The pictures that former Hoboken resident Loretta Pasculli Lawrence has of her family from the 1940s and ‘50s are mostly fading, black-and-white photographs. But the faces in those tattered images are almost always gathered around one thing: a dinner table.
Like many Italian-American families, food was an integral part of Lawrence’s upbringing in the Mile Square. So when her mother, Catherine Pasculli, passed away in 1989, she preserved her mother’s recipes in a cookbook called “Cooking for my Family: From Catherine Pasculli’s Hoboken Kitchen.”
“It’s so important for a family to be around a dinner table, even just for a little while,” Lawrence said. “In my family there were seven screaming Italians fighting to be the first to tell everyone about their day.”
The 2008 release is gaining traction in Lawrence’s adopted city, Myrtle Beach, S.C., where the book is sold at local Italian-American grocery stores.
“There was every culture you could image.” – Loretta Pasculli Lawrence
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“It’s a dish that I grew up on,” said the 67-year-old author. “But I’ve always loved eggplant and chicken Parmesan too.”
Lawrence first learned to cook when she was married in 1965. Her mother was her best teacher. “I called my mom up almost every night,” she said. “She gave me so many different recipes. I had quite a repertoire.”
The cookbook is available online at Amazon and Barnes and Nobles. For more information on “Cooking for my Family,” visit: www.cookingformyfamily.net.
The chicken shack
Lawrence said that Hoboken was a much different place 50 years ago than it is today. The author lived in town through the 1970s.
“When I lived in Hoboken as a kid, it wasn’t the same as you see today. This was well before the renaissance, before Hoboken became really beautiful.”
The 200 block of Willow Avenue, where Lawrence lived, was filled with different ethnicities, she said. “There was every culture you could image. People came right off the boat and landed right in Hoboken.”
Instead of centralized supermarkets, Lawrence remembers Johnny’s Butcher Shop, Tedesco’s Fish Store, Ginger’s Produce & Grocery, Marie’s Bakery (still in business today) and Nick’s Chicken Store, where her mother would send her to pick out a “fat one.”
“I can’t believe I actually picked out a live chicken, the poor things,” she said. “It was nothing like today. Vendors would come down the street selling vegetables and fresh fruit – singing out the specials of the day.”
Lawrence said that the rent for her family’s five-bedroom railroad at 207 Willow Ave. back in the 1950s was $23 a month.
‘On the Waterfront’
Lawrence’s father was a longshoreman and met Marlon Brando on the set of “On the Waterfront.” While researching the part, Brando had lunch with a few of the dockworkers to gain insight into the people he would later portray on screen.
“My father said he was a really nice guy,” Lawrence said. “He ended up being an extra in the movie, but every time we tried to look for him [in the film] we could never find him.”
After “shaping” – or waiting by the docks everyday looking for work – Lawrence’s father finally became a regular longshoreman.
“In the wintertime, it was really tough for him,” she said. “But mom always had a hot plate on the table for him when he got home.”
According to the author, many families are missing the importance of dinnertime with family.
“I don’t think a lot of children today have that. I know families are busy with class and other things. But to stop once a day is so important, to sit around and connect with your family – to celebrate life,” she said.
For more information on Lawrence, visit her website: www.cookingformyfamily.net.
Sean Allocca can be reached at editorial@hudsonreporter.com