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Book: Born Round: A Story of Family, Food and a Ferocious Appetite by Frank Bruni
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Authors: Frank Bruni
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included a pasta dish on top of a gigantic turkey or an enormous ham, unless the pasta dish supplemented a gigantic turkey and an enormous ham. And the amount of each kind of food was plotted with this rule of thumb in mind: If every guest decided to eat nothing but mashed potatoes, or nothing but turkey and only white meat at that, would there still be enough mashed potatoes or white-meat turkey to go around?
The holiday pasta dishes varied from host to host. While Grandma favored her thumb-molded strascinat , Mom liked to serve manicotti, which were like oversize, thin-shelled, sleeve-shaped ravioli stuffed with ricotta and herbs. Sometimes, though, she served eggplant macaroni. Aunt Vicki and Aunt Carolyn liked to serve ricotta-stuffed shells, which were thicker and smaller than manicotti.
Over the years, on the many occasions in addition to holidays when the extended family got together, and even on occasions when Grandma cooked just for my siblings and me, I noticed that she stopped making the dishes that Mom, Aunt Vicki and Aunt Carolyn made so well. One by one they fell away, although it might be more accurate to say they were forfeited: manicotti and lasagna to Mom; stuffed shells and pizza dolce to Aunt Vicki; chicken cutlets and a range of Italian cookies to Aunt Carolyn. I think that after so many years of competing with her sisters-in-law, Grandma didn’t have the heart to compete anew with her daughters-in-law. But I think she was also validating them—letting them know they’d arrived. In some ancient public ceremonies, a torch was passed. In the extended Bruni family, the responsibility for eggplant macaroni was.
Some members of the extended Bruni clan, from left: Uncle Mario, Aunt Carolyn (holding their son Mauro), Dad, Aunt Vicki, my sister, Adelle (with my cousin Adele just beneath her), Mom, Grandma (with me standing over her), my brother Mark, my brother Harry (with my cousin Marc beneath him) and Uncle Jim.
A holiday feast required days and days of planning and preparation. Mom’s Thanksgivings in Avon, for example, tended to go like this:
T MINUS SIX DAYS—Sit down at the kitchen table with a ruled steno notebook and, over the course of three to four hours, make, revise, refine and double-check a series of lists. On the first two pages list every dish you plan to make. Use a third page if necessary. On yet another page list every dish that, in contradiction to your controlling nature, and in a moment of rare and laudable flexibility, you have permitted Vicki or Carolyn to bring. On yet another page list every item of ready-made food you plan to put on a platter, and on several pages after that translate the list of dishes you’re making and the list of ready-made food you’re assembling into a list of every ingredient, and how much of it, you need to buy. Pause to scream at Mark, who is listening to a Deep Purple album in his bedroom upstairs, that the electric guitars are too loud. Pause to scream at Frank, who is watching TV in the next room, that The Love Boat is too loud. Wonder where Harry is, and when Dad will get home from the office, and circle certain items on the shopping inventory—the special-trip, specialty-store stuff like cannoli and bocconcini —to be assigned to Dad. Make a mental note to tell him that he should wait until Wednesday to pick them up, so that they’re as fresh as possible on Thursday. Make an additional mental note to remind him on Monday and again on Tuesday that Wednesday is right around the corner.
T MINUS FOUR DAYS —Shop. Take the station wagon. Make sure nothing is in the far back, or in the backseat, or in the passenger seat, because it’s possible you’ll need all of this space. Make sure a stretch of about five hours is free and clear, because you’ll need this much time for driving to and among all the right stores and shopping and circling home to unload the perishable items; nonperishables can be left in the car until the kids come
The holiday pasta dishes varied from host to host. While Grandma favored her thumb-molded strascinat , Mom liked to serve manicotti, which were like oversize, thin-shelled, sleeve-shaped ravioli stuffed with ricotta and herbs. Sometimes, though, she served eggplant macaroni. Aunt Vicki and Aunt Carolyn liked to serve ricotta-stuffed shells, which were thicker and smaller than manicotti.
Over the years, on the many occasions in addition to holidays when the extended family got together, and even on occasions when Grandma cooked just for my siblings and me, I noticed that she stopped making the dishes that Mom, Aunt Vicki and Aunt Carolyn made so well. One by one they fell away, although it might be more accurate to say they were forfeited: manicotti and lasagna to Mom; stuffed shells and pizza dolce to Aunt Vicki; chicken cutlets and a range of Italian cookies to Aunt Carolyn. I think that after so many years of competing with her sisters-in-law, Grandma didn’t have the heart to compete anew with her daughters-in-law. But I think she was also validating them—letting them know they’d arrived. In some ancient public ceremonies, a torch was passed. In the extended Bruni family, the responsibility for eggplant macaroni was.
Some members of the extended Bruni clan, from left: Uncle Mario, Aunt Carolyn (holding their son Mauro), Dad, Aunt Vicki, my sister, Adelle (with my cousin Adele just beneath her), Mom, Grandma (with me standing over her), my brother Mark, my brother Harry (with my cousin Marc beneath him) and Uncle Jim.
A holiday feast required days and days of planning and preparation. Mom’s Thanksgivings in Avon, for example, tended to go like this:
T MINUS SIX DAYS—Sit down at the kitchen table with a ruled steno notebook and, over the course of three to four hours, make, revise, refine and double-check a series of lists. On the first two pages list every dish you plan to make. Use a third page if necessary. On yet another page list every dish that, in contradiction to your controlling nature, and in a moment of rare and laudable flexibility, you have permitted Vicki or Carolyn to bring. On yet another page list every item of ready-made food you plan to put on a platter, and on several pages after that translate the list of dishes you’re making and the list of ready-made food you’re assembling into a list of every ingredient, and how much of it, you need to buy. Pause to scream at Mark, who is listening to a Deep Purple album in his bedroom upstairs, that the electric guitars are too loud. Pause to scream at Frank, who is watching TV in the next room, that The Love Boat is too loud. Wonder where Harry is, and when Dad will get home from the office, and circle certain items on the shopping inventory—the special-trip, specialty-store stuff like cannoli and bocconcini —to be assigned to Dad. Make a mental note to tell him that he should wait until Wednesday to pick them up, so that they’re as fresh as possible on Thursday. Make an additional mental note to remind him on Monday and again on Tuesday that Wednesday is right around the corner.
T MINUS FOUR DAYS —Shop. Take the station wagon. Make sure nothing is in the far back, or in the backseat, or in the passenger seat, because it’s possible you’ll need all of this space. Make sure a stretch of about five hours is free and clear, because you’ll need this much time for driving to and among all the right stores and shopping and circling home to unload the perishable items; nonperishables can be left in the car until the kids come
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