My grandfather would prep for days before a holiday meal, blanching, chopping, filleting, and marinating his way to a rube-goldberg-like setup in his basement kitchen. We’d arrive at the house along with blood-related aunts and marriage-related uncles, say our ceremonial hellos, exchanging hugs and kisses. Then my grandfather would disappear. I, his first grandson, was often allowed to accompany him, a special privilege earned through apprenticeship, which began with learning to make pizza and calzones when I was six and ended seventeen years later, just days before he passed on, after a rigorous cooking lesson—linguine with white clam sauce—that may have killed him. 

He’d descend the stairs, start the burners, and then dart around like a squirrel, monitoring sauté pans and sauciers, flash-frying, flipping ingredients high into the air, almost to the hood. If you got too close to his operating radius you’d likely get cut, burned, scolded—all three or any combination. I sensed that underneath this frantic activity something deeply consequential was taking place, that he was committed, body and soul, to the act of cooking well, that the way he did so said something profound about the way that he lived. Making a holiday meal was, for my grandfather, a metaphor for a life well lived. Make your plan: shrimp francese, mozzarella in carozza, a better life for your family. Execute your preparation: procure fresh lemons, dry out hard rolls, cross an ocean. Then—and this is the crucial part—insert yourself into the middle of the various stations and explode into the task at hand, a human shield against hunger, a free radical shaping well-laid plans and preparations into sustenance, artfully delivered, contingent only on your wits, sweat, blood.

These days I do much of the cooking in our house, but I am not my grandfather. Crossing my path on the way to a cutting board won’t put you in mortal danger. I didn’t learn in a restaurant kitchen during the evening rush, and I didn’t learn because it was my only option for gainful employment. I work slowly and mindfully, with great deliberation. I accept help, suggestions, and especially company. Feeding a partner, and someday a family, still requires a well-laid plan and the ability to carry it out. Thanks in no small part to my grandfather, though, it’s no longer a shield between sustenance and poverty, between life and death. It’s a way to perfect the practice of living, a willingness to transform that which is inevitable in life into a thing of beauty. Cooking well is an emblem of your highest aspiration: for my grandfather it meant surviving long enough to climb a ladder, to position the next generations on a higher rung than his own. For me it’s an act of gratitude for being so positioned, a celebration of having what I need, a transformation of chore into ritual, routine into practice, life into art.