Measured with Love

February is one of my favorite months. It feels like it should come with a complimentary quilt, a cup of warm tea, and a historical romance novel. The light is weird, the trees look like they are holding their breath, waiting for Spring to enter the room. It’s quiet and anticipatory at the same time.

However, inside my house, February is about to be the opposite of quiet. I thought we would have my grandsons for two weeks. It wasn’t a planned visit, which honestly makes it even better. I could hardly wait for them to get here.

I did the very important grandma preparations. I bought extra Play-Doh. I stocked up on magnet tiles. I even bought a couple more Lego sets because I have learned something in my years of living with children (and teaching teenagers), which is that boredom is not a moral failure, but it can become a household emergency if you do not plan ahead. I’ve also got all the snacky-snacks: yogurt, dried fruits, apple sauce pouchies, pretzels, and tons of pistachios.

The food is where I have to think a little more carefully when they come to visit. My daughter and my grandsons are vegetarian. Now, we don’t eat a lot of meat in our house, but we do eat some. We are not a family that throws bacon on everything and calls it a personality trait. Still, it means that while the boys are here, I always need to cook a little differently. It’s not truly a big deal since most little kid favorites are not really meat centered: grilled cheese, pizza, and the all time favorite spaghetti.

When my kids were little, we ate a ton of spaghetti. It was cheap and it was fast for a mom on a tight budget with four growing mouths to feed. Of course, being Sicilian American, Romano cheese is a staple. My kids put it on everything from chicken soup, to cauliflower, to mashed potatoes, and especially pasta.

My kids’ dad used to call it “the stinky cheese,” which often felt like a dig at my culture and food preferences. I remember one dinner where he stuck his nose up at my son Christian, asking him why he would put so much stinky cheese on his pasta. Christian’s response was epic: That’s not stinky cheese. It’s Italian gold. He could not have been more true.

Like the Romano cheese in our house, most of my cooking comes from learning how to cook from three incredible women: my mom, my Grandma Marie, and my Nonni. Let me start by saying that all three of these women are gifted when it comes to cooking. I also want to say I learned the art of “what’s in the refrigerator” meals from them.

And, as a young mom who was also a teacher, I regularly forgot to pull the chicken from the freezer so it would defrost in the sink while I was teaching. This was not a crime, but boy, if I said dinner was going to be late, it was moans and groans from everyone as I was fending off my three hungry boys who could eat through my pantry like Pac-Man.

I remember my mom, who was the queen of casseroles and one-pot cuisine, scraping together leftover somethings that were genuinely delicious. Once, we had a potluck at church that she forgot about until 8:30 on a Saturday night. I watched her rummaging through the cabinets, pulling out potatoes, cream of chicken soup, seasonings, and canned water chestnuts. There was leftover roasted chicken from dinner and a bunch of broccoli she probably bought for something else. Suddenly, she was making magic out of nothing but odds and ends.

The crunch of the water chestnuts was a delightful surprise. The creamy chicken soup and tang from the sour cream was so comforting. The potatoes were like the best part of scalloped au gratin. And of course she covered the whole thing with cheddar cheese, because that is what respectable Midwestern church casseroles do.

The next day at church, people raved about it…as they should have. It was divine, and my mom walked out of the fellowship hall with an empty glass baking dish. Woman after woman asked her for the recipe. My mom sheepishly replied, “I didn’t use one.”

I have no idea why she felt embarrassed about this. If it had been me, it would have been my moment to shine. I am sure I would have said, “Listen, y’all. My family knows I’m a goddess in the kitchen and can whip up an amazing dinner out of thin air.”

I now find myself cooking the same way, partly because I’m a horrible meal planner, and partly because I truly believe I could earn a spot on Chopped if they ever let everyday people on that show. I rarely use a recipe, and even if I have one, I will have forgotten three of the ingredients and I’m just winging it.

The best part of cooking this way is that you have to measure with love. My sweet daughter-in-law recently asked me how you know how much garlic to put in the butter for garlic bread. My answer was, “Keep going until the ancestors say, ‘Stop!’” That was not me being cheeky. That is my real answer. When I think my mom, or Grandma Marie, or Nonni would stop…so do I. And there is something to patterning your cooking after all the generations who came before, not because they always got it right, but because they often built a pretty great foundation.

Which reminds me of one of my dad’s favorite jokes:

A family was getting together for Sunday supper. It was four generations under the same roof for their favorite ham and sweet potatoes after church. The mom and her daughter were in charge of getting the ham in the oven. The mom opens the ham and, whack, takes three inches off the end with a meat cleaver.

The girl asks, “Why do we always cut off the end of the ham, Mom?”

The mom says, “Grandma always did that, so I do it too. You’d have to ask her why she did it.”

So the girl goes into the next room and asks her grandma, “Grandma, why do you cut off the end of the ham before you put it in the oven?”

The grandma looks at her granddaughter and says, “Oh, that’s something I learned from your great-grandma. I’m not exactly sure why she did it. Go ask her.”

So the little girl goes out onto the front porch where her great-granny is sitting and asks, “Great Grandma…Mom and I are making the ham, and we cut off the end like you and Grandma always do. Why do we have to cut the end off the ham?”

Great Grandma looks surprised. “What do you mean you’re cutting off the end of the ham? I only did that because the pan was too small.”

Ba-da-dum.

So, on Sunday, I’ll scoop up my grandboys and bring them back to Tennessee. I’ll pull up a step stool on each side of me in front of the counter, and we’ll cook together…without meat…and with lots of laughter and messes.

Come on over and join us for some of their favorites: butternut squash soup with farro and chard, coconut curry paneer with tomato rice, macaroni and cheese with chopped cashews, and of course there will be plenty of spaghetti with Romano cheese.

Cheers to cooking with everything measured with love.