To Elmiro Logullo, Tony, Rita, Rosalie, Miranda, Patti, Mary, Kevin, Jennifer, Rachel, Frank, John, Mike:
My Sincerest condolences on the loss of your wife, mother, and grandmother at this time. Although I am no longer part of the family, I wanted to express my thoughts.
My fondest memories of my Mother n Law were when Rita and I would be “ordered” to go to the house at the crack of dawn, usually around 5 to 6am or so in order to participate in the making of either “Canning tomatoes, or the making of the traditional italian Christmas cookies Cordechedes. Easter cookies of the Scaledries would also summon us to an early morning rendevous of work.
My mother n law would always greet us before we got to the heart of the mission which was usually to assist in cutting up what seemed to be hundreds of pounds of tomatoes that were destined to become her wonderful tomato sauce which she made from scratch. The 3 of us usually would talk about everything under the sun while this was going on. And though I watched her making her tomato sauce diligently over the years, mine just never would or could taste exactly as her’s did. Indeed the same with her meatballs-no matter how hard I attempted to duplicate the recipe-they just would never taste the same as hers. It drove me nuts when I would try the end result and see that again, it wasn’t the same as hers!
It got to a point where Rita and I would try to painstakenly analyse the ingredients in a scientific manner trying to figure out where the difference was – it didn’t help the matter either in the fact that she never used cups or teaspoons as an exact measure – no, when she made something she just knew in her mind, exactly how much of each to put in!
She could tell exactly how much flour was enough just by the way “it felt” when she handled it also.
There is one episode of the comedy EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND -that always brings a smile to me – where the daughter n law is convinced that her Italian Mother n Law has sabotaged her famous meatball recipe so that it could not be duplicated. And now, many years later, I have finally come to realize what that missing ingredient is that I myself, was never able to duplicate – the reason why mine never tasted the same as Rosa’s – was because it was her genuine love – this was the ingredient that she added spiritually into each and every one of her recipes that she made for her family.
I am blessed that she was in my life and in my children’s lives also. She was as special an angel as one could hope to know on earth.
