When I was growing up, “Sunday dinner” meant the same thing to all of us in our family: my mother would be making my Italian grandmother’s recipe for sauce with meatballs and sausage. Known as “Sunday Gravy” in other families, we called it “the Sauce”, and we would pass by the big pot on the stove as it simmered all day filling our kitchen with the smell of Grandma’s house. Our job was to stir the sauce if we wandered past the pot - we’d of course “miss” the big note taped to the lid…written in my mother’s special determined hand-writing: “Stir Sauce!!” My mother had four kids so stirring the sauce throughout the day was to be a shared task. She could be on the other side of the house and her ears could still detect any one of us in the kitchen at any given time. Then you’d hear the voice bellowing, “Stir the sauce!” We would attempt to tip-toe into the kitchen to steal a meatball or sausage and…damn, she could hear that lid come off that pot from a mile away.
The sauce would cook on low for hours, turning from bright red into a deep color with velvety texture. The meatballs were made from a combination of beef, veal, and pork, and though they were nearly the size of baseballs, they were so light and fluffy. They would float from the baking sheet into the pot.
When at my grandparents’ house this meal was served with pasta and plain Italian bread. Garlic bread was that “fun” thing my mother would bring to their house at times and something my Grandpa loved, but they’d have never made garlic bread for themselves. Sunday dinner was a natural routine to them – delicious and served while it was still daylight. My Grandpa would make the salad from ingredients he “brought up” from his garden: lettuce that had distinct flavor, tomatoes with delicate skins – juicy – and that smelled like tomatoes, homegrown cucumbers, oil & vinegar, salt ‘n’ pepper. The salad had to be mixed by hand…by his hands …salad just didn’t taste the same unless hand-mixed by Grandpa.
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