The food I remember the most is when my father made spaghetti sauce, and we’d have huge spaghetti dinners. He’d get the meat, breadcrumbs, and ingredients to make his own meatballs. He’d have canned whole tomatoes that he would crush in his hands. There was tomato paste, oregano, onions, some bell peppers, sausage. He’d leave the kitchen, and my mother would be looking around to make sure he hadn’t added anything that she wouldn’t have. He’d come back, and she goes, “You didn’t put a bay leaf in there, did you, Jack?” His name was John, like mine, but she called him Jack. “You didn’t put any hot pepper in there, Jack?” And he’d say, “Leave it to me.” He would be there cooking the sauce the whole day with his wooden spoon. We had a very small house in Oswego where I grew up (it was the second house we lived in, the first without my grandparents), so the sauce filled the whole house, and it smelled like an Italian restaurant. He did add a bay leaf once in a while or some hot peppers, but my mother was none the wiser and ate it and loved it anyway.