Love Apples

and learning to let go...

This recipe means the world to me and very likely is special to cooks and their loved ones the world over. The original is from the inimitable Marcella Hazan and is readily found all over the internet. This is my take on what has become a way to serve up “love on a plate.” I hope you’ll join me, all you need is an open heart, tomatoes, butter, and a single onion.

It was the summer of 2009 and we were getting ready to take our son off to college. I remember it was a glorious growing season because even though I should have been packing I was busy picking and preserving a bumper crop of tomatoes from my tiny back garden.

Truth be told, whenever I’m slightly overwhelmed, I take to the garden to “busy” myself, a practice that dates to when my son was a baby and I was more than a little bit overcome with parenting. Life improved when I convinced my neighborhood nursery to hire me to water plants which in turn launched my career in horticulture, but that’s a story for another day.

Fast forward roughly 18 years and that baby was leaving home. The car was full, as was this mother’s heart. Friends who were out of town let us stay in their house before the university’s official move-in day. An unfamiliar home is always still, but we were especially quiet as we looked ahead. Parents often center themselves when a child is in transition, I don’t want to do that. Our son was the one who was making a big leap, all my husband and I had to do was learn how to let go. It was very, very quiet in that beautiful home on a hillside overlooking Boise, my son’s new home.

So I did what I always do, I went to the garden where I found several perfectly ripe tomatoes on the vine. Did you know that tomatoes are sometimes referred to as love apples? I knew what we were having for dinner. I picked those tomatoes and went inside to find butter, an onion, and some dried pasta, pantry staples in most kitchens.

While the better part of a stick of butter was gently melting in a saucepan over medium heat, I cut an onion in half. Yes there were tears, but surely it was the onion. I sliced those hefty tomatoes and added them to the saucepan with the butter and a tiny splash of water. How many tomatoes? There’s no right number, go with what your heart feels is enough. Take care to not brown the butter, we’re feeling fragile, okay?

Cook the tomatoes, mashing them with a wooden spoon, until you get a coarse sauce. The smoother your sauce, the more it will cling to your chosen pasta, but no biggie. Place both halves of the onion cut side down into your tomatoes-turned-sauce. Reduce heat to a bare simmer — I know, one person’s simmer is another’s burble. The temperature markings on the knobs of my home stove have long worn off, so I just watch to make sure the bubbles are small and not angry.

I love my stove, a tiny Wolf model we purchased when my son was a baby, but admittedly it’s on its last legs. I’m always (pleasantly) surprised when I cook in another kitchen on a cooktop marked with temperature readings and burners that you don’t have to prime with a lighter like you’re camping.

Where were we? Place a lid on your lovely sauce and simmer on low for an hour or so until the sauce thickens, and the onion dissolves into individual petals. At some point you’re going to want to boil water for the pasta, but your work is essentially done. That is, except for the part about letting go.

Time travel to today. For the last 15 years life has been tumultuous, as I’m sure it has for so many. Hearts have been broken, healed, and filled to the brim many times over. The rest of it, sometimes so very messy, falls into place one way or the other. At the end of last year, our son asked his love to marry him. She said yes and now wears our family ring. I know this isn’t the end of life’s wild ride for them or us or anyone, but I know having love in our hearts is what makes it all worth living.