From a Chicago Kitchen to the Arizona Desert
La Susa’s Bakes ~N~ Sweets began long before it had a name — at a South Side Chicago table, in Jason’s Italian family, where gathering around the table was simply what you did, and food was how you said “I love you.”
Syri grew up in Hyde Park, on Chicago’s South Side, raised by her mom, Donna Ann, who cooked everything from scratch, with Grandma never far away. Flour on the counter, something savory on the stove, and something sweet always coming out of the oven — that is where these recipes were born, and where Syri learned that baking for someone is one of the purest ways to take care of them.
Her teenage years, and the road into adulthood, took her to Chicago’s North Side — and the recipes came along, including treasured ones from Jason’s family, like Nonna Rose’s, whose name is on our signature cookies. Ask Syri and she will tell you straight: her cookies are Nonna Rose’s cookies. Every batch of Nonna Rose’s Chocolate Chunk & Chip Cookies carries her memory right to the table.
Then life wrote a new chapter. A health diagnosis in the family changed the way Syri thought about sugar, and she went back to her own kitchen with a mission: keep all the comfort, all the flavor, all the love — with less refined sugar and healthier ingredients wherever she could. Nothing precious was lost. The pizzelles still snap, the pies still shine, and the cookies still disappear fast.
Today, home is Florence, Arizona, at Oasis at Magic Ranch, where Syri bakes for her new desert community with fresh local eggs and dairy — and still tucks a little taste of home, carried all the way from Chicago, into everything she makes.
If you ask Syri what kind of baker she is, she will laugh and tell you she is a messy baker — no fancy kitchen here, just a real home kitchen, a well-loved oven, and a whole lot of love. That is the whole secret, and it always has been.
Pull up a chair. There is always room for one more at this table.
— Syri
The Fox & The Rabbit
Jason is the fox and Syri is the rabbit. Together they are Fox & Rabbit Co., their artisan seasoning brand, blended with love right here in Florence, Arizona.