What is it about Christine’s cheesy mashed potatoes that make everybody nuts? It’s just some potatoes, cheese, and sour cream mixed together. But it’s something more. To understand let’s take a walk down memory lane.
Back in the day, when I was a youngster, I used to get up early on a Sunday morning to go to the 8 o’clock mass with my beloved Grandmother. We would sit at the end of the last pew every week. We sat there every week because it was an easy out before the end of the mass. We would leave mass through the side door during communion before the “official” end of the mass. It counted. We stayed for 98% of the mass. Our obligation was fulfilled. Besides we couldn’t take one more prayer out of Sue Colisimo’s mouth in the pew in front of us because she was ALWAYS a sentence and a half ahead of the rest of the congregation. It used to get on both our nerves.
We would head back down the street to 7012 where I would watch my Grandmother prepare her weekly dose of her infamous meatballs. I was like an appendage of hers. By her side during the entire processes. Mix the meat, heat up the pan with the grease from last week’s meatballs, roll the meatballs, and then fry them up. The Sunday meatballs weren’t round like her macaroni meatballs. The Sunday meatballs were shaped like little footballs. The usual amount of meatballs on a normal Sunday was about 3 to 4 dozen. She would place them in a pasta dish lined with napkins.
I would take about a dozen steaming hot meatballs wrapped in some napkins and return to 7006 to share with the family who slept in on a Sunday and went to what my Grandmother referred to as “the lazy peoples mass” at 11 o’clock.
After the 11 o’clock mass people would file into Grandmom’s house to shoot the shit and chow down on some meatballs…similar to what happens on Sundays at 7006 today. It was a ritual. Mostly family, sometimes a neighbor or two.
To those who know and remember… if you close your eyes and think about it… you can smell and taste those meatballs.
Everybody and their sister can make meatballs. I’ve tasted many meatball recipes over the years. Some good ones, some bad ones, but none like my Grandmother used to make. Annette’s meatballs have come the closest to tasting like Grandom Gatti’s meatballs. So what was it about Grandmom Gatti’s meatballs that made people make the pilgrimage to 7012 every Sunday for decades?
Food recipes are just scientific combinations of food. Plain and simple…usually. I’m sure anyone can combine the same ingredients my Grandmother used to make her meatballs with and not have them come out the same as hers did. So what was it about those meatballs? What is it about those cheesy mashed potatoes?
It’s called heart and soul kids. Something you can’t buy at any supermarket.
My Grandmother knew how much joy her meatballs brought to her family. They were like little hugs with every bite. She put her heart and soul into every single meatball she ever made….which over the years totaled in the thousands I’m sure. Probably in the hundreds of thousands.
So the next time you take a forkful of those cheesy mashed potatoes be mindful of the fact that you’ve just been hugged by our Christine.
