There I am in the kitchen last night, mixing up cinnamon
muffins from a box. I silently lament, “It’s too bad I was so stressed this
weekend. It would have been nice to make something.” You’re quick on the
uptake; you’ve already realized that I was in fact making something at that
very moment. It took me a few more minutes to realize that I am the rare person
who considers making muffins from a box mix “buying muffins from the store” as
opposed to making them at home, i.e., from scratch.
The light bulb goes on, and all I can do is shake my head at
myself.
It reminds me of a time a few years ago when we were staying
home for Christmas and didn’t have a huge crowd coming in. A neighbor asked
what we were doing for Christmas, and I said we’d probably just make spaghetti.
The sweet lady gave me a look—eyes narrowing, head tilting. She tentatively
asked, “Spaghetti? You’re more than welcome to come over…”
I looked back her, my head tilted, puzzled eyes, and after a
good 30 seconds realized what the problem was. In her mind having spaghetti for
dinner meant a jar of sauce from the store. For a lot of people it’s probably
one of the simplest, lowest stress meals you can prepare. It’s definitely not
worthy of the celebration of Christ’s birth. What she didn’t realize is that I’m
Italian. We’ve been having sauce on Christmas my entire life. It’s made from
scratch. It takes at least six hours.
When my mom does it, it takes the form of a lasagna capable of feeding about 30
people. There is also anti-pasto salad, garlic bread, and bowls of pork and
sausage cooked in the sauce. This is followed by Christmas cookies of every
description, all made from scratch, and cream puffs, also made from scratch. No
one leaves the table hungry—for anything—ever again.
I feel like this topic of food has come up several times now
because I keep finding myself relating to food and its preparation in ways that
seem to vary—sometimes wildly—from the norm.
We spent three weeks waiting for our household goods to
arrive from the other side of the state. My neighbors have been so amazing. We
brought some basics with us: a 6 quart pot, a griddle, a 3 quart pot, and a colander.
We also had a few spatulas, can opener, etc. There were a few things I had to
buy, like a cutting board and a cookie sheet. I borrowed a set of mixing bowls
from a neighbor. But still, I managed to make chicken pot pie and blueberry
cobbler. We only increased our meals out when we realized we could charge them
to the incompetent movers.
Is that weird? It reminds me of my grandmother, who, when they
camped had my grandfather improvise an oven so she could make stuffed peppers
and bake a cake. They had the most popular campsite. Kids would wander over and
return to their own campsites demanding to know why they were stuck with hot
dogs and beans.
That’s weird, right?
The only explanation I can provide is that I’m third
generation American. It’s actually kind of crazy. There’s a single branch of my
family, the Sterners, that goes back to the Revolutionary War. Everyone else
came from Italy in the early part of the 20th century. All the other
great grandparents were born in Italy. My dad’s mom spent World War II in
Sicily after her family was trapped there when they went back to visit. Her dad
was a fascist. She worked as a translator for the Allies after Sicily was
liberated. My great uncle was part of machine gun crew for the Italian army. My
mom grew up living above her Italian grandparents. Grandma Miraldi spoke to her
in Italian, and my mom answered in English. My dad was the secret translator
for his siblings when his parents spoke Italian.
It’s a different tradition when your family’s cultural
heritage is still so close. My parents both grew up on Staten Island. They went
to the Italian stores; they lived practically next door to their entire
families. My dad has a picture of somebody’s birthday, black and white, and
around the table are bodies packed just wall to wall. He can name almost every
one, and they’re just about all related to him. And if you thought that
description earlier of Christmas dinner was crazy, try it at my dad’s house
growing up. First you had an entire pasta meal, all the trimmings mentioned
above; then you had a turkey or a ham or both; then you had fruits and nuts and
cheeses; then you had dessert. It took hours.
And it was like that at every holiday.
I can guarantee you that none of it was pre-prepared or
store bought. Of course, that’s partially because those things didn’t exist in
the 1950s, but mostly it was because that’s not how it’s done.
This isn't my actual family, but you get the idea.
