Simply Sauce

Homage to Our Saucy Italian

Sometime around the Labor Day weekend each year, my family labors all day to produce about ten cases of what friends call “Liquid Gold” tomato sauce; it’s not gold. It just tastes like the smoothest, freshest, delectable pasta sauce that you ever had. You could watch a YouTube video of a guy named Pasquale who would walk you through the process, in a beautiful Italian accent to enhance your experience too. But we don’t need to watch because we had the real deal in our lives for many years: Simplicia (“Vowel-Packed Italian Last Name” that I won’t use here), our friend’s mother, an Italian immigrant and the best cook I’ve ever known, dishing out a few phrases lost in translation.

We used to visit her backyard production site toting babies in strollers or children big enough to help pick basil or wash tomatoes, and she’d put us all to work immediately. Oftentimes, on those final summer days before the sun steps back for cooler autumn breezes, rivers of sweat would flow from my temples to my neck, as “Simply” yelled commands that no one standing around dared defy:

“Stir.”

“Grab ze-hose and rinse za pot.” A pot that was, in reality, a cauldron sitting atop a make-shift burner on the driveway.

She had a full kitchen in her garage, though this was not a big garage. A pot would simmer there within reach—a reasonable distance to go ahead and stir as often as she directed. However, a pot also simmered in the house in her 8 X 10 galley kitchen, and you had better be ready to run inside to that pot when she pointed, and then run back to the garage for the next instruction, making sure sweat did not drip into the sauce. This went on from about 7am to 7pm on the annual Sauce Day.

“Dump that pan and refill it. Hurry. Get it on the burner.”

“Sit here and cut out ze bad spots on-za tomatoes.”

“Peel garlic.” 

Ugh. If you have never peeled three pounds of garlic, you might not know that it burns your fingertips raw. But no one got away with complaining around Simply. I had to sneak to the back of the garage in tears and rinse my hands a few times before finishing the pile. I hated when I got stuck with that job. Layers of skin peeled off my fingers for a week after. In our current sauce-making process, we use rubber gloves. And sometimes, without ever admitting to Simply--gasp, we buy a jar of already peeled garlic.  

We always took a break mid-afternoon to sit for a meal if all was simmering properly. Simply loved feeding people, especially kids. Mix-matched plate after plate would appear before you, and you better eat it all. Of course you would. You were hungry. Homemade pasta and bread. Olive oil. Beef or chicken that tenderly fell off the bone. Greens with red wine vinegar and assorted deli meats that were somehow so much better than anything I could ever find at the store. Simply’s husband drinking his homemade wine like it was water, in a little, thick juice tumbler. And my girls shoveling in spoonful after spoonful under Simply’s watchful eye.

She watched my group extra carefully because we had a history. I was a bit cautious when my girls were babies and Simply would pass them a chicken bone to gnaw on, even though the babies were only just starting solid food after all. Obviously, I had offended her deeply when I refused. It seems a little confusion still lingered in our collective memory of these events. The one baby was only five months old when I refrained from the food offered; whereas, the second baby was a little older on one instance, and I may have eased up a bit by that time and let her accept the bone as if she were Pebbles Flintstone. She told me later, with her four fingers touching her thumb, very close to that one gesture where you flick them off your chin, that when I refused her food, she “wanted to kill me.”

She was not joking.

My first daughter inherited quite fair-skinned genes from perhaps the small percentage of Irish my husband carries. My second-born inherited what looks like all Mediterranean genes and is of a little darker skin tone.

How does this relate to the story?

Apparently, according to Simply, the reason my first daughter is fair-skinned is because I never fed her. That’s what provoked such murderous feelings in her; she was only wanting to protect the poor, starving child who lost her chance at developing that desirable olive skin tone.

As 7 and 10-year-olds, though, they ate like the rest of us, greatly pleasing Simplicia. Over the years, I stored away the method of creating this sauce since no written recipe existed. Clicking a pic here and there always elicited firm reprimands:

“No pictures. Stir!”

Good thing I learn best by doing, but I did sneak a few pictures anyway.

It’s that time of year again, and my family has built up Sauce Day to quite a production. One hundred and twenty jars should last us the year; we do give some away since our friends and neighbors are becoming addicted to it. I mean, no one goes back to store-bought after tasting this. Even our grandkids get involved in the tradition now.

This year, it feels a little different as we are at the one-year anniversary of Simplicia’s death. In her honor, I’m putting together a spread for Sauce Day:

Fresh mozzarella, tomatoes and home-grown basil, with oil and balsamic drizzled. Mortadella, prosciutto and thick-cut salami. Assorted olives, mostly Castelvetrano green ones. Bread, artichokes, Parmigiano cheese, and Olive oil for dipping. Probably some homemade pizza from the local Italian market. A little wine, but store-bought in our case.

Thank you Simply. Salute.

Do you have family traditions you are passing down to the next generation?