I struggle with the garlic.
My three friends squabble next to me, all packed together in our 100-square-foot kitchen. They’re making a quick lunch; I’m making pesto from scratch. I’m not sure why.
Despite growing up on pesto pasta, I’ve never made it from scratch. I embarked on this endeavor with memory as my only recipe, ushering my friend Amina into my car to accompany me to the grocery store and hunt for forgotten ingredients that had just popped back into my head.
Pine nuts were never in my mom’s pesto. She swore by walnuts. I remember her telling me that walnuts were good for my brain because of their unique shape—a little pea-sized noggin. She’d tell me that sort of stuff all the time: that carrots were good for my hair because the two words sounded the same (c-hair-ots), that blueberries were good for my eyes because they resembled my own round blue irises.
Amina and I stood in front of the nuts section and stared at the teeny, tiny, $15.99 box of pine nuts.
I grabbed the walnuts.
We left the grocery store, narrowly avoiding a collision with the bollards in the Whole Foods parking lot, and returned home. I’m now back in the kitchen, staring at the NutriBullet that’s overflowing with a mushy, vibrant green substance. My mom would always use her food processor, but I’m working with what I’ve got, the Bullet left over from the girls who lived here before us.
I hold the container out for Amina to try. She dips her pinky in, tastes, and immediately sticks her tongue out. I follow suit. It’s a typical garlic flavor, but it’s stronger and much more bitter—10 times more bitter than usual. I return to the chopping board.
I guess I do know why I’m making pesto. Graham’s visiting tonight, driving four hours from New York to stay the weekend. This is our favorite meal, and I want to surprise him by making it from scratch.
Graham and I met in the winter. We watched that season’s first snowfall together. That night, he walked me home, so worried I’d get sick since I was wearing ballet flats. Whenever we looked back on those first fuzzy weeks together, he always mentioned my ballet flats, wet from the snow.
Chilly weather called for hot dishes—kitchen tables laden with mismatched bowls and spoons, and bellies full of soups, beans, and pastas. I was still living in a dorm, so we’d always go over to his house to cook.
Graham cooks like I do—simple ingredients and no recipes. One of those chilly winter nights, he made a sauce his dad always made: just half an onion, a stick of butter, and crushed tomatoes. A few spices. We sat at his kitchen table. We were awkward and smiley, and to be honest, I don’t even remember what the pasta tasted like.
Two weeks ago, my parents visited for Family Weekend. They bustled out of their big truck, wrapped in coats and scarves in the 60-degree weather, carrying bags and bags full of homemade veggie chips and, at last, jars upon jars of homemade pesto. My mom ran into my kitchen and started rummaging around, asking me why I had fruit that wasn’t organic and which side of the freezer was mine. She lined up the eclectic containers of pesto—from reused jars to little Pyrex dishes with red lids, all labeled with my name in Sharpie—along the side of my freezer.
On Friday night, I offered to cook my parents dinner. They came over to our apartment and ambled about as I prepared carrots, onions, cauliflower, and a big pot of soup. The soup was one of those dishes I would whip up all the time, and, as usual, I made up the recipe as I went, without any measurements or ratios. In an attempt to impress my parents, I made way too many dishes at once. While I wasn’t looking, my mom would turn off a burner when a pot was about to boil over, or dial down the oven when she was afraid of the teeniest amount of char.
We sat down at our dining room table and ate a meal I’d cooked for them for the first time ever, save for the strange desserts and mud pies I’d made for them as a kid.
The evening after they left, I checked my fridge and pantry and found nothing fresh or interesting to eat. I unraveled a rubber-banded bag of pasta, brought a pot of water to boil, and took out a jar of my mom’s homemade pesto.
After much trial and error, with my hands and kitchen now smelling like garlic, the pesto was finally at a stage that I’d label as edible. I packed it away: in repurposed jars and little Pyrex containers with red lids, all labeled with my name in Sharpie. I lined them up on my side of the freezer; I now had 12 receptacles of pesto at the ready.
As Graham pulls into the driveway, I follow the foolproof steps that always bring me peace due to their comforting routine. I boil the pasta, drain it in a colander, and use the same hot pot to defrost the frozen pesto, watching it transform into a luxurious sauce when mixed with the starchy pasta water. I mix some peas into my mom’s plain and simple recipe because I know they are his favorite vegetable.
Every morning growing up, my mom would ask me what I wanted for dinner that night. I can’t recall a time when I didn’t answer back, “pesto pasta!” She would chide me that it’s not good to have pasta every night, but, most of the time, she would cave, and when I came home late from a student council meeting or cross country practice, a large pot of pesto pasta would await me— more than enough to feed an army, let alone our little group of three.
As I finish up the dish, Graham saunters around and helps me out, washing miscellaneous spoons and used pots. We sit down and enjoy our favorite meal in each other’s company. After not seeing each other for a while, I soak in how good it feels to complete a labor of love.
Every Sunday, my friends and I take turns hosting what we call family dinners. I’m always amazed at how Amina can whip up a casual nine-dish meal or how Lucy roasts vegetables to perfection. We sit down after a long week and eat a delicious dinner cooked with love by our dearest friends, and it is simply the best feeling in the world, my favorite part of the week. It’s my turn next Sunday, and I think I know just what to make for everyone.
Senior year has been a stretch of college that’s felt different from the rest, and I have come to realize that a lot of that comes from having a space of our own, a little taste of adult life. When I’m homesick and hungry, I can whip up my favorite childhood meal in no time. When I’m getting a bad case of the Sunday blues, I can rely on my friends to be there for me in the form of a warm, home-cooked meal. And when I want to show the ones closest to me how much I love them, I turn to the kitchen, giving way to ingredients and recipes that remind me of home, ones passed down, improvised, or rediscovered; the act of cooking is a love language in itself.
