symbols and images which Jews have associated with mothers from the Bible to the modern period. It demonstrates the complex ways in which the Jewish mother has been used to construct and frame Jewish religion and culture.

Twenty years after she lost her mother to breast cancer, Heather St. Aubin-Stout receives a postcard asking her to come back for magnifications of her recent mammogram. She asks for prayers from her family, friends, and neighbors. Prayers not for her to be cured but for her strength and wisdom. When she is diagnosed, she soon faces her memories of what she experienced with her mothers illness and death. However as she deals with her illness and treatments while she and her husband try to parent their three independent teenage sons she discovers that this is Not My Mothers Journey. Heather chronicles her journey with candid honesty discussing her challenges, confusions, and emotions with daily life while dealing with a potentially terminal disease. She engages the reader with everyday life experiences. She knows that each journey is unique, but she believes that we are here to help each other and by sharing our stories well make the individual path less painful, no matter what were dealing with.

My MotherÕs Funeral circles around the death of the authorÕs mother, but what also emerges is a landscape of personal loss and pain, of innocence, humor, violence and beauty. Drawing heavily upon her childhood experiences and Colombian heritage, P‡ramo describes the volatile bond linking mothers and daughters in a culture largely unknown to Americans. The book moves between past (Colombia in the 1940s) and present lives, and maps scenes both geographical (Bogot‡, Medell’n, Anchorage) as well as psychological--ultimately revealing the indomitable spirit of the women in her family. Especially from P‡ramoÕs mother the reader learns what it means to be a Colombian woman.