A prayer for my mother ... over tagliatelle

"You want to start with the base.

"Onion, carrots, celery. ...

"A mirepoix ... the holy trinity."

It's my mother's voice that is whispering over my shoulder as I inexpertly dice the vegetables into uneven pieces and dump them into a pan to sauté. 

"Oh, do I?" I whisper back. 

No. I did not want to worship in the galley kitchen of tradition. I wanted to skip the base. Especially the green bits. 

She had always anticipated my plans and endeavored to circumvent them. She may be gone, but her advice lives on in the blessing of memory. 

"Don't skimp on the celery."

Maybe it was the pile of green half-moon crescents left on my plate after every tuna sandwich or noodle casserole of my childhood, that had tipped her off that I didn't like the miracle vegetable's peppery flavor or its tough fibrous veins. She knew, also, from the first bite of my adult-hosting events that something was missing. 

And she firmly believed the omission was a culinary sin. 

"I know you had some success trading celery for pickles in your tuna salad, but I will pray aloud for the door to hit you on the way out if you try that kinda nonsense with dinner. 

"Just close your eyes and put the celery in. The flavor won't be the same without it."

That was her message for everything I would ever question about conventional wisdom: "You just have to have faith."

And so it came to be, on the eve of all food-centric holidays that our family meal would be pasta. Something sparse on ingredients that would nevertheless provide a plentiful yield.

My mother's go-to meal was Bolognese, a flavorful meat sauce she'd pair with noodles. 

It was a family favorite, mostly because she said it was "goulash" and called it "garbagé."

What you need:

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 medium carrot
• 1 celery stalk
• 1 small onion
• 10 ounces ground beef (not too lean)
• 10 ounces ground pork
• 1/2 cup dry red wine
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 2 1/4 cups tomato puree 
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1-2 whole bay leaves
• 1/3 cup milk 

What you need to do:

Dice onions, celery, and carrots and put them in a large pot with olive oil. Cook over low heat, stirring occasionally until the onion is translucent. 

Increase heat to medium and add the ground meat, stirring to break it up as it cooks. Once the meat browns evenly, turn the heat to high and add wine. Cool on high until the alcohol burns off (about 30 seconds) and then turn it back to medium. 

Stir in tomato paste, puree, salt and pepper then add bay leaf and reduce heat to the lowest setting and simmer for three hours. Stir occasionally. 

To finish, remove the bay leaf, add milk, and heat thoroughly at a medium temperature. 

My mother served it over elbow macaroni, but the recipe, one of the first she ever copied for me, called for a wide flat noodle linguini, fettuccine, or tagliatelle. 

Of course, she added some words of wisdom she thought I needed most: "Remember to cook the noodles before serving."

In Gratitude

At a family reunion, last summer my father's sister set a box of empty books out on a picnic table with a sign marked "Gratitude Journals" and instructed us to take one. 

The box sat there through the cookout, and as the band played up-tempo folk covers, their pages rustled at the edges in tempo with gusts from the warm late August breeze.

It had been a while since we'd all been together like this. Almost a year. My father had been there then, toting around oxygen bottles and getting tangled in the lines that had recently tethered him to them. I had been a nervous wreck, swooping in to untangle him and recriminating myself for taking him on this journey in his condition. I was so anxious that I couldn't even articulate my fears to some of the relatives who had decided we hadn't reached post-pandemic gathering safety quite yet: "... this may be the last time ..."

His memory was with us now, filling the void I had felt with absolute certainty that he would have loved every minute. From the moment we stepped into the foyer of the rental cabin with its decades' worth of one family's ski passes affixed to the wall, to the moment his granddaughter jumped from the rock wall's edge into a deep pocket of the river below. Unexpected miracles if you think about them. Even just the thrill of kicking a rainbow-colored ball into the weeds when the bases are loaded seems an outsized feat. I will cheer until my voice splinters.

Gratitude, psychologists will tell you, is more than words we offer in return for a gift or a favor. Gratitude is a trait that can be part of our dispositions as well as a fluctuating mood we carry from day to day. It can ease our tensions with a world we often find ourselves at odds with if we let more of it inside.

As she made her way from cousin to cousin, embracing each of us in a hug that belied her slender frame, my aunt explained the basics: Life is much too short to focus so heavily on its hardships. Take some time every day to take note of its gifts. 

I visited the picnic table before I left, selecting a book with a green leatherette cover embossed with Celtic knots and lined, cream-color pages from the others. I slipped it into the bag I had hauled around all day, from which I would harass my nearly grown children at regularly-timed intervals with cans of bug spray and sun-protective lotions.

I know the sun is setting on this moment, even as the kids wave away my concerns. The sun has gone behind the clouds, and the flies are not swarming. We have replaced our parents just as they will replace us. 

This understanding no longer fills me with dread. The future will come whether I note it or not, whether I worry about it between my thoughts. 

Of course, I knew this book would remain pristine for a while. It will stay in the bag with the unused potions and wait for me to decide where to take it. I will hesitate over penmanship ... trying to stave off that first cross-through line by not writing anything. It will surf from one side of my desk to the other, reminding me with its emerald hue that it is ready when I am.

