Recipes – The Elephant's Trunk

Mom’s Sunday Pasta

June 2, 2024June 1, 2024 Nancy's Notes 🖊️🎶

Written for Stream Of Consciousness Saturday –
where the prompt is ‘recipe’. Here’s my stream.

My husband is as easy going as can be, so when he makes a request, I try my best to oblige. Last night he asked for Sunday pasta with meatballs. How could I refuse?

Homemade pasta with all the trimmings is something I can do with my eyes closed but when I first started out in the kitchen as a new bride, I had no idea what I was doing. Sure, I had watched my mother cook for years but it’s a whole different ballgame when you’re on your own.

I’ll never forget the first time I tried to make Sunday pasta. Reading my mother’s recipe was no help. This is exactly what she wrote:

For your pasta dough mix flour and eggs, water when you need, pinch salt, oil maybe.

That’s it. No measurements, no amounts, nothing definitive. Her meatball recipe was no better:

Chopped meat, eggs, some salt & pepper, handful parmigiano, another handful breadcrumbs, dice onion, parsley, oregano, glass of water.

A GLASS OF WATER! Which glass? What size? At this point my eyes were frantically scanning the kitchen for a glass! I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry. I’m sure my mother never referred to a recipe in her life so she had no idea how to write one!

Just then it hit me and I had a vision of my mother in her kitchen. She always used a Flintstone’s Jelly Jar as her water glass when cooking; she said it was the perfect size. All I had to do was find an equivalent measure and I’d be good.

I eventually mastered the art of Sunday pasta with meatballs but I sure do wish I had my mom’s jelly jar .… for old times’ sake, you know?

NAR©2024
#SoCS

The Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS June 1, 2024

This is “Che La Luna” by my Sicilian paisano, Louis Prima

Uncategorized

La Cucina Di Mia Madre

January 25, 2024January 24, 2024 Nancy's Notes 🖊️🎶

Denise at GirlieOnTheEdge is challenging us once again
to create an amazing Six Sentence Story,
this time using the word “access”;
this is my response.

Due, no doubt, to the cold weather, I have been doing a lot more cooking indoors, eschewing the barbecue grill for simmering pots of tomato sauce, bubbling trays of lasagna and stews roiling in slow cookers – a skill which comes naturally to me since, as I have mentioned many times recently, I hail from a long line of talented cooks, with my mother topping the list; she instilled in me at an early age a love of hearty and delicious home-cooked meals and the know-how to prepare them.

Mom was a Sicilian immigrant who attended school only until the age of 9; with her own ailing mother unable to maintain their home, my mother assumed the role of nurse, cook and maid …. devastatingly unfair, but that’s the way it was in 1925 – kids forced to abandon their childhood, growing up in a hurry.

My mother and her cousins did not have access to YouTube or TikTok or cooking channels on TV; there were no cookbooks in her small apartment …. just recipes galvanized in her brain from watching her grandmother and her aunts holding court in the kitchen.

Many of the ingredients my mother used were home grown, such as vegetables, herbs and fruit, and the items that didn’t come from the ground were all bought from the local grocer and butcher, the price haggled and haggled once again until my mother was satisfied; her purchases were of the finest quality and she always returned home with change in her purse.

When I, as a kid, would come home from school or a day outside with my friends, I would always be greeted with the sublime aromas of something magical cooking; I would float into the kitchen as though carried by angels, my nose twitching, and I would dreamily ask “What’s for dinner?”

So many mornings I was awakened by the steady thump thump thump of the base of my mother’s palm kneading and pounding the dough for her exquisite double crust pizza filled with nothing but sweet, caramelized onions sautéed to golden-brown perfection; to this day after too many years and countless attempts, I still have not figured out her secret to that culinary slice of heaven.

Sunday’s Six Sentence Story Word Prompt!

“Mambo Italiano” featuring Rosemary Clooney singing and Sophia Loren dancing.

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Flash

Home Cooking

January 24, 2024January 23, 2024 Nancy's Notes 🖊️🎶

Sammi at Weekend Writing Prompt
is challenging us with the word “note”;
in exactly 72 words, this is my response.

My mother was a terrific cook; her specialty was, of course, homemade Italian food – manicotti, arancini, etc.

She left me her ‘recipe book, which was really nothing more than scribbled notes. Her ‘detailed‘ cooking instructions read: “some cheese” and a “glass” of water.

I can remember the glass she used to add water to whatever she was cooking; it was an old Flintstones jelly jar.

How I wish I had that jar!

Weekend Writing Prompt #347 – Note

This is “Come On-A My House” by Louis Prima

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