Page 22 of A Recipe Called Home
Shouting up the stairs, Jules asked Grandma Rosa if she wanted to go to the grocery store. After her appointment this morning, Rosa's physical therapist gave her the green light to be on her feet more each day. Her hip was healing well, but she needed to move it. A change of scenery wouldn’t hurt either, Jules reasoned.
It took a few minutes to get them out the door and into the car, which she had picked up from Winnie’s earlier that morning. Flipping the passenger visor down to open the mirror, Grandma Rosa checked her lipstick and pinched her cheeks for color, although she had a full face of makeup on already. She wouldn’t be caught dead without looking like she spent an hour getting ready, even if it was just to go to the grocery store.
“You look great,” Jules quipped.
“Right. You just never know who’ll run into in this small town.” Rosa closed the visor and cast her eyes down, picking at the invisible specs on her trousers.
It hadn’t occurred to Jules that her grandma might be feeling nervous about her first trip in public since the accident. Rosa always carried an air of independence about her, so it must be hard for her to have to depend on other people. Barb used to joke that Rosa’s spine was made of steel. This proved that at least her hip wasn’t.
Still, Grandma Rosa didn’t complain. She wouldn’t grumble or hide away. She’d face the world head-on, like she’d always done. An injury wouldn’t prevent her from living her life, and Jules admired that. She grew up admiring that strength, hoping that some of it would rub off on her.
“You know, I used to go with my father sometimes to Chicago’s South Water Market in the early mornings,” Grandma Rosa said, staring out the window at the grey day passing by. “He would wake me up around five, while everyone else was still asleep, and we’d sneak out the back door with our canvas tote bags. That’s where my love for all things food started.”
Jules nodded, encouraging her grandma to continue. She’d never heard this story.
“We’d hop on our bikes and ride the few blocks in the dark. I remember it being so quiet at that time of day. The energy was different, slower in those moments before the day began; the last moments of stillness that few ever saw,” Rosa continued, a wistful look on her face. “My dad and I wouldn’t say a word the entire ride. It was as if we were both in on a secret, and neither of us felt the need to talk about it. We were just in it.”
The image of her grandma as a young girl riding a bike through the residential city streets during the twilight of the morning hours flashed in Jules’ mind and she ached for moment she'd never experience.
“He went almost every morning to sample the fresh produce for the restaurant and place orders. But on the rare days he took me with him, I felt special. It was the only time we’d ever spent alone together.”
Rosa was the eldest of three daughters, and Jules’ great grandmother divided her time between the house and the restaurant. The two youngest girls took up most of her attention. Rosa helped as needed, but preferred to be in the restaurant, especially as she got older. And her mother didn’t hide that she thought it improper for a young lady to work in a kitchen, even though she did the same almost every day. It drove a wedge between them over the years, one that Jules wasn’t certain ever dissolved.
As they drove, Grandma Rosa told Jules how her father taught her how to pick out the best and freshest artichokes, eggplants, juicy red and green peppers, and everything else they could find for that day’s menu.
“After a while, we made a game of it,” she recalled. “I had to guess which pieces of produce were the best at each stand. If I chose correctly, we’d share a warm slice of pandoro sweet bread from one of my dad’s favorite purveyors before loading our haul onto the wire bike racks.”
Afterwards, she’d follow him to the restaurant and watch as he prepped food for the day. She still remembered the first morning he invited her to help, clasping his hand over hers as she held onto a large chef’s knife, barely tall enough to see over the counter. It wasn’t long until he trusted her enough to handle the prep by herself, which she did every morning before school.
“The kitchen became my sanctuary. It’s where I learned that to be great at anything takes an incredible amount of control and focus. Things many people lack." She looked at Jules. “Things you have in spades.”
Jules could see it all unfolding in her mind, and she longed to know more about her grandma’s childhood. It seemed so different from her own.
Pulling into the parking lot in front of John’s Shoppe, Jules turned the ignition off and sat for a moment while Rosa gathered her things. She’d heard her grandma tell stories about what it was like growing up and working in her father’s restaurant, but never anything quite so intimate. Jules had a sense that there was a lot her grandma was leaving out, but didn’t know why.
Jules helped her grandma out of the car, gently holding her elbow as she pushed herself upright almost completely on her own. It was clear Rosa didn’t need her as much as she’d anticipated, but Jules didn’t care. It had been years since they’d spent this much one-on-one time together, so she was grateful. Their relationship had changed in the years since Jules grew from a young girl to a woman. Now, she appreciated her grandma’s wisdom and the stories she shared with her in a new way, through the eyes of a woman who’d experienced the ups and downs of life and could relate on a more personal level.
Together, they made their way through the store, gathering all the ingredients needed for that week’s menu of recipes. At the produce section, Grandma Rosa shared her some of her father’s tricks to identify the best pieces.
“You have enough here for a feast,” said Micky, the current owner, as he scanned their items. He inherited the shop a few decades ago from his father, John.
“We’re on a mission to cook our way through some old recipes,” said Rosa in an upbeat tone Jules hadn’t heard in a while.
“I bet they’ll bedelish, especially if they’re your recipes,” he replied, smiling back at Rosa.
If Jules didn’t know any better, those two were flirting. Her head swiveled back and forth, watching them exchange playful banter as they stood in the checkout line. Trying hard to keep her face as neutral as possible, she loaded their items into the bags they brought, not saying a word.
What was happening?No wonder Grandma Rosa seemed preoccupied with her appearance earlier; she had a crush on the shoppe owner, Jules realized to her horror—and maybe delight? She wasn’t sure.
That evening, back home in the kitchen, they laid out all the ingredients to make lasagna from scratch, even the pasta. It had been ages since either of them had rolled out fresh pasta dough, and they looked forward to the rhythm of it. Since they were planning to make enough to take leftovers to The Landing, they got started in the early afternoon. It would take a while; making fresh pasta and sauce was a labor of love. The sauce had to simmer in the big pot for at least two hours. Ideally all day, but they’d gotten too late of a start for that. A couple of hours would have to do.
Mixing the flour with eggs, salt, and a dollop of olive oil, Jules formed the dough into four large balls and covered it with plastic wrap to sit for thirty minutes before rolling it out. During the downtime, she helped her grandma open the cans of San Marzano tomatoes, the only kind she would ever consider using, and poured them into the big pasta pot that once belonged to her great-grandfather. She stood close as Rosa added the seasonings and fresh herbs, along with three onions chopped in half, which would simmer in the sauce until the end, when they’d be used to smear on crusty bread as a sort of tomato-y onion confit that Jules loved.
It felt good to have her grandma cooking alongside her now instead of backseat driving from the table. Neither of them noticed the afternoon tick by. It was an easy thing to do in the kitchen, lose sense of time. It wasn’t until after they’d rolled and cut the lasagna sheets that they realized it was getting late. They’d need to hurry if they wanted to get the pans of lasagna assembled and in the oven by five. It would take at least an hour to bake in the oven and they were already cutting it close to dinner time for the eager ladies at The Landing.
With an intentional pep in their step, they got all four pans in the oven with no time to spare. Exhausted from the manual labor, they both plopped down at the table. Jules could see the exhaustion on her grandma’s face. She’d been on her feet almost all day, by far the most activity in weeks.
“I’ve got the rest of it. Why don’t you head upstairs, and I’ll bring you a plate when it’s ready?” she offered.
