The tastes of my family

"When I think of my mother, I taste desert." Adam Gopnik

When I think of my mother, I taste meatloaf, the kind she baked after a day of work at the bank, mixed with onions, tomato paste, bread crumbs, and cheddar cheese in the middle. When thinking of my father, I smell roasting chestnuts, taste their sweet earthiness on my tongue. For my grandmother, there are those ribbon shaped cookies made by her hands, fried but still soft inside, drenched in honey and powdered sugar. And that sauce, with the thick layer of olive oil sitting on the top that you pierced with fresh Italian bread to meet the tangy tomato underneath. For Nunzio, I taste the grapes that sat in a bowl on the kitchen table, sometimes plump, sometimes wilted, a bit of sweetness after a meal of weighty textures and flavors. For Louie, there are walnuts cracked fresh from their shell and wrapped in dried figs. "Try this," he said offering me the cracked nuts snug in their sticky friends.

Now there is E like a cinnamon sugar donut melting in my mouth and J fava beans soaked in salted water and simmered to oblivion with garlic, stewed tomatoes, rosemary, and oil.