If you haven't heard of Clara Cannucciari yet, you will, and likely in the near future. She is a 93 year YOUNG great-grandmother from upstate New York. Thanks to her grandson/filmmaker, Clara is a You Tube phenomenon and is completely en fuego right now. With 10 videos, she has more than 800,000 views.
Maybe it's the economy that's driving her popularity. She tells us:
"The winters, they were terrible. And that's another thing. We didn't have a refrigerator, so we used to put everything, bury it in the snow outside, that was our freezer. Then we'd say, 'go get the meat, out near the fence, OK?' [she chuckles] That's sad. I'm laughing, but it was sad... Everything was terrible, but we had good food."
She is so adorable:
"I've never used a cutting board. We didn't have all the conveniences of a cutting board and stuff."
Here is one of her recipes; from Episodes 4 and 4.5:
Peppers & Eggs - "You can't have peppers and eggs without bread"
3 Bell Peppers, she uses yellow and red
4 eggs
The recipe comes from her mother. Clara says that, in high school, she once traded her 'Peppers and Eggs Sandwich' with a girl who handed her a Spaghetti Sandwich. She says, "I was so disappointed. Never again. I'm not trading with anybody."
She continues:
"The bag would get all full of oil but everybody wanted our sandwiches. Everybody would have a dry sandwich with salami or ham. We had peppers and eggs. 'Wanna trade sandwiches?' - 'No' she would say, 'we don't want to trade.'"
First you clean out the peppers, take out the seeds, and you slice them long and relatively thin. She says you should keep the seeds, dry them, and plant them so that you have peppers for next year (obviously). Fry the strips in a shallow pan with some oil, with some salt, until they start to brown.
Beat the 4 eggs together with a fork. Pour them over the cooked peppers in the pan. "Then you mix them in until they settle. and then, they're done."
Fresh bread
Flour
Warm water
Yeast
In a large bowl, make a well out of the flour, and crumble the yeast into the middle of the well. Dissolve the yeast by adding water, and knead. Continue adding water and mixing with your hands until it comes to a dry-clay consistency. Cover with a towel and allow for it to rise.
Once the first rise is done, divide the mass into loaves and put into loaf pans. Cover, and allow to rise again. With a knife, make some slits across the top. Bake at 350 until they're golden.