Home - Homey Eats

There are all the foods that remind me of home because New York is famous for them.  Nathan's Hot Dogs, the pretzels, Ray's Famous Pizza, all those.  Then there are the foods that remind me of home way down deep in my soul - where you walk into a house and whatever's cooking smells so good that you want to just lay down on the floor and let the feeling hug you somehow, even though that can't happen.

Any and every Italian dish, between my grandmother and my mother, they knew how to make it.  Minestrone soup.  Homemade pizza.  Shrimp scampi.  My mother would start cooking dinner when we got home from school in the afternoon.  She'd only stop to help with homework or deal with customers dropping by to pick up their clothes.  

We had this red step-up stool in the kitchen  - I would drag it over to the counter and stand on it to reach the stove.  "Stir, Samantha!  Don't stop.  It'll just take a minute to pin this dress" my mother would tell me as she rushed over to a girl wiggling into her dress over her jeans.  

Leaning over so I could look at the big girls going to prom, going to Sweet Sixteens, going to be bridesmaids, I'd stop stirring.  The big girls would see me and wink, and without looking up my mother would know.  "Samantha, you better be stirring!"

I'd yell that I was and resume the slow circles.  It made my arms hurt, but it was worth it to make the house smell that good.