All of this is tempered by
the slow, deliberate rhythm of my 88-year old grandmother who bends
over the spent iron stove, pacing the pouring of ingredients into pots,
tasting, and serving up a feast of exotic and timeless dishes: baccala
salad, fried baccala, stuffed calamari, eel, eggplant parmagiana, stuffed
peppers, shrimp and scallops, pasta with calamari, pasta aioli, stuffed
artichokes, and - if there is time - Christmas Eve Pasta with olives,
pine nuts and tomatoes (recipe follows).
On this signature night, my grandmother
serves this cucina italiana that her mother had served, and her mother
before her. None of the recipes are written down. But each year, each
dish is served as the year before, and folded into each one is my grandmother's
unfailing love.
My French friend and fellow food
enthusiast, Christine, remarked to me once, "The love energy that
we put into food is the most important ingredient of all." I believe
that.
My grandmother infuses love into
each dish on Christmas Eve. Through this offering, we receive enough
love to carry us through the New Year into whatever life presents for
us. It is a love that says, "Whatever happens in your life, sit,
take time to eat as your ancestors before you, and feel grounded and
whole."
Like a magic cleansing, these foods
calm and renew us to start again. On this night, we huddle around this
ancient tradition of fish and pasta, as around a campfire in the dark
wood. Regardless of the losses that year, the pains, the mistakes, the
celebrations and births, we are all on equal footing as family members
who look forward to these ritualistic dishes that somehow erase the
knocks of life for that night.
This Christmas Eve ritual lights
up my ancient soul with the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches,
connections and memories of a known antiquity. Food writer Marlena De Blasi describes how the
Neapolitans liken the tomato "to their own hearts, its seeds to
their security and its potency to their own sensuality."
These Christmas Eve dishes form
one of the seeds of my own and my family's security. They are a gift
of tradition served each year by an Italian-American woman whose own
ballast has always been love of La Famiglia , no matter what. Her cooking
creates a blanket of tastes, textures and smells. By combining ingredients
like garlic, raisins, pine nuts, capers, lemon, olives, and parsley
she produces an atmosphere that envelops us in well being.
What rituals in your life shape
your security and sensuality? What traditions or activities speak to
your soul and connect you with the larger family of humanity? Perhaps
this thought is a jump from eating stuffed squid. But these traditions
and rituals of food that have survived generations, ocean crossings,
losses and regenerations are to be reckoned with and ultimately given
the respect they deserve as an important foundation of family and community
life.
Many times in my work as a coach,
I ask people, "What gives your life meaning? What connects you
to a sense of who you are in the world or what your purpose may be?
What do you value and how can this lead you through both the light and
dark in your life toward the transcendent?î
Finding the activities that connect
you with a greater sense of who you are and what you are in the world
doesn't have to be complicated. In my family, and among my friends,
sharing a feast of foods on Christmas Eve, or other days and nights
of coming together, is one of our connective acts of love. Through these
traditional foods, we are reminded that we can take time above the drone
of life to enjoy each other and, dishes infused with the love and memory
of those who came before us.
Some who have eaten this pasta (recipe
below) call it 'soul food.' I serve this pasta dish now on any occasion,
year-round. Like my grandmother says, "Eat! No matter what happens,
eat and enjoy."
About Rosemarie
Perla: Rosemarie Perla, daughter
of an Italian Restaurant owner, mother of two and home cook, has been
working for the last 30 years as a whole life coach, program developer,
manager, group leader, consultant and Licensed psychologist. She recently
developed a non-profit, Fresh Start Coaching, whose mission is to assist
people in developing a more nourishing relationship with food and cooking.
She can be contacted at: Rosemarieperla@mindspring.com
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