Upstairs, I hear The Man of La Mancha album playing, my dad singing The Impossible Dream loudly, alongside Richard Kiley.  The song resonates with passionate lyrics and musical drama.  There is a grief and depth to its poetry that is akin to The Music of the Night sung by Michael Crawford in The Phantom of the Opera.  It makes me weep with its beauty and inconsolable sadness interpreted between the lines.

I watch as my Abuela places a large quantity of flour in the middle of the table, making a deep volcanic well wherein she expertly cracks three, whole, raw eggs into the core.  Slowly, from the sides of the heaped semolina floured hill, she cups the white dust into her hands.  She scatters the powder into the crater of yellow, jellied mounds. Gently, she incorporates the flour into the eggs, employing powerful and experienced forearms, wrists and hands. Dough is formed.

It was a messy yet magical process.  Unable to resist, I eagerly participated when my Abuela allowed me to.  Although it looked like fun – it proved to be an assignment for robust, skilled and mighty sinew.

Abuela divides the mother dough into an even amount of sections and rolls each glob into smaller round baby balls of satiny dough.  With a rolling pin, she flattens each on a lightly floured section of the table and then turns them clockwise. She irons out the wrinkles, continues turning and flattening all the way back up to twelve o’clock, then flips the pasta sheets over, like you rotate and spin a mattress.  Dribbling flour overhead like snow softly falling, she brushes her fingers over the smooth surface enlarging it further with her rolling pin, using the same process over and over until it’s the consistency and color of creamy muslin, the delicateness of a baby’s powdered bottom and the thickness and texture of velvet cloth.

The record player needle drops and the diamond point hisses as it swishes back and forth until it catches the groove and the LP album of West Side Story begins to play, starting with the overture.

“Según  cuanta humedad haya es la harina que vas a necesitar,” (The quantity of flour is determined by the amount of humidity that you have) she explained simply.  “Tenes que tener cuidado porque si agregras demasiado, la pasta se endurecerá” (You have to be careful, because if you add too much, the noodles will be too chewy).

There was affection and memory in her work and conversation as she persevered past each stage of alchemic transformation, regaling me with tidbits of information and technical details enshrined in historical family customs.

She deftly spreads teensy amounts of flour onto the elongated flat sheets.  Abuela drizzles in flour, waving her hands, she sands, brushes, and sweeps as flour particles disperse with the bottom palm of her four fingers, side to side, up and down so that the pasta sheet is pampered with tenderness, thoroughness and attention.

I hear “I like to be in America, everything free in America” upstairs and mimic the heavy Latina accent and dance up a storm around my Abuela.  She laughs and roars with glee, completely enjoying my antics.  The scent of sauce fills the house. With every breath, I inhale tomatoes, onions, garlic, oregano and bay leaves into my lungs. I cannot wait to enjoy the fruits of our labor!

Being an intuitive and creative cook, my mom never measured.  For her signature hearty Italian stew, she cooked several portions of beef, sometimes fowl, and mild, sweet Italian sausage in olive oil infused with fragrant, whole bay leaves.  The flesh sizzled as it seared.  Her trusted meat vendor in town saved her choice cuts.  She added slender slices of sweet green peppers, brown skinned onions and celery.  I peeled and she diced crunchy orange carrots and papery white garlic.  I opened and she added the contents of two or three cans of whole red tomatoes and a can of tomato paste.

I was taught to cook by layering, applying, editing, marinating and waiting – but mostly by tasting, smelling, listening and experiencing the preparation and finished product in all its stages.

But today, my grandmother was making and teaching me how to make homemade pasta downstairs in my mom’s sewing room.  My mom had embarked on the savory process earlier without my help.  I performed my Saturday chores, cleaning the bathrooms as well as tidying and vacuuming my bedroom.  Broadway tunes blasted from our RCA record player and stereo speakers as we worked

After stirring and surreptitiously tasting the sauce, I joined my Abuela (grandma) downstairs, in the hobby/laundry room.  She visited from Argentina and lived with us for a little under a year when I was ten years old.  She had scoured the silver splattered Formica topped table to a polish.  A strip of ribbed shiny chrome curved tightly around the edges of the table, like a rimmed, sleek headlight on a 60s winged Chevrolet, driven with swagger by a lacquered – haired rebel without a care in the world.  The table could be enlarged using an extra piece you inserted into the middle.  I helped center the wooden nubs into their respective holes from one end and pushed.

My mom spread, laid out, pinned and cut her inexpensive fabrics using sheer tan McCall or Simplicity patterns on the work surface, producing practical outfits for her daughters and herself.  I learned to make gnocchi, pasta, and pizza atop the smooth, level plateau.   I performed my home – schooled Spanish reading and writing on the sewing room “desk” while my mom manually pressed her foot on her Singer sewing machine or fed our clothes through the pins that squashed our laundry dry while she washed clothes.

Initially, when my parents immigrated from Argentina and lived in apartments, it was our kitchen table.  After purchasing our first home on Long Island, in the town of Kings Park, on Thistle Lane,  it morphed into a “behind the scenes” activity center.

Some of you have read Part One.  Look in older posts or in Archives to retrieve it. I go into a detailed description of my grandmother and you will understand the context better. I am delivering installments of Part 2 over the next several days.  I hope you enjoy reading it, maybe smile and relive some of your own nostalgic moments in the kitchen or new history you are making.

Part 2 – Chapter 1:

I came down the stairs and smelled Italian tomato meat sauce wafting through the air.  It lured me into the kitchen like a Pied Piper flute.  Embellishing the sauce, my mom added and stirred in oregano, salt and red wine.

“Can I taste?” I pleaded.

“Not yet” she replied sharply, turning her head and giving me an “ I know what you are up to” look.

“Can I stir, then?” I pestered, using a different tactic.

“Ok. But don’t eat any yet. The flavors have to meld all day and if you start tasting now, there won’t be any left for the talllarines (noodles). ”

She was right.  My sister and I used to sneak into the kitchen all day and dip pieces of ripped off bread from a fresh Italian loaf and scrape what would stick to the sides of the pot as it condensed over hours of simmering.  Occasionally, we ducked the stolen morsel right into the sauce.  By the time dinner rolled around, more than half the sauce and all of the bread had just about disappeared thanks to our constant pilfering and “tasting.”

Growing up on Long Island, in New York state, I remember processed, packaged, frozen, boxed “food” just starting to appear and appeal to moms and growing families.  Prepared meals were widely distributed and marketed to housewives.  Every family on our horseshoe –  shaped block had one car, one garage, one driveway,  and most mothers didn’t even know how to drive.  We waited for my dad to come home from work to shop in the local supermarket or went on weekends.  My mom staunchly believed in green produce and home –  cooked meals.  My father insisted on it.  We sat at the octagonal dining table, never answered the door or phone during dinner and ate punctually five minutes after my dad came through the door of our house from his job as a design engineer.