I am a foodie.  It has to do with my Italian heritage. I learned from my mother how important it was to cook healthy food for your family.  No matter what my hours were, if I was home, I always made dinner. At Today, I loved doing food segments, meeting some of the great chefs, and sampling their dishes.  I actually made every recipe for the food segments I produced to see if it was doable for viewers. Along the way, I met one of my heroes, the legendary Marcella Hazan, who died last year at age 89.

The International Culinary Center in New York recently hosted a fundraising gala luncheon for The Marcella Hazan Scholarship.   In case you didn’t know, Marcella Hazan is the person responsible for elevating Italian cuisine from Formica table pizza joints to white-tablecloth elegance.  Marcella introduced Americans to how Italians really cook, with fresh, seasonal ingredients, and a light touch with the spices, especially garlic. Her tomato sauce was nothing more than ripe tomatoes, a whole onion, and butter.  Marcella often appeared on Today through the years.  Her gravelly voice and no-nonsense answers to the hosts’ questions made her a perfect guest for Bryant Gumbel and Matt Lauer, both of whom greatly admired her.  And it appeared she enjoyed giving them a little humorous dig if she thought their questions were dumb and the answers obvious. 

But for one of Today’s biggest franchises, Marcella demonstrated that she was a team player and a trouper.  When Matt Lauer took his first Where In The World trip, she braved a cold, drizzly morning to do a cooking demo in Venice, Italy.  Standing out there in the damp weather resulted in a case of pneumonia. Years later, Marcella told me that illness forced her and her husband Victor to move to Longboat Key, Florida for the warmer weather. 

Marcella was known to be a demanding cooking teacher, and those who signed up for her famous cooking courses in Italy were nervous about  displeasing their teacher.  Our food stylists were no different, and Marcella’s segments, out of respect and out of fear, demanded they be on top of their games. 

Marcella’s last appearance on Today was an interview about her beautiful memoir, Amarcord.  Our food stylists were charged with creating the same meal Marcella served the great NY Times food writer Craig Claiborne.  His column about the meal led to her first cookbook contract.  That morning, we were worried.  Would she dismiss the food with a wave of her hand and a frown?  To the relief of the lead stylist for that segment, Deb Winson, Marcella said it was perfect.  I don’t think our team ever received higher praise, or appreciated it more.

Her son, Giuliano, followed in his mother’s footsteps and is creating his own impressive library of works as well as his own following as an award-winning cookbook author and cooking teacher.  Marcella told me that Giuliano had “the taste” from when he was a little boy.  You should be happy to know that Victor revealed at the luncheon that Marcella had filled a notebook, in her tiny, Italian handwriting, with red ink no less, and a new book will be published next year. 

Thanks to great cooking teachers like Marcella, Americans learned to eat “farm to table”-- cooking what’s in season, locally grown and at the peak of freshness.  It seems every restaurant is now touting its “locavoire” menus.  So while we love eating it, have you ever wondered about the men and women who grow it?

A new documentary premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival called, Farmland.  Oscar-winner James Moll, who said he knew little about farming before he started filming, tells the story of the new American farmer and rancher.  Moll produced the film with support from the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance. The movie focuses on the day-to-day lives of six men and women, who are, get this, in their 20’s.  I was struck by the daunting economics of getting the food from their farms and ranches to your table.  Why would a college-educated generation want to get involved in a family business that has enormous costs and is subject to the vagaries of Mother Nature and market demand?  While the film only touches upon the hot controversies in the food industry, the true focus is on educating audiences about today’s American farmers and ranchers. Their stories are compelling.  While most are sons from families who have farmed for generations, the most compelling story was about a woman who went to Peru in college, and learned to harvest corn and yucca.  She majored in art history but she is now cultivating 18 acres in Pennsylvania, surprising her non-farming family. The film opens wider next week, and is certainly worth seeing, especially with older kids. It makes you want to run to your local farmers' market and buy the ingredients to make one of Marcella’s famed recipes.

 Photo:  In 1A with Giuliano Hazan, photobombed by assistant director Erica Levens