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I don\u2019t trust people who don\u2019t love to eat. \u00a0I spend an inordinate amount of my day thinking about eating, planning what I am going to eat or being full.\u00a0 \u00a0Being part Jewish and Italian, guilt and food are part of my DNA. \u00a0Even now, as I write this, I am considering a purchase of Kettle Potato Chips at the deli down the block. I can\u2019t help myself.<\/p>\n
Growing up, everything revolved around food. My mother never just said, \u201cLet\u2019s go for a hike.\u201d She\u2019d say, \u201cLet\u2019s go for a hike\u2026I\u2019ll make a nice fresh chicken salad with walnuts and grapes on this amazing grainy bread I found at this new bakery\u2026\u201d There was food tucked in the glove compartment of our car, in pockets of coats, in my mom\u2019s purses.\u00a0 I never so much as stepped outside without my mom yelling after me \u201cDid you eat a little something?\u201d<\/p>\n
Our refrigerator was always packed as if we were preparing for a blackout or Armageddon.\u00a0 I once found a leftover slice of a Carvel cake from my seventh birthday in the freezer.\u00a0 I was nine years old.<\/p>\n
My family would often spend Sundays at my Great Uncle Angelo\u2019s house.\u00a0 He lived to be 104 and made the best food I\u2019ve ever eaten.\u00a0 Before there was \u201cfarm to table\u201d, \u201corganic\u201d and \u201c locally grown\u201d, there was Uncle Angelo\u2019s food.<\/p>\n
He lived with my Aunt Anna in a small apartment in Flatbush, Brooklyn with a garden where he grew vegetables and raised chickens.\u00a0 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. \u00a0My mother liked to brag that he managed to stay out of the Great War cooking for the generals.<\/p>\n
When I was fifteen years old, my family traveled to Northern Italy to meet my mother\u2019s family.\u00a0\u00a0 I know we saw different sites, but I only remember the eating.\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It was long and narrow and smelled like garlic and bread.<\/p>\n
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. \u00a0I don\u2019t remember anyone ordering, the food would just arrive and arrive and arrive: \u00a0bowls of Gnocchi with sage butter sauce, cheesy risotto and braised rabbit served over creamy polenta with local Porcini mushrooms.<\/p>\n
When I arrived at college, I had been too spoiled on home made food to handle the dry cafeteria burgers.\u00a0 My new best friend Gabriella agreed and soon we were making elaborate dinners on one hot plate.\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Once I got front row seats to Joan Armatrading, Gabriella and my favorite singer, but Gabriella couldn\u2019t go because it was \u201cTomato Sauce day\u201d on her block.<\/p>\n
When I started dating a sculptor who lived upstairs, Gabriella started dating a business major that loved to cook.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
The sculptor from upstairs who would later become my husband loved my passion for food.\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0 Dave had never had sushi before and ordered so much; they stacked up the bamboo plates into a tower next to him.<\/p>\n
When Dave graduated, I took a gap year and we traveled around Europe for a few months. \u00a0We 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.<\/p>\n
As I chomped my way across the European continent, I gained twelve pounds and my thighs chafed when I walked.\u00a0 When my sister picked me up at the airport she mumbled, \u201cYou could have just floated home.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen in Rome.\u201d I replied. \u00a0Rome was saltimbocca and lemony stuffed artichokes. I indulged when I traveled to Europe, to New Orleans, to Newark.\u00a0 Every memory I have is forged in food.\u00a0\u00a0 When a friend retells an event I can\u2019t remember, she need only add,\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cWe stopped and had ribs at that great Barbecue place with the giant cow out front,\u201d that the memory of the sticky sweet sour taste of barbecue sauce comes flooding back.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 Everything we did involved having \u201ca little snicky snack\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 When we walked around Manhattan she knew the best places to buy any kind of food: \u201cThat Mexican Deli has delicious mole\u2019, this place has a truffle cheese to die for\u2026wait, this Salumeria has prosciutto that they slice as thin as paper\u2026\u201d Merri shopped at Farmer\u2019s Markets and used giant stained hard cover cookbooks to prepare her meals. \u00a0After I married Dave, she made us rosemary chicken that Dave loved.\u00a0 \u00a0She made it for him for years.<\/p>\n
When Dave died on September 11th, I stopped eating. \u00a0\u00a0Ironically, my apartment suddenly filled up with food.\u00a0 Friends, family, neighbors and even strangers arrived bearing hams and lasagnas, raviolis and platters of cheese.\u00a0 I threw up everything I tried to eat and subsisted on Ensure shakes and soup.\u00a0 The food kept coming.\u00a0 People wanted to do something.\u00a0 Local restaurants donated dishes until we had to start turning it away for lack of space in the refrigerator.<\/p>\n
After a few weeks, I graduated to bagels and butter, grilled chesses. Things I never ate before. Comfort food.\u00a0 Nothing tasted right and the only thing I could cook was frozen chicken nuggets and fries for my son.\u00a0\u00a0 Eventually, I began eating, but my taste buds felt like I had burned them.\u00a0 Slowly, like a long winter ending, I began to enjoy food again.\u00a0 It started at a restaurant, where I let a salty steak float around like clothes in a dryer.\u00a0\u00a0 At a party, creamy Brie made me close my eyes, at a wedding, a briny oyster tasted like the middle of the ocean.<\/p>\n
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I moved to a carriage house in Staten Island and bought a long farm table to host my friends. \u00a0\u00a0I began cooking again.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 It became a thank you card on a plate.\u00a0 On warm summer nights I grilled polenta and rib eye steaks with tarragon butter.\u00a0 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. \u00a0I picked fragrant foods so my friends would enter and say, \u201cDamn it smells good in here!\u201d\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I memorize the images of my friends laughing, eating, the candlelight distorted in the globe of their wine glasses.\u00a0 I take a bite, I savor, and I swallow and say mmmmmm.<\/p>\n
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I don\u2019t trust people who don\u2019t love to eat. \u00a0I spend an inordinate amount of my day thinking about eating, planning what I am going to eat or being full.\u00a0 \u00a0Being part Jewish and Italian, guilt and food are part of my DNA. \u00a0Even now, as I write this, I am considering a purchase […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n