Sundays From Scratch

Basil plants growing in the every window that fill the entire house with an intoxicating smell. Small, medium, and large tomatoes that cut like butter and taste like the first day of summer right off the vine. The sound of your great grandmother molding, cutting, and hanging fresh pasta in front of you as she teaches you all her best secrets. Frank Sinatra and Roberta Flack playing on a record player in the living room. Your first trip meeting your great grandparents and their last few months left on earth.

My mother grew up in West Virginia, in a little town called Weirton. It's about two streets if you really look at it, but right on the edge of town is my Great Grandparent's, more lovingly known as Big Nana and Big Noni, farm. I've only been out to visit West Virginia a handful of times, and this specific trip at the age of 7 was my one and only time meeting my Big Noni and Nana. Sunday's will always be my favorite day because of them. The day I learned is when everyone can decompress, eat good food, drink good wine, play games, and spend quality time together. It was the first time I got to ride a horse, the first time I fell in love with the smell of sheet music and the scratch of vinyl, the trip I realized that my Noni was my favorite person in the world, and the first time I got schooled on how to make a pasta from scratch.

The one week trip that changed my entire outlook on food and family.

Now, this specific Sunday was not your typical spaghetti dinner - this was the lesson of Italian Wedding Soup. Still to this day, one of my favorite meals of all time. I sat down at her counter, and watched her make pasta from stratch, throw it in her machine as she perfectly timed and cut small rigatoni tubes. It was like watching a conductor at the orchestra, everything was perfectly imperfect.

I feel like for those reading, and some of you may know this about the Italians or more specifially Italian Grandmothers, they don't write anything down, and if they do it's as vague as possible. My Big Nana also didn't believe in measuring anything. She used to say, "my hands can act like cups for a reason, why buy measuring utensils when I have it built in." To be honest, fair point Nana, fair point.

This is the recipe my Big Nana wrote down for generations to "follow":

Truly something you learn by watching and doing... and not a recipe to follow. Let me add some color to this very vague recipe above with, as Big Nana would advise, honest to god guesses for quantity.

Italian Wedding Soup by Big Nana

Meatball Ingredients

▢ 3 lbs of chicken - boiled, then shredded

▢ 2 eggs, beaten

▢ 2 more eggs, hard boiled

▢ 1 cup of italian bread crumbs, use italian bread from the night before and chop up

▢ 1/2 cup of freshly grated parmesan cheese

▢ 4 cloves of minced garlic - the more garlic the better, measure with your nose

▢ 1/3 cups of freshly chopped parsley, as finely chopped as possible

▢ salt and pepper, to taste

Soup Ingredients

▢ 1 yellow onion, diced as fine as possible

▢ 1 cups carrots, diced

▢ 2 optional celery ribs, diced

▢ 4 cloves garlic, minced

▢ 8 cups chicken broth

▢ 2 teaspoons Italian seasoning aka fresh basil, two pinches of oregano, a small handful of thyme and rosemary, and of course chopped parsley

▢ 2 cups of freshly rolled rigatoni or rotini pasta, whatever your heart desires, or in all honestly whatever shape you mess up the least

▢ 4-5 cups fresh spinach

▢ salt/pepper, to taste

How to Make

▢ After boiling and shredding the chicken, roll all the ingredients together into 3-4 inch balls.

* Nana's hot take: don't brown them on the stove, throw them in the soup once it's boiling and cook them that way. I know watching her do this, I was a little horrified. However, letting them cook this way blends all the flavors perfectly together. It's remarkable.

▢ For the soup, cook the onions, carrots, garlic, italian seasoning, and optional celery until slightly browned before adding in the chicken broth. You'll know it's browned perfectly when the smell of yellow onion and garlic make your nose tingle just slightly. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and add in your meatballs.

▢ Boil the pasta in a separate pot until al dente. Put the pasta into serving bowls then pour the rest of the broth, veggies, and meatballs over. If you don't expect leftovers, you're insane, but also you can cook the pasta in it. (Good luck with that.) Add in the spinach and cook until wilted.

▢ Most important and never to be skipped: top with freshly grated parmesan cheese.

▢ Pair with a nice *italian* red wine or apertive.

It'll look a littttttle something like this:

Now that I've added some more instructions to this I could add the easier, less time consuming ways to do it. However, I can't in good conscience disrespect Big Nana, so you'll have to figure the easiest way possible for yourself ;)

I also feel the need to add that I too found the Progresso Italian Wedding Soup doupe when I was in college, and I absolutely fell into the trap. Don't kid yourself though, everything about making something from stratch is just overall better... and anything from a can is bound to have enough salt to make you bloat into next Thursday.

All in all, I can't wait to buy a pasta maker, have basil grow in my window, and have my own little garden in the back for cooking. I can't wait to teach my kids and my husband all my favorite italian recipes. I can't wait to be the Italian Grandmother that I grew up with. I truly, truly can't wait to dance around the kitchen with good jazz, drinking good wine, and teaching them why Sunday's truly are the superior day.