I don’t trust people who don’t love to eat.  I spend an inordinate amount of my day thinking about eating, planning what I am going to eat or being full.   Being part Jewish and Italian, guilt and food are part of my DNA.  Even now, as I write this, I am considering a purchase of Kettle Potato Chips at the deli down the block. I can’t help myself.

Growing up, everything revolved around food. My mother never just said, “Let’s go for a hike.” She’d say, “Let’s go for a hike…I’ll make a nice fresh chicken salad with walnuts and grapes on this amazing grainy bread I found at this new bakery…” There was food tucked in the glove compartment of our car, in pockets of coats, in my mom’s purses.  I never so much as stepped outside without my mom yelling after me “Did you eat a little something?”

Our refrigerator was always packed as if we were preparing for a blackout or Armageddon.  I once found a leftover slice of a Carvel cake from my seventh birthday in the freezer.  I was nine years old.

My family would often spend Sundays at my Great Uncle Angelo’s house.  He lived to be 104 and made the best food I’ve ever eaten.  Before there was “farm to table”, “organic” and “ locally grown”, there was Uncle Angelo’s food.

He lived with my Aunt Anna in a small apartment in Flatbush, Brooklyn with a garden where he grew vegetables and raised chickens.  Pasta was drying everywhere: on the backs of chairs, on tables even on the shower rod in the bathroom. I was only six or seven, but I can still remember the nutty fresh taste of the pesto he made, my first salty caper and how my Aunt Anna killed and plucked the chicken for the Marsala that I still make today.  My mother liked to brag that he managed to stay out of the Great War cooking for the generals.

When I was fifteen years old, my family traveled to Northern Italy to meet my mother’s family.   I know we saw different sites, but I only remember the eating.   Every evening we would walk down a narrow ancient street where my Uncle Pietro would open the door of what looked like an apartment, but turned out to be a restaurant.  It was long and narrow and smelled like garlic and bread.

The woman who owned the restaurant hugged us as if we were old friends and immediately started bring out plates of pecorino, toma cheese, sopressata and grilled eggplant all covered in oil as green as Spring.  I don’t remember anyone ordering, the food would just arrive and arrive and arrive:  bowls of Gnocchi with sage butter sauce, cheesy risotto and braised rabbit served over creamy polenta with local Porcini mushrooms.

When I arrived at college, I had been too spoiled on home made food to handle the dry cafeteria burgers.  My new best friend Gabriella agreed and soon we were making elaborate dinners on one hot plate.   Gabriella was born to first generation Sicilians who lived in Maspeth, Queens and never spoke a word of English. They made their own wine, cooked all day and took their eating very seriously.  Once I got front row seats to Joan Armatrading, Gabriella and my favorite singer, but Gabriella couldn’t go because it was “Tomato Sauce day” on her block.

When I started dating a sculptor who lived upstairs, Gabriella started dating a business major that loved to cook.  Soon, our dorm meals became so elaborate we had to push the furniture back to make room for our picnics of mozzarella, tomato and basil, Penne ala Vodka, chicken parmesan, arugula salad with shaved Pecorino, tomato and olive bruschetta. We never ate it all, but the site of an entire dorm floor covered in delicious food was pure heaven to me.

The sculptor from upstairs who would later become my husband loved my passion for food.  We went to Dim Sum restaurants in Chinatown, Salumerias in little Italy and a tiny Japanese place in the East Village that had half priced sushi on Monday nights.   Dave had never had sushi before and ordered so much; they stacked up the bamboo plates into a tower next to him.

When Dave graduated, I took a gap year and we traveled around Europe for a few months.  We visited beautiful churches, grand museums and muddy canals, but what I remember most was the food: Utrecht was crunchy croquettes, Ireland was salty salmon on grainy brown bread, Venice was a gnocchi Bolognese, and Belgium was garlicky mussels.

As I chomped my way across the European continent, I gained twelve pounds and my thighs chafed when I walked.  When my sister picked me up at the airport she mumbled, “You could have just floated home.”

“When in Rome.” I replied.  Rome was saltimbocca and lemony stuffed artichokes. I indulged when I traveled to Europe, to New Orleans, to Newark.  Every memory I have is forged in food.   When a friend retells an event I can’t remember, she need only add,   “We stopped and had ribs at that great Barbecue place with the giant cow out front,” that the memory of the sticky sweet sour taste of barbecue sauce comes flooding back.

After college, I moved into Manhattan where I met Merri in a writing class. Not only would we become best friends and collaborate on theater together for years, but Merri is the first person I have ever met who loved food more than me.  Everything we did involved having “a little snicky snack”.   When we walked around Manhattan she knew the best places to buy any kind of food: “That Mexican Deli has delicious mole’, this place has a truffle cheese to die for…wait, this Salumeria has prosciutto that they slice as thin as paper…” Merri shopped at Farmer’s Markets and used giant stained hard cover cookbooks to prepare her meals.  After I married Dave, she made us rosemary chicken that Dave loved.   She made it for him for years.

When Dave died on September 11th, I stopped eating.   Ironically, my apartment suddenly filled up with food.  Friends, family, neighbors and even strangers arrived bearing hams and lasagnas, raviolis and platters of cheese.  I threw up everything I tried to eat and subsisted on Ensure shakes and soup.  The food kept coming.  People wanted to do something.  Local restaurants donated dishes until we had to start turning it away for lack of space in the refrigerator.

After a few weeks, I graduated to bagels and butter, grilled chesses. Things I never ate before. Comfort food.  Nothing tasted right and the only thing I could cook was frozen chicken nuggets and fries for my son.   Eventually, I began eating, but my taste buds felt like I had burned them.  Slowly, like a long winter ending, I began to enjoy food again.  It started at a restaurant, where I let a salty steak float around like clothes in a dryer.   At a party, creamy Brie made me close my eyes, at a wedding, a briny oyster tasted like the middle of the ocean.

 

I moved to a carriage house in Staten Island and bought a long farm table to host my friends.   I began cooking again.  I liked spending the day thinking about what to make: that Italian specialty store with the prosciutto hanging like leathery lamps from the ceiling, that run down bakery with the crispy semolina bread.

My dinner parties became a way to express my gratitude to the people I loved for helping me through the darkest time in my life.  It became a thank you card on a plate.  On warm summer nights I grilled polenta and rib eye steaks with tarragon butter.  In the winter, I made pork chops with peach brandy sauce and rosemary potatoes and always there was a salad with beets or figs and candied walnuts.  I picked fragrant foods so my friends would enter and say, “Damn it smells good in here!”  During these dinner parties, at one point during the meal, I stop and look down the long hallway of my table to take in the evening.  I memorize the images of my friends laughing, eating, the candlelight distorted in the globe of their wine glasses.  I take a bite, I savor, and I swallow and say mmmmmm.