Menu Twenty-Two

I had a stylish great aunt who considered herself worldly and a discerning gourmet (she had eaten steak Diane on numerous occasions). Having lived in Cleveland, she gloried in an elegance many women in our town of Dayton lacked. Her perfectly coiffed silver hair was swept back in a flip, and she wore that hairdo forever. The hair, the handbag, the heels, the string of pearls, and always, the cape. Great Aunt Sally was a woman who could wear a cape.

She wasn’t Italian, but she advised me as a boy never to cook more than one pound of pasta at a time. I figured this was an idea she’d read somewhere or had on the word of some Italian chef on a cruise.