A Lesson in Food and Family

In Italy, where the Coronavirus hit early and hard, the lockdown response was total and long, and reopening has been gradual, summer so far feels surprisingly normal. Days are full of sunshine. It’s hot by mid-morning and stays that way until dusk. People line up (at a socially safe distance) to eat ice cream every afternoon. In big cities like Rome, where I live with my husband and our two young daughters, streets have emptied, markets have reduced their hours, the pace of life has eased. One thing that has not eased, however, is the pandemic-induced need to feed our children multiple times a day while maintaining Italy’s culinary standard.

Italy is a country synonymous with food. When asked in English where they are from, Italians inevitably reply with an accent that reveals their nation’s bond to its gastronomy. “I am from Italy,” they say, pronouncing “Italy” like the name of the high-end Italian restaurant and grocery store, “Eataly.” The chain’s reusable shopping bags confirm in bold, black letters: “Italy is Eataly.” Across the country, cities are defined by their cuisine. “When you’ve eaten lasagna in Bologna, pesto in Genoa, la carbonara in Rome,” a Roman friend once explained as we dined on her city’s famed egg pasta dish, “that’s when you know you’ve truly been to those places.” Food is also an expression of love. My mother-in-law from the Calabria region in southern Italy prepares our older daughter’s favorite meal—mini meatballs the size of mini marshmallows—every time we visit. When she calls my husband on the phone, she doesn’t begin with hello. She asks directly, “have you eaten?”

After fifteen years of living in Italy, I still haven’t metabolized the full significance of food to Italian culture. Despite their American genes, my daughters growing up in Italy have learned this lesson from birth, or at least since “lo svezzamento,” the Italian word for introducing babies to solid food. Sometime in late February, our six-month-old baby decided she was ready to eat from one day to the next. A week later, the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy shuttered schools, sending thousands of children, including our four-year-old daughter, home for lunch—and everything else—for the foreseeable future. Overnight, my husband and I found our professional lives relegated to the back burner. It was time to cook.

We had stocked our pantry with a few jars of baby food in case of an emergency. But even the Coronavirus was not emergency enough for my Italian husband to prioritize practicality over the tradition of home cooked meals, especially for our baby’s first culinary experience. Our pediatrician had equipped us with the two-page recipe for “la pappa” that seemingly all Italian babies are served as their first meal. The homemade mash combines into a single dish the sequence of courses that distinguishes Italian dining. A grain-based powder provides the traditional primo, or first course, which for most Italians is usually pasta. Added to that is a rotation of steamed and puréed veal, chicken, or fish as the secondo, or second course, when Italians typically eat their protein. (Egg can be added into the cycle after a few months, but only the yolk and then only once a week. Parents worry that anything more would be troppo pesante, “too heavy,” for baby to digest. My American mother, who has eaten two eggs almost every morning for most of her life, must have a stomach of steel.) After stirring in a contorno, or side dish, of mashed potato, zucchini, and carrot, the mixture is garnished with a drizzle of olive oil and a pinch of Parmesan cheese. The result looks a lot like the bowl full of mush in Margaret Wise Brown’s American classic, Goodnight Moon. I had always imagined the dish next to the comb and brush to be leftover oatmeal. After making gallons of Italy’s first baby food for both of our daughters, I now think the mush might be savory.

When our baby’s vegetable broth had been strained and her veal steamed and mashed, it was time to feed our four-year-old. A graduate of the Italian three-course purée, my older daughter has developed a Mediterranean palate, with decidedly Italian leanings. She prefers pizza bianca, what Americans might call “focaccia,” to any other kind of bread. Sautéed filet of sole, which my husband debones under the brightest lamp in the house, has long been her favorite meal. If I forget to add a dash of fresh olive oil to her vegetables, she lets me know immediately. The word “effervescent” is part of her vocabulary because that’s how she likes her water: not flat, but not too sparkling, either.

During our two months of quarantine, our daughter’s tastes gave welcome structure to an otherwise nebulous string of days. On Saturday mornings, my husband took advantage of the fishmonger’s fresh haul to cook the sea bass and zucchini risotto she loves for lunch. On Sundays, we nodded to my American family traditions, and she and I made pancakes together for breakfast. Yes we used farro flour, ground from an ancient Mediterranean grain, but the blueberries and buttermilk made them taste like the pancakes my dad still makes every Sunday, forty years running.

Earlier this month our daughter began a summer camp that meets every day in the park. The first week she came home to eat lunch with her sister, who now, at eleven months, thankfully eats the same food as the rest of us. By week two, she announced she wanted to stay at camp and eat lunch with her new friends. We went to our local bakery for bread, we bought sliced turkey at the deli, and I sent her off with a lunch box packed with a sandwich, carrot sticks, and a package of apple juice that resembled the Capri Sun juice pouches my mother had given me to drink at summer camp. That afternoon, as I ate the same meal, I felt an unexpected wave of homesickness. I guess Italy’s sensibility for food and family has gotten to me after all.