Life is all about what you eat -- isn't it?

I’ve been thinking a lot about food lately, which is nothing new. After all, I’m Italian by heritage on both sides of my family. We’re the kind of people who plan lunch and dinner while eating a breakfast big enough to glut an elephant.

Lately, though, I’ve been thinking about food because author Leslie Peitrzyk interviewed me about my debut book, Once Removed, for her blog, Work-in-Progress.

“Any food associated with your book?” asked Leslie. “Any recipes you could share?”

At first I was at a loss. There wasn’t much food in my book, as I remembered it. There wasn’t much food in any of my writing, as far as I was concerned. No fights over huge family dinners. No hours spent in the kitchen cooking for a gathering of thirty or more relatives.

Then again, there was that one short story I wrote years ago about the DiCorscias, a New Jersey Italian family whose members recur in my collection and are the main characters in my novel-in-progress. In that old, never-to-see-the-light-of-day story, Rose, the matriarch, plans a graveside dinner party to celebrate her dead mother’s birthday. And there was my first published story about a downtrodden, overweight woman whose overbearing father insists she plan him a huge retirement party when what she really wants to do is tell him to piss off while she gets inseminated and has a baby on her own.

But food was barely a footnote in those stories. Not worthy of any real notice.

Which reminded me of the best compliment I ever got in graduate school. My classmate Ian Froeb, who’s now a well known restaurant critic, walked up to me after a critique of one of my stories and said, “God, I can’t believe how well you write about food!”

It hadn’t occurred to me that my story had anything to do with food. But when I reread it, there it was, a cocktail party littered with loving descriptions of every single appetizer–a cocktail party where everything essential happened.

So I started paging through my collection and discovered that, in fact, food plays a significant role in my stories. There’s zeppole, polenta and fried apples, a whole roasted lamb, even stinco d’agnello (roasted lamb’s head, gelatinous eyes and all). Throughout the book, significant moments happen over food. Food is offered as a consolation, a gesture of love, a gesture of aggression, even.

And that food is usually Italian.

A Recipe to Share

So yes, I decided, I would tell Leslie in my blog interview, I would be happy to share a recipe. But which one?

After consulting with my sister, Lisanne Sartor, who’s not only a kickass writer/director but also an incredible cook, far better than I will ever be, we decided that we couldn’t share her meatball recipe, which is a gluten free version of my mom’s and makes my mouth water just thinking about it. If we shared that, why would anyone ever have to attend another meatball night–although she also makes incredible homemade rolls, so, really, this was my concern, not hers.

We could, however, share our sauce recipe, also doctored from my mother’s original recipe. To be honest, though, this recipe is really all my mom. She was a natural chef who could cook to taste without thinking about it. In law school when I finally decided it was time to learn to cook, I would call and ask for her recipes, which usually involved her telling me, “Well, add a handful of this and maybe a jar of that….” When I pointed out to her that my handful might be a bit smaller than hers (she had big, square palms with long piano player fingers, which I envied), she laughed and gave me actual measurements. And they worked.

Feel free to comment below with pictures of your meals or modifications of the recipe, or anything else about food. After all, life is all about the food, right?

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