by Jen Nails
If all I had of Mom was her cookbook, maybe that was all she had of herself, too. Maybe if I started bringing her all those old recipes she used to cook, she’d start remembering when she made them, who was there, how the food tasted. Who she was when she wrote them down. Who she is now.
I imagined the scene at the Place tomorrow. I’d bring the polenta. Mom would eat some. She’d remember something about cooking it from when she was little. She would remember something about us. She would see us and know us. She would.
Potatoes and Yams and Bears, Oh My
When I woke up that Sunday morning, I sat up and said, “Potatoes,” out loud.
“Potatoes are vegetables,” I told Wiley. “There are different kinds of potatoes. There are yams, which are like sweet potatoes, and then there are normal potatoes, which are savory potatoes.”
I squeezed Wiley. “But they’re all potatoes!”
What is a main course that uses potatoes? Gnocchi!
What is a dessert that uses yams? Yam-pecan pie!
My entry for Chefs of Tomorrow = Gnocchi and Yam-Pecan Pie!
Downstairs, I took the pie recipe out of the cookbook and read the ingredients again. I started a grocery list with yams at the top. I pulled open the baking cabinet to make sure that we had a new thing of brown sugar. In the fridge, I checked that the baking soda wasn’t expired. As soon as I had all the ingredients, I’d do a test pie.
I had to call Lisa.
“Lisa,” I said. “It’s me. Thanks for getting me thinking about vegetables.”
“What?”
“Yam-pecan pie and potato gnocchi!”
There was a pause.
“Stef,” she said, “yes!”
We talked for a little more and then I had to go get dressed to go to the Place.
Before we left, no one asked me why I was putting a Tupperware from the fridge in my backpack. Good. It would be kind of hard to explain why I wanted my mom to have some of her old polenta-and-sauce recipe. But it made sense to me.
I felt sneaky, having Dad walk us over to the church since I had just ridden there by myself yesterday, but of course I didn’t say anything about that. On the way, Dad and Nina talked about new-car stuff (“Does it have a sunroof?”). Ever since Chefs of Tomorrow and ever since Dad said he was getting a car, they were being friendly to each other, and somehow the grudge I had toward them had melted down to nothing.
When we got to Mom’s, I went right up to Helen. “We brought a snack,” I said. “I’m practicing for a cooking contest, so there are all these leftovers and . . . and it’s her old recipe. Could you warm it up a little? Please?” I was losing my breath and had to take a gulp of air.
“Sure, dearie,” said Helen. “What have we here?”
“It’s polenta,” I said. “Cornmeal porridge and pasta sauce.” She nodded as she took the Tupperware and headed off down the hall. It wasn’t just polenta. It was magic polenta. Stuff that Mom used to make for us before her injury. Maybe eating it and talking about it would bring back the memories that had been locked in her brain since she got hurt.
Mom sat on the couch with the newspaper in her lap, opened to the “Living” section. She glanced up at me and smiled a stranger smile.
“It’s us, Mom,” said Nina. “Your girls.”
She closed the paper and reached out her hands.
“Hi, Steffy and Nina,” she said. We hugged her and gave her kisses. Nina told her we were getting a new car, and I reminded her about Chefs of Tomorrow. I had told her weeks back, too, but had mentioned it every week since.
“I decided I’m doing potato gnocchi and yam-pecan pie,” I said.
“Nice,” said Nina.
“Good plan,” Mom said. “I really, really want to be there. But I don’t know. I think . . . I’m going to ask Helen if there’s some way . . .” The corners of her mouth started to get pulled down. “Don’t laugh,” she said, “but it makes me nervous. Going outside.”
“Mom,” said Nina, “we would never laugh.” Mom nodded and took Nina’s hand. “We would be there, too, and we would help you.”
Mom might come. Mom might come! And my dad would be there, too. Me, Nina, Mom, and Dad. Together. I stood up and walked over to the window for a minute, kind of holding my breath that that could actually happen. Mom and Dad together.
Then Helen came out with the warmed polenta on a plate.
