Family affair: Son's illness leads to bakery's sweet success

  
Sweet Success  

By Anne Geggis, Sun Sentinel


BOCA RATON – Giovanna Cimino and her family are helping to cure multiple sclerosis -- one biscotti at a time.

Cimino's son, Giuseppe Fausto, was diagnosed with the degenerative disease that attacks the nervous system in 2004 when he was 27. Faced with seeing a whirlwind of doctors, Cimino said she closed her full-service restaurant.

"There's a moment when you know you have to change and you don't know what to do," she said.

She worked for nearly two years at Whole Foods Market and then set up a bakery/café, Cosa Duci. Today, she donates a portion of the shop's profits – at least $1,200 a year -- to fund research into curing the disease, which has no known cure.

She and her family say they are hoping others don't have to endure the fight that has taken center stage in their lives.

"When we started going to different doctors, every one of them was saying something different," Cimino said. "All of it scary."


Searching for the best way to feed her son, Cimino, now 66, found herself on the forefront of a trend that now fills up even mainstream supermarket aisles:
-  baked goods gluten-free (protein found in wheat).


The sausage on his pizza became hummus. 

Vegetables like zucchini, broccoli, eggplant and asparagus began having a larger role in the cooking repertoire of his mother and sister. 

The baked goods were made with different kinds of flour, like almond flour.

But still, he says, being Italian on a gluten-free diet is not easy.

He unwittingly found a new avenue for the business while he was exercising at the local fitness club.

After regular stops for an espresso at Nordstrom's café, the people who ran that shop discovered Cosa Duci's gluten-free biscotti, he said.
Now the biscotti goes to Nordstrom cafes nationwide as well as Milam's Market in Miami. Cakes, cookies and biscotti go to Whole Foods' Florida stores.
Still, the family is the heart of Cosa Duci, which means "sweet thing" in a Sicilian dialect. 






Source:
Family affair: Son's illness leads to bakery's sweet success - Sun Sentinel