Before I was a cookbook author and food writer, I was a newspaper reporter. I wrote about all kinds of things: grisly teen murders in suburban Detroit, the latest fitness craze, or how billionaire philanthropists like to give away their money. I hardly ever wrote about food, even though it was the subject I thought about most.

One day, many years after I had graduated from Columbia School of Journalism and worked at numerous newspapers, it finally dawned on me that I could and should be writing about food. So that is what I am doing. I grew up in an Italian family, At the dinner table we debated not the politics or news of the day but rather what we should eat tomorrow night, which is probably why I am much better at explaining a recipe than, say, a piece of legislation.

My mother is a native of Chieti, a picturesque hilltop city in Abruzzo, not far from the Adriatic coast. She had my sister and me shaping gnocchi and ravioli by the time we could see over the kitchen counter. We spent our summers in Italy with my mother’s three sisters (all great cooks); each year my father planned trips throughout the peninsula guided by where the best local food and wine were to be found.

Italian home cooking is my first passion in the kitchen. That is why I chose Italian soups and stews as the subject of my first cookbook. Those dishes represent, to me, the heart and soul of Italian home cooking: beautifully simple, full of flavor, full of comfort, the kind of food that fills the whole house with divine aromas and that invites people to linger at the table.

In truth, though, I love all kinds of home cooking. Living in Virginia for the past 11 years, I have become especially enamored of my adopted state’s illustrious culinary history, from the many contributions of Thomas Jefferson to Colonial tavern cooking, to the coastal cuisine of the Chesapeake Bay and Eastern Shore, to the simple southern comfort food best exemplified by the recipes of cookbook author and Virginia native Edna Lewis.

These days, I am almost as likely to have a pot of Brunswick stew simmering on the stove as a good ragù or lentil soup. When I’m not in the kitchen testing recipes, I can usually be found in my office entering said recipes into my computer, browsing through my favorite cookbook of the moment or, more than likely, shuttling my kids to and from various activities or dragging them with me to the grocery store. Like any working mom, I have a full plate—but I wouldn’t have it any other way.