In the food zone
If I were on top of things, I’d remember that I’ve signed up to teach three cooking classes in the fall. Apparently, I’m decidedly not on top of things. So, I guess it’s a good thing that I at least look at my mail. I got my catalogue and found out about my cooking classes when I saw my name printed in it. One is The Complete Pasta Course. The other two are Some Like It Hot and Tapas: The Little Dishes of Spain. Great. Now all I have to do is figure out what I’m teaching and I’ll be all set. (Of course, the classes have to meet minimum registration requirements and they haven’t been since the economy went into hibernation. Don’t think these will fly either. Time will tell.)
I often think about how I learned to cook. I know I’m pretty good at it, but I have to admit that I’ve never been to school. I learned to cook from watching three 
people: My grandmother, my dad and my mom. That pretty much sums up my education in this arena. I also have a lot of memories surrounding food and smells. One of the things I used to love to do was congregate at my grandmother’s in Everett after Sunday Mass. My grandmother would have a pot of gravy and meatballs on the stove. Now, let me clarify this “gravy-sauce” thing. My family doesn’t call red sauce “spaghetti sauce.” We call it gravy.
It wouldn’t take long for us to start mucking up the works. Before you knew it, someone would grab some Italian bread and start dunking it into the gravy. Then, we’d start eating the meatballs. My grandmother would have to run out to the kitchen to protect Sunday dinner and, boy, did it annoy her that we were depositing breadcrumbs into the gravy. You thought she’d never shut up. When she started speaking Italian, we all knew we were in real trouble.
Another memory I have about my family involves ravioli. We’ve been eating homemade ravioli at all major holidays for years. It was my dad who used to make the raviolis. We’re talking no machine here, not even a crank. All the dough was made by hand, rolled out by hand with a rolling pin, cut into neat circles with these great aluminum drinking glasses we used to have, and then stuffed and assembled by hand. I have a very vivid memory of my dad laying a large sheet over my grandmother’s bed, and my dad would neatly lay out all the ravioli on the bed as he made them. Invariably, he would make “The Papa,” a giant ravioli that we got to cook and eat on the spot. It’s a funny thing about this memory. It’s like I’m in my grandmother’s room right next to her bed. I remember exactly how her room was set up. There are ravioli on the bed, and I can look right out her door and see my dad in the kitchen making more.
It’s a very vivid memory, and I have it at the weirdest times. I lost my dad at an early age, but the memories I have of him are very much alive. At any rate, when my dad died, my mom took over making the ravioli. Now that my mom’s gone too, both of my older sisters have picked up the holiday ravioli making.
My sister’s Christmas eve bash
Now here’s a family tradition. My sister Mamie hosts a Christmas eve 
open house every year, and has been doing this for more than twenty years. The evening starts about 6 p.m. and people keep coming and going right up until the early morning hours. In keeping with Italian tradition, the emphasis on Christmas eve from a food perspective is seafood, so my sister serves things like octopus salad and smelts. When my mother was alive, my cousin Richie would always ask, “Hey, Auntie Frannie, you making calamari pie this year or what?” She always did, and she always made extra so people could take some home. Now that my mom’s gone, my sister carries on the tradition using her recipe. Of course, logic will tell you that not everyone wants to sit around eating octopus and smelts — particularly small children — so there’s always the traditional meat balls, roast beef and ham for the less adventurous eaters in the family.
Most of the people coming to the open house are on my mom’s side of the family, not my dad’s. My dad’s sister Phyllis used to come every year before she passed away. I’ve recently met a lot of Della Piana’s on Facebook. We know we’re related, but we’re not sure how. Regardless, my mom’s side of the family is huge. I have a lot of cousins. My mother’s brother, my Uncle Tony, had fourteen children. He used to joke that he had sex with his wife only fourteen times, but she got pregnant every time. And his children now have their own children and grandchildren. It’s a great way for us all to catch up with each other.
The little kids love it because there have to be fifteen or twenty kinds of cookies for them to gorge themselves on. There’s a small cookie tree that gives them access to cookies and candy canes. Eye leve. No permission required. No waiting. Hey, it’s Christmas.
The inevitable Ying-Yang
Of course, food can evoke some ugly memories as well. I’ve had my share of both. Some of the uglies have been doozies. Let’s start with what I like to call the granddaddy of bacterial contamination: Tofu. Yeah. I will eat it as soon as the package is open. If it isn’t used all in one foodie event, it’s trash. I never save it. If it comes in hot and sour soup, I eat around it because only Buddha knows how long the restaurant has saved it for. (Of course, there’s so much vinegar in that soup that it probably wouldn’t matter much anyway.)
On this particular night, I ordered Chinese food for Beth, Thalia and myself. We went to a place called China Wok in Beverly. We’d lived there for about seven years, so we were familiar with the place. I was the only one who didn’t eat tofu that night. I was also the only one who didn’t get sick. So picture it: Two bathrooms. Two yakkers. Ugly. Okay, I’ve got this thing about vomit. Know what I mean? To have two people yakking at the same time in two bathrooms didn’t leave me much of an option for going to the bathroom myself. Of course, Thalia was done after several hours, but Beth is never that simple. No sir.
Beth got so sick that she nearly dehydrated. She ended up in Beverly Hospital
for a freakin’ week. It was amazing. They ran blood cultures and all kinds of other tests. She couldn’t even eat for the first few days she was there. As a joke, I managed to get some yellow tape that said “Toxic Waste” at work. I snuck into the hospital room while she was sleeping and taped up her bathroom door. The nurses were laughing like hell when I returned a few hours later. It was no joke. She couldn’t leave until she could eat, and she couldn’t eat until the end of the week. Then, they released her with anti-nausea medication. Exactly one week later, the exact same thing happened again and Beth ended up in Beverly Hospital for another week. They never actually came up with any reason for this bad health event other than the tofu. Thankfully, it didn’t happen a third time.
Ah, but we’re not done yet! One other messed up food event happened with the charming and delightful Miss Headcase. You remember her! Turner’s Falls? Photography? Yeah, that headcase. Not this one. Her sister Janet visited from California once and we drove down to Newport, Rhode Island for the day. We decided to eat at a place called La Forge Casino.
Miss Headcase ordered steak. I cannot for the life of me remember what Janet and I ordered. So anyway, we’re eating when all of a sudden, I look up and Miss Headcase is seriously choking on a piece of steak. I mean, this is no joke. Everything I learned in my CPR class was coming true. She finally pushed herself away from the table and started moving around the restaurant holding her throat. Janet, I have to tell you, just kept eating.
I finally caught up with Miss Headcase right near the kitchen door. Thinking 
wasn’t an option at that point. I grabbed her as best I could, pulled her back, and did the heimlich. I figured I had one shot. It worked. Just as the executive chef was walking out the kitchen door, Miss Headcase chucked a piece of steak right onto his freakin’ shoe. It was absolutely the perfect ending. It looked like a comedy act, frankly.
