Ahead of Her Time
My grandma’s stash of old nutrition books
My grandma was drinking apple cider vinegar before it was cool.
My maternal grandma, Florence Ferri, was ahead of her time. At least that’s what my mom always says.
Everyone called her Florrie. She lived in a two-family house on 60th street, in Bensonhurst Brooklyn, where she raised my mom and uncle. This was the same house that my great grandparents eventually settled in when they came over in the 1920’s from Salerno, Italy. My grandma was just about as Brooklyn Italian as you could get. She made the best lima bean soup, loved people watching from her front stoop, played cards with the neighbors, and made a legendary meat sauce.
One of my earliest memories is sitting together in the backyard of her house on 60th street underneath the fig tree. If I close my eyes, I can still see her standing in her apron over her six-burner porcelain stove listening to her walkman radio. (Notice her plastic covered Champion juicer in the background below).
I remember eating so much Pastosa ravioli on Christmas day that I needed a mid-dinner nap. Whether it was a holiday or a Sunday dinner, my grandma always had a bottle of papaya-flavored digestive enzymes on the table. My mom said she even brought the digestive enzymes with her every time they went to the iconic all-you-can-eat Cooky’s Steak Pub.
I’ll always remember those green chalky chewable tablets as a part of our family traditions. On the holidays we would stuff our faces with ravioli and antipasti, take a handful of digestive enzymes, and somehow our stomachs would magically make room for the main course. Those enzymes were my grandma’s way of keeping Italian traditions alive, with a nod to her love of nutrition.
Yes my grandma loved to indulge, but as far back as I can remember she was always talking about her favorite natural remedies. I remember she would eat bowls of apple sauce mixed with yogurt and crushed raw garlic because she knew, even 20 years ago, that garlic helps to purify the blood. She always had bags of fresh parsley and basil in her freezer and a bottle of Bragg apple cider vinegar in her fridge.
My grandma had a balancing act between special occasion indulging and nourishing recipes. She lived her life this way, although she may have started on her health journey a little late. Even when she developed lung cancer, my mom was taking her to see holistic doctors, giving her coconut oil and sun’s soup before it became mainstream.
I like to think my grandma’s passion stuck with me. It’s been over 17 years since she passed away and I find myself thinking about her a lot these days. Especially now that I’ve started to pave my own path towards fixing my digestive issues. I recently came across a stack of her old nutrition books — each and every one marked with her detailed cursive writing and sticky notes — and I’m feeling inspired. I didn’t know that she read book after book about reflexology, acupuncture, and alternative medicine, trying to piece together her symptoms and what caused them.
I’m taking a page from my grandma’s book. I want to reach a much healthier place while I’m still young. I’ve seen enough family members suffer from cancer to know that there’s more we could be doing. One thing I feel strongly about is integrative medicine — an approach which takes physical, emotional, mental, social, spiritual, and environmental influences into account when assessing someone’s health — instead of the more traditional symptom management with medication. I won’t be stubborn and avoid going to the doctor for 10 years at a time like most of my older Italian relatives. I hope to figure out how to keep our traditions alive in a way that keeps all of us alive.
I know she would love that I’m picking up where she left off and questioning the status quo. Florrie was smart, stubborn, loving, and ALWAYS curious. 💕
