My favorite meal has to be tuna spaghetti. It's what we in the family call a family recipe even though I think it just started with my dad finding the recipe in a magazine or newspaper (I'm pretty sure not online).
I don't remember the exact origins of it, however, I just know that my dad made if for me and my brother every Wednesday night and many a Saturday afternoon. I don't know why my brother and I clung onto it so much, but we did. I mean, I do think it's delicious, but I also find many other things delicious (like pizza) and it didn't become a large family ritual (well pizza nights were common but this feels different somehow). I also know that I was (and am) a picky eater so perhaps our dad just found something we'd eat consistently and was like "good enough!"
When we were young, our dad would do all the cooking and we would just watch TV as the smells of garlic and lemon wafted in from the kitchen window (or window cutout? what do you call it when there's just a rectangle cut out of the wall so that the kitchen flows a bit more into the living room?). We would pile on parmesan, swirl our forks to get as big of a pile of spaghetti as we could fit into our mouths, and chow down. Second servings are another big tradition of tuna spaghetti, yet we would often still take home leftovers. My brother and I would have to try and split them between us.
As we got older, we helped out with the cooking. Now, I'll admit, I mostly let my brother and dad do the cooking (men belong in the kitchen, right?), but still sometimes I helped out. Mostly I'd squeeze the lemons or get the tuna out of the can, the smaller jobs. I had (and still have to some extent) a fear of chopping myself up with the parsley and I always hated trying to get the last bits of garlic out of the press. Still, cooking with people is fun and I did dabble from time to time. However, I will admit that I more often watched TV and let the boys do all the work than pitched in, but I want it to be known that sometimes I helped.
Tuna spaghetti became part of my identity. It was often leftovers that I would share either at lunch or when friends came over and we were trying to figure out what to do for dinner. When my mom would pick me and my brother up from our dad's, we would smell of garlic (she wasn't always the biggest fan of this truth be told as she likes a reasonable amount of garlic in things and we love heaps of it). To this day, it is one of my core recipes: something I can whip up pretty quickly with a high degree of satisfaction for the effort put forth. I also included it in the recipe book given to two dear friends for their wedding. My family doesn't have a lot of "traditional" recipes, but I thought tuna spaghetti counted and, after all, these friends are family.
Another time we would make tuna spaghetti was Christmas Eve. Having divorced parents meant that I spent Christmas Eve with my dad and Christmas with my mom. I know many people have grand meals for Christmas Eve, but we always had tuna spaghetti. It was tradition! What could be better for a holiday than tradition?
Now that our dad is in a care facility, I still try to make or have tuna spaghetti with my brother whenever I see him (not literally every time I see him, but at least once per visit). Again, mostly I let my brother do the cooking, but I do help. He's tweaked the recipe over the years, upping the lemon, tuna, and parsley content (especially the lemon content), but it's still delicious.
That reminds me that we weren't always up for the recipe being tweaked. One time our dad bought a different kind of spaghetti (not the traditional blue box of Barilla), and my brother and I were like "why'd you change it?" Our dad was not surprised that we could tell the difference and vowed not to do it again.
Tuna spaghetti, as I'm sure you've gathered, is something I heavily associate with my dad and with him in failing health, it is something I cling to more and more. I plan to keep up the tradition of cooking it with my brother and plan to spread the tradition onto my kids. I hope they like lemon, garlic, tuna, butter, parsley, parmesan, and spaghetti.
Anyways, if you're curious, I can share the recipe.
(Prompt by Eleanor Pratt)
Comments
Post a Comment