Sharing our Nonna Gina with the world

Anastasia “Gina” DiNatale will forever remain at the core of our family’s lives and hearts, she was our matriarch who lived a life truly devoted to her family. An only child, she was raised in San Vito, a small Italian mountain village in the region of Le Marche. An emphatically devout Catholic, she aspired to join a convent in her youth, however, her mother wouldn’t allow it. At age 18 she met Natale DiNatale and soon after they were married. Anastasia lived through the terror of WW2, hiding her first born and her husband under the wooden slats of her modest home as soldiers swept through their village. In a time where food resources were so scarce, she would often reflect as she grew older and say, “Even the weeds along the roads were picked clean”, Gina’s resourcefulness and creativity with food sustained her family during those times.

In 1958, she and her family journeyed from Ascoli Piceno, Italy to America in search of a better life for themselves. In order to do so, Gina’s incredible determination led her to sail the Atlantic, alone, four times to secure the necessary paperwork for herself, her mother, her husband, and their seven children to emigrate from Italy to the United States. Their first few years as Italian immigrants proved to be very difficult. They had very little money to spare and did not speak much English, but their hearts were filled with promise AND…they ALWAYS had unimaginable food.

Their economic situation raised the need for Nonna Gina to create everything from scratch. Nonna Gina could turn cabbage and potatoes into gold, (a food we grew up on known as ‘pappa-cio’), which was then simply put, ‘Italian peasant food’ and today would be considered fine, artisanal cuisine. In her gifted hands, eggs and semolina would be magically transformed into perfect, homemade pasta dough. Countless bowls of dough, covered with her kitchen towels, could be found scattered across her countertops and wooden tables awaiting the opportunity to me morphed into various types of delectable pasta by her beloved “macchina”, (her manual pasta maker, which sits proudly displayed on the back of our counter today).

Nonna Gina passed during the pandemic, on April 2nd, 2020 at the age of 96. Even during her final days she couldn’t help but boast to all of her nurses and doctors about her beloved family. In the many decades of being a daughter, wife, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, Nonna Gina’s affinity and devotion for her family was always apparent. Her boundless love was so evident through her smiles, her prayers, and her endless food offerings. It is with this same enthusiasm and pride that we would like to invite you to our kitchen and share in the bounty of our table.

Salute e buon appetito!