MEATBALL WARS (and Other Holiday Traditions)

My family of origin is Italian-American so it may not surprise you that many of our holiday traditions center on food (oh, and also on guilt, but that’s a blog for a less jolly occasion.) Our most deeply rooted food tradition is a recipe passed down from my father’s side of the family. We call it Baked Macaroni, but its modest name hardly does justice to the layers of baked fettuccini noodles, tiny meatballs, hard-boiled eggs, pepperoni, locatelli and bubbly imported provolone cheese, smothered in “gravy” (aka tomato sauce for those without South Philly roots.)

We’re not sure how the recipe originated, but conventional family wisdom suggests it was our grandmother’s version of lasagna.  Since childhood, it is what we eat for Christmas dinner. If you’ve never stood at the kitchen counter for hours on end chopping eggs, pepperoni, and cheese, stirring gravy and rolling 7 or 8 HUNDRED cherry-sized meatballs, you may not appreciate what a tedious labor of love making Baked Macaroni can be. When it became too much for our mother, she passed the honors to my sister, Jeanne.

Well, sort of passed them. She relinquished the manual labor, but in the tradition of a good Italian mother, she retained general contractor rights. That meant starting in August, at every family get-together she might be heard asking questions like, “How many pounds of pasta will you use,” or “when will you start the gravy” or “how many meatballs will you roll?” Naturally there were no correct answers to these questions and they inevitably led to lively debates which my husband, Jim, affectionately dubbed, “THE MEATBALL WARS.”

Jim and I took over making the Baked Macaroni a few years ago and this year is our fourth Christmas since Mom died. It’s no surprise we miss her sitting at the holiday table. Who could have predicted how much we would also miss the Meatball Wars?