“I knew I smelled something,” Mom said. I got all jumpy as we walked her to the dining table.
“You used to make this all the time, Mom,” I said. “Your sister, Gina, says you made it the best, next to your dad.”
Mom took one bite and closed her eyes and chewed. Me and Nina sat there with her while she ate, and no one said a word. Nina glanced at me a couple times, and it was the old, real Nina, nothing in her eyes but hoping.
“Remember, Mom, I don’t like it,” said Nina. Mom leaned down close to the plate and breathed in big.
“Sauce,” she said. “Mmmm.”
“Yeah,” said Nina. “Steffy made that. Auntie Gina says she makes it as good as you did. Do.”
Mom looked sideways at Nina.
“But I don’t like polenta,” Nina said. “When I was little, you would make me macaroni and cheese when you’d make it.” Nina bit her fingernails.
Mom scooped up the last bite and dabbed her mouth with the napkin. I imagined those chunks of cornmeal and sauce floating around inside of her, each one carrying a little memory trigger. I thought about my mom’s brain and how her injury had sealed up pieces of her past in tight wrappers, how maybe there was some way to open them back up and take them out.
She leaned over to Nina and took her face in her hands and then kissed her. Then she reached out for my hand and gave me a squeeze. She squinted at us both real hard.
“Do you remember, Mom? Do you remember making polenta?” Nina asked.
“You know what I remember, honey?” Mom said. “I remember making sauce. I really do. Breaking apart the meat. And I remember that I didn’t like polenta either when I was young. Just like you.”
Nina was nodding and looking up and dabbing the bottoms of her eyes, smudging eyeliner on her fingers. Mom was like me in some ways. I knew it. And she was like Nina, too. It hit me right then how my sister remembered Mom better than me. How she was probably way sadder than me to come here and see her now.
We all three sat there together at the dining-room table, me and Nina holding Mom’s hands while she studied our faces. I wondered if somehow, when she started to have more memories of us, we’d start to have more of her, too. If it was shared memories that held people together.
Dozens of Dinners and Desserts
March 30. It was here. Over the past three months, I had made dozens of dinners and desserts, and since I’d figured out my contest entry, I’d made seven batches of gnocchi and eight yam-pecan pies.
That morning I had been on the phone with Lisa three times and had changed outfits four times, and Nina had knocked on my door twice to hand me different shirts to borrow and put makeup on me. Gina and Harry were downstairs with Dad, putting tinfoil on all my stuff.
Nina knocked on my door and then came right in.
“Oh good,” she said. “You’re wearing the skirt. It’s so much better than the dress.”
“I know,” I said. “Thanks for the fashion advice.”
“No problem, little sis,” she said, hugging me hard. She tossed a folded piece of paper on my bed. “For your autobiography.”
“Thanks,” I said. “It’s not due till May.”
“I know. I was just thinking last night about the contest while I was getting outfits for you to try on and basically realizing how awesome you are.”
My whole face was spreading into a smile that had started somewhere in my stomach.
She went on. “But I didn’t know when the next time would be that I would think you were annoying, so I thought I better write the letter right now.”
We both giggled.
> “Come on,” she said. She was out the door and tramping down the stairs in her new green Doc Martens—a Christmas gift from Auntie Gina. I pressed her letter to my chest for a second before opening it up.
Dear Steffy,
I am really proud of you. I know you’re totally going to win Chefs of Tomorrow. You are so much more patient and nice than I am. You are kinda like a stuffed animal. You are the best sister in the world. I like that you can cook, and I like that you are usually up for anything. You always really think about what people might like to eat and then you make it for them. I love your pasta, your burritos, your banana bread, and mostly anything that you make (maybe someday polenta!). Sometimes I wish I could be more like you.
Love,
Nina
The mascara that Nina had put on me was all over my fingers, and I had to go rinse off before going downstairs. In the kitchen, everyone was talking at the same time. Harry thought we should put the gnocchi in a Tupperware. Auntie Gina thought that we should leave them in the big blue-and-white dish that had been in the Sandolini family for years, for good luck. Dad said, What if that dish dropped or something? And Nina agreed with Harry and Dad. Everyone was all fussing over me and the contest, and I was wiping my cheeks every second. More mascara to wash off on my fingers.
