Life

Kitchen Traditions: Tomato Season Meets a Family Legacy

September is a special month in my home. It is tomato season, and so a time to celebrate my family’s Sicilian heritage. My kitchen has been marked throughout the entire month with telltale signs of all the tomato sauce and pasta producing: tomato-streaked cabinets and flour-dappled floors. It all started eight decades ago when my dad started growing tomatoes in the yard. His return was so prolific, we didn’t understand how to consume all of it. “We should make Nona’s tomato sauce!” he exclaimed. The sparkle in his eye made me understand how much he loved his grandmother’s sauce, where he had been practically weaned. Nona, as her grandchildren and great-grandchildren called her, came to Ellis Island in the Old Country in 1920. She, with only the business of my toddler grandfather, made her way out to California to fulfill my great-grandfather, who’d found them a house. (This photograph is…