From Milan to the Pacific Northwest
Finding Home Through Food, Gardens, and Community
Program Description
What happens when an Italian who grew up surrounded by centuries-old culinary traditions moves across the world and has to learn an entirely new landscape of ingredients, flavors, and customs?
Join Italian cooking instructor and culinary storyteller Paola Albanesi for a warm, humorous, and heartfelt journey from Milan to the Pacific Northwest. Through personal stories, photographs, and food traditions, Paola shares how leaving Italy transformed not only the way she cooked, but the way she understood home, community, and the universal language of food.
From discovering farmers markets and local seafood to embracing burgers at the family barbecue, meeting passionate local farmers and artisans, and learning to cook with ingredients she had never encountered in Italy, this is a story about curiosity, adaptation, and finding belonging around the table.
The presentation also celebrates the surprising connections between Italian traditions and the Pacific Northwest. Together with Renée LaCoste, you’ll discover how many beloved Italian vegetables and herbs thrive in our local climate and how a simple home garden can become the starting point for authentic Italian cooking.
This presentation is filled with stories, practical inspiration, and a few delightful surprises along the way.
Whether you’re Italian by birth, Italian at heart, an avid gardener, or simply love good food and good stories, you’ll leave inspired to see your own table—and your own garden—with fresh eyes.
Presenter Bio
Paola Albanesi is a Milan-born Italian cooking instructor and culinary storyteller based in the Seattle area. Inspired by a life between Italy and the Pacific Northwest, she creates hands-on classes, culinary tours, retreats, and food experiences that celebrate regional Italian traditions, seasonal ingredients, and the people who grow, raise, and craft them.
Her work connects authentic Italian cooking with the extraordinary farms, artisans, and food traditions of the Pacific Northwest, encouraging people to cook seasonally, travel curiously, and gather generously.
Above all, she believes the greatest ingredient in any kitchen is conviviality: the joy of gathering around the table to cook, learn, and share.
Website: www.linktr.ee.com/Paola_Albanesi
Renee LaCoste – Garden Project Manager, Italian Stories Program
Renee LaCoste leads the Italian Stories Garden Project, a living heritage garden within the Italian Stories Program. Inspired by generations of family members who shared the wisdom of growing, preparing, and preserving food, Renee is passionate about honoring the plants, seeds, traditions and stories that carry history from one generation to the next.
The garden project focuses on heirloom varieties, seed saving, traditional plant uses, and creating opportunities for the community to gather, learn, and celebrate the connections between gardens, food, and culture.