In the end, Tupperware won. We drove downtown to Grasshopper Stadium. Auntie Gina and Dad found the table where you drop off your stuff, and I got number 19. There was a catch in my throat when Auntie Gina stepped back and let Dad fill out the paper. It didn’t matter that I had said I was my own guardian—you still had to have a parent’s signature when you signed in.
They had a band playing on the baseball field, and the contest was in the parking lot under these white tents. They had hot dogs and pizza and funnel cakes and raffle tickets to buy, and even games like throw the ring around the empty soda bottle to win a stuffed animal.
Joe Glorioso from school was there with his mom and dad, and Jean Sawyer, and even Mrs. Ashton.
“Steffany Sandolini,” she said, squeezing my hand. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Turning in the application for this contest instead of an outline? Creative thinking! And I will take you up on what you said that day: you are definitely writing about this in your autobiography. Got it?”
I nodded, and Mrs. Ashton gave me a hug. “Thank you for coming,” I said. Wow. Even my English teacher (not even my favorite class) was here for me.
Lisa found us and she grabbed my hand, and we walked around and checked out all the entries. Something beefy. Some kind of shish kebab. Spaghetti. Fancy judges were going to taste all this. Family was different, because they were used to eating what you made. And they were usually hungry. What if the judges were so full when they got to mine, they thought it was gross?
We got seats up front by the judges’ tables. Pretty soon Bob Sebuda—the Bob Sebuda from the channel 3 news—stepped onto the stage.
“Welcome, miniature Greensboro gourmets! I’m Bob Sebuda from channel 3 news, and we have here today over one hundred eager epicures between the ages of five and seventeen, all competing in three age categories for a spot in the Chefs of Tomorrow finals. Now, I’ve got twenty judges behind me who are starving!”
He said how they’d basically just be tasting and talking over the next few hours, how there were rides and games and snacks to buy, and how leftovers would go to charities all over Greensboro. He also said how Chefs of Tomorrow was sponsored by Elon University’s Culinary Arts department.
“So here we go, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “Let the feeding begin!” And then the judges started coming around to all the food and taking it back to several long tables under a big tent.
They ate a whole lot and talked loudly into microphones, and you could barely understand them over the music. Sometimes people clapped. We just hung out and goofed around, and it was a good thing that Lisa was holding my hand hard when they got to number 19, because I thought I would fall out of my seat from watching so hard.
I could pick out lots of mmm-ing and nodding. I made out the words sausage and flavor. Then I thought I heard one of the lady judges say she’d never had gnocchi as good. Lisa’s eyes lit up and her jaw dropped, and she kind of jumped up and down in her chair. When they got to my pie, there was lots of ooh-ing.
Then more and more and more and more and more eating. Just little bits of each entry. We took a walk around. Joe Glorioso found us and told us that a squirrel came right up onto their table and stole his hot dog bun. We had hot dogs and lemonades. When the sun started to go down and the sky got more orange, you could feel this big shift in the day because the grown-ups with the cups of beer started to laugh louder and dance harder. The only cup I saw Dad with all day was a pink lemonade cup.
It crept into my head that I hadn’t seen any stashes of beer in our fridge in a while. Also creeping around inside me was that Mom and Helen didn’t get to come to Chefs of Tomorrow after all, but there was so much else going on that I just didn’t let myself dwell on it.
After the tasting portion was over, anyone could go up and exchange raffle tickets for samples of the entries while the judges went off and decided on the winners. Lisa and Nina and I each had a lemon cupcake with vanilla frosting and sprinkles. That person’s main course was lemon chicken. Me and Lisa giggled that she had suggested that to me a month back.
Finally, it was getting time to announce the winners. There were fifty kids in my age group. That meant there was a ten percent chance I’d be in the final five.
