With tomatoes falling off the vines in the garden how hard is it to take some of that in-season-tomato-taste and serve it up over spaghetti noodles? Homemade spaghetti sauce is a long-standing tradition to Ann Donaldson, who traces her ancestry on both sides back to Sicily, Italy. Sunday dinner at her grandparents’ home was a large family affair with numerous cousins, and at the center was a long-simmered pot of spaghetti sauce. Tomatoes need to be peeled before cooking down into sauce. Placing tomatoes in hot water until they split can make taking off the skins simple. Gently squeezing out some of the fluid and seeds is useful before throwing the tomatoes in the pot or canning jars for future use. Donaldson’s mother would either prepare the sauce the day before, or wake up very early Sunday morning to get the sauce simmering all day smelling “wonderful.” What goes into the pot depends on personal taste and what is available. It “always had meatballs,” said Donaldson, “sometimes sausage, pieces of port, spareribs, whatever…my grandma used to put whole eggplants in the sauce.” Spices included “obviously garlic,” onions, green peppers, basil, oregano, salt, pepper and a little sugar. Her sister sometimes adds a jalapeño pepper and red pepper flakes can also add some spicy zing. You can throw in a handful of minced fresh basil or use the dried. Ingredients were never measured so recipes were difficult to share. The sauce was rarely the same but always delicious. “You have to lovingly stir it so that it doesn’t stick on the bottom,” said Donaldson, “and you taste it as it cooks and then you decide if you need to add something.” Though it’s hard to beat fresh, tomato puree, canned crushed tomatoes and tomato paste can yield similar results. Tomato paste can thicken up watery sauce, and water can be used to dilute thick sauce.

Other traditional meals, Donaldson remembers, included Lasagna for Christmas Eve dinner, followed by gift opening. Midnight Mass Christmas Eve was followed by a sausage second dinner at grandma and grandpa’s house. Cousins sleeping on every surface after that. Once everyone had slept off the Christmas fun, another Christmas day dinner would be provided that probably involved sauce. Chestnuts were gathered, scored, and baked in the oven. 

Although she doesn’t grow her own grapes for wine like her grandparents, and doesn’t have a garden like her parents, Donaldson still passes on her passion for good food. She likes to try new recipes because “cooking is not really hard, just time consuming.” Although she doesn’t have the same fresh ingredients her ancestors enjoyed, she has on occasion, found some Burdock, a thistle that tastes a bit like an artichoke, and gone through the time-consuming process of peeling the stalks and deep frying the bundles of stalks in oil.  

Artichokes stuffed with breadcrumbs, olive oil, garlic and other seasonings was a meal that she learned from her mother and made for her grandchildren. “It was one of my proudest grandma moments when three grandchildren were eating artichokes at the same time, at the same table, ” said Donaldson. Healthy eating like that is something to be proud of, she said. “But you didn’t think about it being healthy, just that it was good!”