Rescue remedy

The road is long. It is windy. And soon, I'll have to stop for gas,

I'd almost forgotten about the tin: A somewhat marvelous yellow container purchased on impulse at the recommendation of a friend and tucked into the side pocket of my car door. It still contained a handful of pillow-shaped capsules -- pastilles as they were labeled -- that claimed to safely and naturally alleviate stress, and that I'd imagined were a mixture of sorcery and snake oil.

Of course, I do not believe in such hocus pocus. Not even at the price I'd paid, which, by pre-inflationary standards, was well above the threshold at which manufacturers understand that unmet claims would need to be properly reimbursed. But I bought the citrus, honey-flavored bonbons nonetheless and then promptly forgot all about them after an initial taste test made me worry the remedy might instead lift the enamel from my teeth.

But then Election Day happened. And the blathering of talking heads for days, weeks, and months as a lead-up wore on me. Their voices were like knives, my focus strained from the convergence of all the refractive screens in my general orbit. I start to become like stone. My hands clench a little tighter and my shoulders inch a little higher, especially as I drove myself to various errands and to mild distraction.

I was afraid for it to be over. Afraid of the landslide that would annihilate everything in its path.

I dipped my hand into the door gap and felt around for the circular tin. I shook it, listening for the satisfying rattle of tiny lozenges. Still there.

The sound it makes as I open it is loud and percussive. It feels like a drum beat. When pressed, the lid of the container echoes as it pops loose. Pushing in against the rim from both sides fixes the lid back into place with more of a metallic snap. I repeat the process in what I imagine to be 2/4 time. 

Anyone listening might disagree. The incessant popping and snapping could set their teeth on edge or make knuckles white. I wouldn't blame them for being annoyed to the point of explosion because of my tin beatbox pulsing atonal jazz.

I notice then that the box has shifted and a cascade of candied gels has spilled out into my lap. I realize the package's entertaining engineering requires two hands.

I abandoned all sense of order, took a deep breath, fished a pill out of my pants, and popped it into my mouth. It tasted like honey-sweetened nothing. Chewy, honey-sweetened nothing.

I take another deep breath and wait for the promise of soothing natural botanicals to wrap me in its blanket of calm as I keep driving.

There are so many miles yet to go. I roll down my window to let the unnaturally warm breeze clear the air. And just keep breathing. And I keep opening and closing the now empty tin with the beat of music on the radio.

Eventually, I realize I AM calm. 

I don't need the remedy, but maybe I'll just keep the tin.

Stroganoff

"It smells good," said my son, whose nose, which up until this moment had been metaphorically pressed against his computer screen, led him into the kitchen where I had been tinkering with dinner.

I say "tinkering" because I am a cook in the chore description only. I have no loftier aspiration than following simple instructions and am especially fond of the pre-packaged kind. Time and again, I may add a dash of this or that to doctor the taste. Sometimes it works; sometimes it fails spectacularly. No one seems to notice. 

My tinkering has been made more extensive as the years wear on and the fonts keep getting smaller and smaller. Instead of searching the house for drugstore readers, I make wild guesses as to the measured amounts the directions called for. 

Often I am wildly wrong.

There was the Great Tablespoon of Cornstarch saga one Thanksgiving not that long ago, which created the need for several rounds of hydrotherapy until finally, we paid our last respects to the decimated sauce as I tipped it into the trash.

My husband took over gravy-making from then on.

Eventually, he took over a lion's share of the regular meal preparations, too. Leaving me to bake fish, blanch vegetables, and boil instant rice in the evenings work places him elsewhere.

On this night I attempted to recreate my father's stroganoff, which is really my mother's dish that my father managed to recreate so flawlessly that he just took over cooking one day, too.

But I digress.

The stroganoff started with the slicing (against the grain for tenderness) of beef that we somehow managed to have left over from a roast the night before. He'd brown it more, adding onions and mushrooms and sautéing the lot over medium heat until the vegetables were soft. 

He'd dump the contents of the pan on a plate and add butter and flour to the pan. He'd stir and stir, slowly adding beef bouillon he'd already dissolved in hot water until this roux became a gravy, then he'd return the meat to the pan and let it cook down.

There may be a reckoning if the sauce was too thick (he'd add water) or too thin (he'd add water whitened with flour) and keep watch.

He'd splash in some Worcestershire sauce, which he would mispronounce on purpose, and a generous pinch of dill before finishing up by incorporating a solid amount of sour cream.

My mom used to ladle it over egg noodles, but my dad use to make "bowties" for his biggest fan ...

My son.

As much as I have tried ... I can't get around the roux. I brown it too fast, or it will hold on to its clumps yielding a deeply unpleasant texture. I'll forget a key ingredient and the taste will mirror paste. And no matter how hard I squint, I can't make out which way the grain is going. No matter how I slice it, I fear the meat will be tough as leather.

So I cheat.

I start with some pre-sliced beef and an envelope of powdered gravy ... and I follow the directions on the back, and in a few minutes, I have a soup that kind of looks similar. 

The boy brushed past me, picked up a spatula, and gave the pot a stir.

"You want to scrape all the way to the bottom of the pan and then kind of fold it over," I offer, hoping to blunt any perceptions of criticism with the adoption of a sing-song voice.

He digs in.

"It tastes good, too."