Angelica always cherished Sunday dinners with her family. She loves to cook and to share her passion for a good meal with those she loves. Her husband sadly passed away at a young age, and she came to cherish even more the opportunity to spend meaningful time with loved ones each week.
“They say it takes a Village to raise a child,” Angelica says, thinking back nearly 50 years to that sudden loss. “Well, I had that Village behind me during that difficult time.”
That sense of a Village goes back to her roots in northern Italy, where her family’s roots are firmly planted, though she herself grew up in Northern Ontario. Even after moving south to Toronto as a teenager and meeting her husband — who was also from northern Italy — she felt deeply connected to her heritage in a homeland she first visited on her honeymoon.
She remembers arriving in her husband’s small village after travelling from Venice and seeing an older gentleman, dressed in dark slacks with a buttoned-up vest and proper hat, riding his bicycle with his wife perched on the crossbar.
Though it was the late ’60s, she felt as though she had stepped back in time to a place that suited her perfectly.
“I thought of my mother — this is what she was telling me about,” Angelica recalls. “I just felt, ‘Yeah, I belong here.’”
Through all the years, her love of connecting with people through fine, wholesome comfort food kept her tied to those roots. That passion has carried on into her newest Village: Tansley Woods, in the heart of Burlington.
It was something Michal Szpigiel sensed right away when he first met Angelica. Michal is the front-of-house lead at The Ruby — the space on the Village’s top floor where residents and guests can enjoy a restaurant-style dining experience without ever leaving the Village.
When he began planning a spring event featuring a guest resident chef, he quickly convinced Angelica to be the first.
She admits she was initially reluctant, unsure whether she wanted to be in the spotlight, but Michal was persistent.
“He was charming,” she says with a smile. “He said, ‘You remind me of my grandmother, and she was a very good cook. I’m sure you are as well.’ Eventually, I came around, and I’m so glad I did.”
She prepared a simple tomato-based pasta sauce from a recipe she keeps guarded in her memory alone. Though she worried about scaling the recipe up to feed a full restaurant, the evening turned out beautifully.
“I guess I’m more courageous than I give myself credit for,” Angelica says. “It was a wonderful experience, and I’d certainly do it again.”
It was a special gift to once again share her passion with others — neighbours who are now part of the Village community she calls home — and she encourages others to embrace the opportunity should it arise.
“Do it with the love that you obviously have for food and good company,” Angelica says, “and it’ll work out.”
