Every couple of minutes, my grandmother gets up to check on the food. Around the third time she wanders off into the kitchen, my mother calls out for her to return to the table to no avail. Sometimes, my mother and I have to follow my grandma into the kitchen and link our arms around hers for her to come back with us. She laughs at our usual antics and replies with, “the food needs tending, too.”

One of my grandmother’s favorite dishes to cook is gnocchi. Every couple of weeks, she brings the family together for one of her delicious dinners. There is a specific set of guidelines one must partake leading up to the meal. A couple of days before one of our Sunday dinners, my grandma calls us asking what kind of sauce we prefer. My mom usually tells her not to worry about it, that we can make the sauce. Their “sauce talks” always ends with a colorful spread of sauces on the dinner table. Throughout the meal, we can tell that the grandparents are following our every move, down to which sauce is the first to go. “See,” my grandma says as she turns toward my grandfather, “I knew that was their favorite sauce.”

Picture: Epicurious.com