Origin Story of Our Cookbook

This is an excerpt from my cookbook, Pots, Pans, and Passports. I am often asked how and why I created what I did. This story is the why.

Each year the holiday season started off with my mom asking “Where should we go for Christmas?” “Greece? Italy? Mexico” I’d reply. For each Christmas as a child, I traveled to a different country. One year my family went to Sweden. Another year we traveled to Mexico, then Italy, and the next year, Greece. Even though I grew up in a small town (population 200!) I learned so much about the world from these adventures.

In full disclosure, we never actually physically went to Mexico, Greece, Sweden, or Italy. I never traveled the world until I was an adult. What we did do was sit down at our kitchen table, pour over cookbooks borrowed from the local library, select a country, and design a feast. My mother and I would make dishes found in these cookbooks to serve at Christmas to friends and family. It was not easy. If we were going to Greece we would have to call around and find specialty grocery stores in the bigger cities near us asking if they sold grape leaves. If we were going to Italy we’d scour the back pages of fancy cooking magazines like Bon Appetit for frozen squid with the hopes they could ship in time for the holidays.

Over the years I learned how to make dolmades (Greece), tortillas (Mexico), and pickled herring (Sweden). On Christmas Eve we’d clear off the table and set out a feast. Friends and family would arrive and look suspiciously at the squid swimming in red sauce. Other times they would dive into Mexican tamales. Some were willing to try it; others would stick up their noses and call us crazy or weird. We paid no attention to the latter. Somewhere, deep inside my heart, I knew the real fun was found in the discovery of new countries and cuisine.

My mother barely went to high school and had only traveled from her birthplace of Chicago, Illinois to our central Illinois town of 200 people. Yet, she created a learning institution to rival most culinary schools with her curiosity, tenacity, and open-mindedness.

I wrote this cookbook in honor of this tradition. It is also for you and your future generations. I hope this cookbook inspires you to travel and explore the world and appreciate its culinary wonders in whatever shape you choose. And I hope you pass along the tradition.

Cook often. Travel far.

~ Nina Zippay

Buy the book here: Pots, Pans, and Passports