By Daniela Sfara
In kitchens everywhere, stories live in the simplest gestures: a pinch of salt, a fold of dough, a pot left to simmer until memory says it’s ready. These aren’t just instructions for nourishment. They are vessels of survival, creativity, and love—passed silently from one generation to the next. In them, the past lingers, and the present finds its roots. When words fall short, hands remember, and culture endures.
My work has always been about preserving what risks being forgotten. It’s a responsibility I carry with genuine, relentless love for knowing. So when I encounter people who value that understanding, perhaps even share it, who choose to learn deeply about where they come from, I feel a great sense of pride. It reminds me of the weight I carry and the work still ahead, but also gives me hope—that the future will not be defined only by selfies or staged versions of Italy, but by the deeper truth that our identity is sustained through the generations before us.
That truth is at the heart of Dalla Valigia alla Tavola, the project of Montreal-born Cassandra Marsillo. In her early thirties, with grandparent roots in Molise, she placed passion at the centre of her table to create a collective memoir of recipes and stories, connecting communities in her St. Leonard home, and the many villages and towns in Molise. I was honoured to receive her book as a gift, and confidently share this project was a beautiful curation, well-deserving of being explored and savoured through each dish. What I saw as I turned each page was a painstaking, intimate, and profoundly human fragment of history. Each dish a testament to resilience, each page a bridge from the previous generations to the next, through us.
Cassandra is an oral and public historian, artist, and educator, but above all she is a listener. During the long, still months of the pandemic, when reflection became a necessity for us all, she began shaping what would grow into a bilingual heirloom. And with the incredible support from the Federazione delle Associazioni Molisane del Québec, and the many who eagerly dedicated a piece of themselves, she set out to collect the lived experiences told through each page.
The result is not a traditional cookbook. Cassandra realized early on that these recipes weren’t simply notes for sustenance but survival stories. They were about scarcity, about creativity, about women and men who kept families alive with so little.
Her book was a beautiful gift to receive, and as I read each page, I very quickly saw that Cassandra “gets it.” She understands what I share in everything I do—that Italian food and culture, its people and legacy makers, is about breaking bread together in all we do, capturing the world with each story, ever so grateful our previous generations selflessly stretched the flour further than it should go, and instinctively moved with memory. Translating such traditions into writing was certainly no easy task.
With Cassandra in her Montreal home, and myself in my Cambridge home, both at our tables, where stories are often best shared, we spoke and laughed at length, and what struck me most in hearing her speak was the way she opened the project to her community. When asked for recipes, people often brought more than ingredients. They arrived with photographs, notes, and stories that transported them back to kitchens of their youth.
That is what food memory does. It collapses time. It brings the past into the present, letting us sit again with those who came before us.
For the Molisan diaspora in Canada, this book became a way to reclaim pieces of identity. For others, it opened a window into a region too often overlooked, reminding us that Italy is not one story but many, beautifully woven across its towns and villages.
Cassandra’s reflections on identity carry a wisdom beyond her years, and I am extremely proud of the work she continues to do in her community, and leading by example of living this very connective bridge with her friends, family, and colleagues.
There is something truly healing about seeing continuity embodied in someone younger—a reassurance that memory will not slip away.
Dalla Valigia alla Tavola is more than a book. It is memory made tangible, a gift to Cassandra’s community and to anyone who values authentic Italian culture. It invites us to cook, to gather, to remember. It reminds us that food is never just food. It is heritage. It is sacrifice. It is love.
When we nurture those memories and honour the table with bread at the centre ready for breaking, we are never far from home. – VV
