Posted by Loulou on May 9, 2014 | 4 comments

Soothing soup

Mama wrote something that she wanted to put on this blog and I said no, no, it’s too long and no one will want to read it because everyone is used to my short ruminations on the condition of anthro-kind and kitty-kind but she insisted and so I said, okay, okay you can put it on but don’t blame me if no one reads it.

It’s about food, and it’s called

Soul Food

Sometimes food isn’t food at all.

Sometimes it’s a really warm embrace. You want to stay there and hug more tightly and breathe in the smell of the other person and not move at all and you think, this is so fulfilling, it is food, like a nice warm bowl of thick Tuscan soup or a dense bitter chocolate truffle—let me just stay here and be enriched while my whole body goes into a kind of hug nirvana. And then, at some point, the hug is finished and you come away full of goodness and warmth and a savory sense of being in that moment completely, and only that moment.

Sometimes it’s music.

Nello Salza, who can extract magic from a trumpet as no other, brings into my mornings a musical food as rich as hot chocolate and churros, a zip to my energy as potent as the creamy rich caffé ristretto from our barista down the street.

And then there is our wedding music by Antonio Janigro that melts my heart every time I hear it, replenishing a reminder, an attention to love that is sometimes sidetracked by everyday cares and distractions.

I remember strolling with my husband through the streets of Rome on the night that the Three Tenors were performing at the Baths of Caracalla—their arias wafting from every window, in every tiny street, bringing us both to tears with Puccini’s che gelida manina from La Boheme. A food for the soul as filling as satisfying as a perfect penne all’arrabbiata or a beautifully poached egg under a blanket of white truffles.

I am nourished, too, by friendships, by people I have known for years and years or those I have had the fortune to meet only recently. So many of them love food and cooking together, but after the table is finally laid with its bounty from the garden or the sea or the magical open markets we love all so dearly, it is the camaraderie and the laughing, even, as the Italians say, the occasional battibecco, a beating of the beaks, that sustains us through those lovely lingering meals.

When we had our business in Los Angeles, we were assailed by the aromas that only a bakery can provide—toasted nuts, crispy olives, melted dark chocolate, to name a few—ingredients that satisfied the senses as much as the work itself satisfied the soul. But the employees, their families, their sorrows and losses, their joys and achievements are with us today in memory much like Prousts’s madeleine. I cannot pass a forno in Italy or a boulangerie in France without a flood of warm thoughts taking over my brain for those who made our days more joyful than tedious. One can only admire and be enriched by talented workers who gave their all to turn out perfect, hand-made loaves, day after day, their friendship even warmer than the fresh-baked biscotti or cinnamon focacce that together we sampled in the morning with our coffee.

And now I come to family, sometimes the source of heartache or headache but more often the soul food of our lives, even for those of us who chose not to have children but instead, created a family along the way.

As a step-mamma and subsequently, step-nonna (the Italian word for stepmother, matrigna, has always given me heartburn) I view my grandkids at an angle different from that of a blood relative, and yet, I adore them as if they had been in my life forever, even through roller-coaster days on which I felt left in the stands while the rest of the clan battled it out in the ring!

Maybe ringside is better.

Even the chaos of a family meal where everyone is talking at once and no one hears anything is as memorable and as dear to me as my stepdaughter’s risotto con funghi or my other stepdaughter’s artichoke lasagne, which is saying a mouthful!

But the joy, the delight, the awe of watching tiny beings come into their own has no competition on any menu.

They are old enough to get acquainted with the kitchen now. One of them wants to cook professionally and will, no doubt, be successful as he is in all things. The smallest ones adore stirring flour and water to make the dough for pizza and cutting out ginger cookies into perfect hearts.

But when I see them tossing chopped rosemary and sea salt onto their focacce, ready for the oven, I think, yes, yes, they are having fun and they will relish the tastes of their own creations, but what they will remember most, what will nourish them as they grow is not the food itself, but the love between us that went into it.

I guess that’s what mama feels when she gives me kibble…

HEY, that’s not kibble–that spaghetti with clams!!! Let me at it…