Homecoming

As my little Volkswagen zipped around the brand new, broad, tilted curve in the exit ramp that takes you from Route 8 North to the bustle of cars taking the long way around the city of Cleveland on I-271, I saw them. They slowly came into view, above the tree tops and before I knew it they were blanketing the sky above me, flowing like waves and puffed like dollops of whipped cream. In autumn, the city of Cleveland, Ohio is blessed with the most wonderful fall clouds I’ve ever known. Great expanses of them move like glaciers from the quickly chilling lake to shade the river carved terrain of the Chagrin valley. Many people who do not call Cleveland home may experience this seasonal gift and assume it to be one more gloomy and miserable thing about the city of Cleveland. Those of us who’ve grown up with the pleasingly calm and cool darkness that lasts from September until the snow falls, we love it. Well, maybe not all of us. How about this: I love it.


My sister and I, together for the first time in a long time.

This past weekend I took my first trip home after moving away eight weeks ago. It wasn’t an ordinary trip with no purpose, but rather a Homecoming. My beautiful sister was flying in from Connecticut on Sunday, and for the first time in several months my entire family was able to be together. My family has always been not just centered around, but nourished both physically and emotionally by food. The roots of our Italian cultural heritage are deeply embedded in the tradition of communal eating. We use food to show our feelings, bringing bottles of wine or someone’s favorite cheese to dinner gatherings. We say “I love you,” with jars of homemade pepper jelly and by fixing the foods we know will induce a desired emotion. When my mother wants to say “I love you,” to my sister with food, she fixes my Grandma’s Lemon Chicken. While it isn’t difficult or abstract, while the flavors are not bold or risk-taking, and while it requires very few ingredients, it is still one of the most comforting, soul-soothing foods my mother prepares. It is a dish that solicits an oral tradition, spoken down through the hierarchy of siblings in my mother’s family. On Sunday, as we all savored bites of silky smooth chicken, tenderly floured and browned, then dressed with tangy lemon sauce and topped with warm, macerated lemon slices, my older Aunts explained how my grandmother originally made the dish with veal, until that became too expensive. There were eight mouths to feed every night, after all. My mother added that she has the recipe written down as Lemon Turkey, and that she started making it with chicken when that became most readily available and required the least amount of extra preparation. I have always eaten and known it as Lemon Chicken. The very thought of it makes me yearn for home. It makes me want to see my sister, knowing it is one of her favorites. It makes me want to be warmed by it on one of those chilled, cloud covered fall days in my parents’ house in Cleveland, Ohio.



The chicken on Sunday was accompanied by my Mom’s piping hot, cheesy Italian rice, cooked and cut green and yellow beans served cold dressed with an Italian vinaigrette and dotted with freshly torn basil leaves, chunks of yellow and pink heirloom tomatoes marinated with slivered onions, and freshly baked, crusty Italian bread. Oh, and two bottles of red wine. For dessert, my mother made one of my own personal love letters: Italian plum crisp. This crisp is something that makes me think of the very same cool, cloudy fall days when I was a child, and my mother preparing one in the hours quickly fading to darkness before dinner. It makes me think of the plastic bowls I used to have, which were adorned with Kellogg’s Cereal characters. It makes me think of curling up on our couch on Luxona Avenue in Wickliffe. I’ve tried to make it myself, time and time again, always failing to get it to taste like my mother’s. I have given up on my efforts. The taste I am searching for isn’t anything I can buy in a store or add to my recipe. It’s my mother’s kitchen, the way my father washes the dishes, the sound of my sister’s car pulling into the driveway. Home is the taste for which I am searching. This weekend, I found it. I traveled three hours for this meal, and I’d gladly do it again. My family gathered, celebrated the joy found in the simplicity of being together, drank and ate until we were content and all was well within and between us.


My family. It is once in a blue moon that we're all four together.

The beauty, joy, peace, and love I had the privilege of experiencing this weekend, from dinner on Friday night until breakfast on Monday morning is a blessing I don’t know what I did to deserve. I found love in places it had been missing. I found joy in just the mere company of those I love. Beauty was all around me, filling and flowing from every sense my body possesses. Peace came to places I thought it had abandoned forever. All of this because of a generations old chicken recipe, some good red wine, and a basket of Italian plums—love your food, love your life, and remember to always buy local.

For resources on local food sources in Cleveland, check out the Northeast Ohio links listing to the left of the blog.