Ballot Ready

My mother loved to cook. She was most at home in her kitchen. As an Italian, she had grown up savoring a variety of Italian specialties, from lasagna to veal scaloppini to tiramisu. Our family was spoiled by always enjoying flavorful meals together. My father, of Hungarian descent, was a meat-and-potatoes man, but he loved that his wife learned to make goulash for him. Each night, my dad would arrive home from work just before 5 o’clock. He would have a whiskey sour and read the afternoon newspaper (The Philadelphia Bulletin) in his recliner, while we kids finished up our homework or were outside playing catch or “run the bases” with the neighbors’ children. And promptly at 5:30, my mom would ring a bell from the front stoop of our house. We, kids, filed inside to wash our hands and take our places at the kitchen table to break bread together.

Since my tongue cancer diagnosis in 2020 and the subsequent radiation treatments that have taken away my ability to eat solid food or taste anything, I spend a lot of time remembering how powerful food can be in bringing people together. Being a “companion” to someone means, etymologically (from Latin), sharing bread together.