Memories of food

More about food. I love to eat. I am married to someone who like me, appreciates good food. You will never see candy bars and bags of chips and soda in our house. Our fridge is filled with Pellegrino water and pomegranate juice, fine cheeses and organic vegetables. Our cabinets are packed with whole grains and pine nuts, fancy mustards and exotic seasonings. Our table is adorned with organic fruits and figs and nuts, and our wine rack is filled with nice chiantis and assorted wines. What's missing from my favorite drawer, you ask? Mortadella, capicolla and salami.

When you are brought up in an authentic Italian household, you eat well. While classmates brought peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to school, we brought meatball sandwiches on Italian sliced bread and salami sandwiches with roasted peppers and eggplant. There will never be a better sound than a meatball dropping into my nonie's all day sauce, or gravy, as some Italians call it, on a Sunday morning.

I drool at the thought of salami and mortadella and meatballs. As much as my mind may know that it takes the worst practices to make that salami- that a pig died for the taste- the sounds of Frank Sinatra take over in my head and the dead pig is replaced with memories of sauce and meatballs and Italian imported meats.

My father died at 57 of a heart attack. My cholesterol is high and my brother's is worse. I mentioned the idea of a vegan diet to him and he said he would rather be dead. Part of me thinks this is crazy and the other part of me relates to it.

Summer made us some stuffed shells while we were in Portland. They were stuffed with tofu and nutritional yeast (the vegan's answer to parmesano) and they tasted good. But did they even resemble my mother's stuffed shells? Not in the slightest bit. My mother's stuffed shells, which she learned how to make from my nonie, were stuffed with ricotta cheese, whipped with eggs, parmesano, mozzerella and fresh parsley. They melted in your mouth. Summer's tasted good as well, but they didn't taste like Italian stuffed shells. To eat the vegan way means to throw out everything you remember and adopt a new way of eating. Fakin' will never taste like bacon, and vege sausage in my Thanksgiving stuffing tastes like, well, something other than my nonie's stuffing, and I love my nonie's stuffing. And don't get me started on Tofurkey.

As Passover approaches and Michael and I wonder what the hell to cook if we are not making brisket and chicken, and with Easter on the way, I can feel a longing for apizzagain (an Italian-style thick-crusted pie that consists of 18 eggs, Italian sausage, pepperoni, and three different kinds of cheese).
I know the vegan/vegetarian side of my family can't possibly understand how I could place such importance on meat. We rarely eat meat, but sometimes, well, you just want it. I wish I didn't, but I do. (As my mom used to say, "If the meat industry had to survive on me, they'd go broke.")

So I will continue to rationalize my feelings and try and make an argument that makes sense to Summer and the rest of them, but they won't understand. Only my brother and husband will understand why a Passover without brisket and an Easter without appizzagain is like, well...a day without sunshine.