My mother's kitchen and mine

Reading memoirs of Italians and Italian-Americans, redolent with food reminiscences, makes me taste the sour grapes of envy. A childhood in the Roman countryside, like mine, should evoke memories of complex and slow-cooked dishes; of fresh ricotta and crusty bread, of golden gnocchi and, yes, offal prepared in the most delicious of ways.

But the meals of my past are far less exotic, prepared by a mom raised in the city, married as a teenager, and within a short time living in a house full of small and picky eaters. My mother having little patience for daily shopping, and holding in her gentle soul even less of the bravado required to keep variety in a kitchen dominated by children, we ate packaged supermarket rolls instead of the giant local loaves consumed by my less prosperous friends, bouillon-cube broth and boxed orzo for our nightly suppers, and drank long-life, shelf-friendly milk rather than the creamier stuff that still today, in Italy, goes rancid within a couple of days.

Ironically, it is when we came to the States that my mamma became an adventurous cook and the most discriminating of shoppers.

Though not spectacularly bound to land or traditions, however, there was endless comfort in the ritual of my childhood meals, and lasting meaning in their three-times-a-day repetition: about ninety percent of what we children ate was buttered pasta or pastina in broth, thinly sliced pan-fried beef (often coated in egg and bread crumbs), green salad, and fresh fruit. This quasi-liturgical monotony was interrupted by the food epiphanies that came with the infrequent visits of elderly female relatives-paternal aunts, mostly-who prepared fresh pasta with a menacing rolling pin and brought vats of sea snails in tomatoes and fennel, as well as honeyed, peppery, creamy, or fruity sweets (cicerchiata, panpepato, ciambellone, frustingo).

In my family today, we sit down to one proper meal a day together instead of three, and usually serve our food American-style-all at once, not in several courses as in Italy. The ethnic provenance of what we eat is much more varied: tacos are a favorite as much as pizza, falafels alternate with fajitas, cellophane noodles with puttanesca, crudités and spiced tofu with rosemary potatoes and baked beans.

Though my husband, unlike my mother's, does the dishes, like mamma I cook for my family every day. God may not have walked among my pots and pans, as among Teresa of Avila's, but I am hardly alone in the kitchen: a stand mixer allows me to bake bread every week and, sometimes, sweet treats; more crucially, my husband's shopping ensures that the fridge and pantry, on most nights, hold what's needed for a simple supper; our food coop provides international and responsibly produced ingredients, and a community-supported farm shares with us a growing season that, for Vermont, seems surprisingly long.

Kitchen connections such as these enhance the meaning, not to mention the pleasure, of the foods we eat. Still there are times when there is monotony in my kitchen, or, more often, rejection. And though it is hard in those moments of “Not again!” and “I'm not eating that!” to think of the liturgical gifts of repetition, of the enduring grace even my often dull childhood meals generously brought into my life, still there is little choice but to keep cooking, keep serving, keep eating, because the dishes will have to be done and food will have to be cooked again tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that.

No matter how wild the cook's imagination, the process is inherently monotonous. But in view of hunger and disorder, in view of loneliness and famine, monotony itself becomes a gift: because tomorrow, like today, and like thirty years ago, I will sit down with my family at our table, in a kitchen that, like my mother's, may hold few surprises but that, like hers, relies every day on the providential presence of food prepared for, served to, and eaten in the company of those with whom I share my life.