We all have essentials–you know, the absolute thing or things you can’t do without.

When I was single and surviving on my own–my two things were ketchup and dark chocolate. I discovered that if I plopped a decent dollop of ketchup in pot-roasts, hamburgers and pasta sauce, it brought the taste level up several notches. My Italian best friend, Rina and I were in perfect agreement about our secret ingredient. When her Nonna discovered our secret, her eye-rolling looked like an out-of-control seizure, accompanied with rapid Italian spewing from her lips. Rina and I spent a lengthy session in her cozy kitchen, making pasta sauce from scratch. We each brought home a few jars of Nonna’s treasured sauce and it wasn’t until years later, that we tried to remember exactly how she did it and what she actually used. At the time, we only knew her sauce tasted tons better than Heinz. And being young, we both felt Nonna would always be there for more sauce.

Both Rina and I graduated into more elaborate dishes and the Heinz was retired as our secret ingredient.

Which brings me to my second essential—chocolate. And not just any chocolate, this is the Belgian dark chocolate, at least 72%.

Bakers all have failures. Let’s face it. We’re all learning, especially if baking powder was accidently omitted; an oven temperature set too high; a heavy hand stirring the ingredients. For someone learning to bake, there are a slew of pitfalls to be avoided–cakes that sink in the middle; cookies needing something to make it better;, cupcakes that never grew to adulthood but stayed the same as when it first went into the oven.

This is where chocolate comes to the rescue. Drench any pastry with chocolate and it will be a guaranteed winner. I don’t have too many failures but I still enjoy melting pieces of dark chocolate bars on top of cupcakes just out of the oven. If the cupcake failed to rise, no one would notice with a chocolate bar melted on top. No-one except a crass, rude person who doesn’t appreciate really good chocolate bar cupcakes.

When all else fails, there has to be a back-up plan. Mine are doughnuts and not just any doughnut, it has to be a Yonnie’s. AND, if it’s a foodie emergency, Yonnie’s is just down the street. . .

Rina and I did survive with cooking lessons from her Nonna and my Mom. We are both older, wiser and married, sharing our culinary skills with our granddaughters, who are far away from home and experiencing life on their own.

Over a coffee at Yonnie’s, Rina showed me a text from her granddaughter: Hi Nonna, My housemate Leesa swears all I need in our cupboard is Heinz ketchup and Belgian dark chocolates. But I told her I really can cook and bake. . . .thanks to my Nonna.

We laughed as we remembered our early days on our own. Some things never change. But some things do.