Around the dinner table

For almost two years my garage has been a home for a pair of couches once owned by my friend Tommy. When he and his girlfriend, Lisa, bought some new furniture, I took their old couches off their hands and stacked in my garage they’ve been ever since.

With my grandfather’s passing this week, my family spent the first day of Spring cleaning and organizing the apartment he and my grandmother have lived for more than 30 years. The Queens apartment was my summer vacation spot as a child and the place we always went on Christmas Eve. The walls are bursting with memories and with one more weekend left to move everything out of it, it hasn’t truly hit me that after next weekend, I will never walk through those old doors again.

We didn't just eat at this table, but stacked countless Christmas presents on top of it.

My souvenirs from my city getaway are two end tables, two lamps, a ceiling light fixture, some hand-embroidered napkins and tablecloths, a set of Mikasa china and a dining room table.

While the end tables and lamps have no emotional value, the same cannot be said for the dining room table.

At 27 years old, I have spent 23 Christmas Eves sitting at that table surrounded by my large, boisterous Italian family. As a child I did not have the palate to partake in traditional fare, like cardona, spitini, fried primo sale or stuffed mushrooms. In fact, my grandmother needed to set aside a bowl of pasta without sauce to satisfy this picky eater.

Sometimes, special circumstances required that eat pizza, fried chicken and fried rice. Regardless, the laughter and the joy of being together was always the same.

I was about 14 when I moved from the kids’ table to the adult table. Eventually Joan, the youngest, was sitting at the adult table, which was extended by putting a small folding table at the end of the formal dining table.

Most of us had a general area where we sat every year. My grandfather was at the head, of course, with my Uncle Dan to his left followed by my Aunt RoRo, my Nana and then most often, my Aunt Kathie. To my Grandfather’s right was my father, my mother then most often me. After my Aunt Kathie and me, the order could vary depending on who was else could make it or who had a significant other in attendance.

While I don’t know how it started, after Grace we generally do the wave. Yes, that thing people do at sporting events. The wave. As with most things in my life, it probably started as a joke and now it’s done at every formal family meal.

The last meal we had together as a complete family at this table was Easter in 2008. My Nana died a month or so later and we’ve struggled to find a way to honor the tradition without the glue that held it together.

The table will now sit in my garage until Chuck and I can pack it into a truck and move it to the home we have yet to find. With my family joking that since I have the table I have to host Christmas Eve dinner, I laugh and say, “If you come down, you bet I will!”

We laugh, but I could not be more serious.

I could only hope that once Chuck and I settle in, that first Christmas Eve my entire family comes down to have that traditional dinner at the same table where we had created so many memories.

Even if it’s just bad North Carolina pizza and KFC.

Learn By Doing

Cooking while living at home is probably one of the hardest thing to do.

Well, I could think of others, but on the off chance that my family actually does read this, I’ll keep those thoughts to myself.

…Don’t judge me, I’m 27 dammit…

Anyway. While Chuck lived in his own apartment we began cooking our own meals, but the lack of cooking space aside from the stove top made real experimentation difficult. Now that we both live at home, cooking space is a plenty. Problem now is too many cooks in the kitchen.

White pizza with bruschetta topping. It was pretty damn awesome.

While Chuck’s parents give us the space we need to make everything from pizza to tacos…okay, just pizza and tacos, my mother is a little more hands on, like it or not.

Enter my traditional Italian mother. The one that always makes sure you have something to eat, even if you aren’t hungry. Give in to her requests to prepare you something and you get a bowl of pasta, chicken cutlets with a side of vegetables. I’ve learned most of what I know about cooking just from watching my mother in the kitchen. She is always appreciative of help while she’s cooking, but try doing it on your own and you’ll end up sitting at the kitchen table while she does everything herself.

Example. I wanted to make some chicken soup with rice for lunch the next day. My mother was in the kitchen also preparing dinner for the following day (something that helped her always put a hot meal on the table after working 9-5). I asked her some questions and she gave me the answers.

“When the broth boils, throw in the rice and turn the stove off.” (Or something like that. I can’t remember exactly, but that leads me to the point of my story)

Our take on Taco Bell's Cheesy Gordita Crunch.

I turn on the stove and while I let the broth get hot I check out what my father is watching in the living room. When I feel that the broth must be boiling I walk over to the kitchen and there is the rice simmering in the pot.

Ugh. OK.

“In 20 minutes it should be ready and you can throw it in the fridge.”

So I leave to head up to my room, checking the time and taking a mental note to come back in 20 minutes. At the 18-minute mark my mother pops her head into my room and tells me she threw the soup in a container and it’s now in the fridge.

Ugh. OK.

Am I appreciative of my mother’s love and care. Damn skippy I am.

Have I learned anything? NO! I couldn’t even tell you how the conversation went. If I wanted to make the same bowl of soup tonight I would have to ask her again.

A similar problem ensued over the summer with the cooking of BBQ chicken. The incident lead me to scream “Learn by doing!!” at my mother while my friend Beka laughed. Needless to say, the chicken soup incident happened after the BBQ incident so obviously she never got the point.

A big part of getting my own place is the bring desire to stock my own fridge and cook my own food. I enjoy working beside Chuck in the kitchen and then feasting on the meal that we have concocted.

Once it finally happens, I’m sure that after a long day of work I’ll be wishing I had my mother to prepare a hot meal for me. But, that’s what take out is for isn’t it?