Sometimes as I’m writing these entries, I find myself wondering: how is this making my life simpler?

Like now, for instance. It’s well after midnight, and I am waiting for an Easter pie to finish baking. No, not the kind of pie you are thinking of, probably. This is over 6 lbs of pork and cheese baked inside pastry dough….

When I was a kid, my grandmother baked what we always called pizza gaina, which apparently doesn’t really exist. It’s actually a dialect or two removed from the Neapolitan pizza chiena, which is dialect for pizza ripiena, or stuffed pizza…

Which is really supposed to be called pizza rustica.

None of that really matters, though. I grew up with pizza gaina, and when I speak with my mother and father on the phone tomorrow morning to wish them a happy Easter, I will tell my mother that I did my best to recreate the pizza gaina that her mother used to make for all of us, when I was just a kid.

So, what did I do to live more simply today?

Probably nothing.

But I just pulled this amazing thing out of the oven, and in the morning, when the kids come downstairs, I plan to tell them about their great-grandmother, and how she would always have pizza gaina waiting for us when we went to see her on Easter.

And I think they will like that–perhaps even more than a chocolate bunny.