“I don’t think I’m going to win,” I whispered to Lisa as we walked past beautiful platters of meats, vegetables, pastas, and stir-frys.
“Oh hush, Steffany.”
The music got turned down finally, and Bob Sebuda spoke into the microphone again.
“From here,” he said, “the finalists whose names I am about to announce will have the next two and a half months to perfect their dishes. Then, on June fifteenth, they will join us to prepare their meals in a live televised broadcast.”
Auntie Gina squeezed my hand, and Lisa said, “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh.”
Bob continued. “It’s been tough,” he said, “but we have narrowed it down to five finalists in each of the three age groups. The following fifteen fabulous foodies will compete for slots on the menu at Greensboro’s own farm-to-table fine dining establishment Lucky Thirty-Two, and a cash award of three thousand dollars. Our second-place winners will receive cooking lessons at Elon University. The folks at Elon will also see to it that leftovers from today’s contest are donated to charities all across our city, so let’s give them a big hand right now for their support of balanced meals for all.” The audience whooted and hollered for a few seconds and then Bob quieted people down.
First he announced the winners in the family category, where little kids cooked something with help from a parent. Then nine-to-twelve. He said that for some reason nine-to-twelve was the hardest one because that was where the highest quality of cooking came from. Lisa grabbed me around my waist. Nina squeezed my arm, and Auntie Gina held both my hands. Dad stood right by her, showing me his crossed fingers.
Bob Sebuda called out, “In the nine-to-twelve category: number twelve, traditional turkey dinner and cranberry pumpkin pie! Number forty-nine, caramel beef stew with vegetables and caramel apples! Number three, barbecued catfish and king cake! Number eighteen, Asian noodle stir-fry and vanilla soy cookies!”
Nina put her hand on my shoulder, Lisa held my waist tighter, and Auntie Gina squeezed my hands harder. Dad lifted one finger and nodded at me.
“And number nineteen, potato gnocchi and yam-pecan pie!”
Chef of Today
I am pretty sure I smiled while I slept all that night.
A Thing of Pizza Dough
I felt bad that it took me becoming a finalist—to have that feeling inside of me—for me to decide to crawl into my closet past balled-up pants and sock clumps to find the cake magazines that I’d shove
d in there before Christmas. Laundry was on the bottom of the list at home, now that Dad was in charge. But somehow it worked out in the mornings—there were always clean things around somewhere to put on for the day.
I flipped through the pages of a magazine called The Knot, and with each cake photo, I got more panicked. Hopefully Auntie Gina didn’t really want me to make her a cake in the shape of a cruise ship or a glass slipper. I hoped she had given me the magazines to have something to give and not because she had one of these in mind.
For the first time, maybe, it felt like living apart from Auntie Gina was a good thing. I had put the magazines in my closet and hated her for a while, but I didn’t have to see her every day and didn’t have to hide that from her. She always said I needed to express myself more. Like, if I was mad at anyone, they’d never know because if I showed it, then they’d get mad at me and that’s what I didn’t want to happen. And if you got mad at magazines and not at a person, maybe it was better because I wasn’t mad anymore, and Auntie Gina didn’t even ever have to know and feel mad or bad.
I flipped through the second magazine, Bridal Guide. More crazy but cool pictures. Giant and elaborate layer cakes full of multicolored flowers. A cake that looked like presents stacked on top of each other. The more I looked, the more I knew I was just going to do a simple yet elegant layer cake.
But then there were the old Italian dessert recipes, like pizza frittas, that might be good to make for the wedding, too.
It was Sunday morning, the very next day after the Chefs of Tomorrow semifinals, and Nina was at a special dance practice for anyone in her studio auditioning for Charlotte Rep, and Dad had gotten a job painting a new office building, and it was just me for a few hours.
I went downstairs, and I opened my mom’s cookbook and flipped through for more dessert ideas. I found the pizza frittas paper again and read it through. Easy enough. Just frying dough, basically. Then I came across a yellowy piece of crinkled paper that said “S’s and O’s—Italian Wedding Cookies.”