Made With Love — The Thing She Baked When Words Weren't Enough

My grandmother told me I love you often.

But she said it in other ways that often spoke louder than words. She said it by making sure there was always something in the house when you arrived. She said it by pressing food into your hands as you were leaving, by calling it a gift but meaning something else. She said it by baking, specifically, when there was something that needed to be said and the words weren't quite right.

I think about this whenever I open a jar of Sicilian Pistachio Cream thinking I'll make a cake. Not really because of the cake. Because of what the cake is actually for — that baking something for someone says the thing that sitting across from them sometimes can't.

Sicilian food culture is built on this. The Sunday lunch that took two days to make isn't just lunch. It's a declaration. The pastries you bring when you visit someone's home aren't just pastry. They're a way of arriving that says: I thought about you before I got here.

Nonna's Pistachio Cake wasn't complicated. It was made for birthdays and for Tuesdays when someone needed something. Pistachio cream into the batter, kitchen smelling like Etna, golden and fragrant out of the oven. Exactly what it was supposed to be.

I've made it when I didn't know what else to do. When a friend had a hard week. When someone's mother was ill. When a text message wasn't going to be enough.

Food is still the most direct language some of us have. Baking especially — it's slow, it's deliberate, and what comes out of the oven is something you can actually put in someone's hands. Something warm. Something made. Something that says: I was thinking about you while I made this.

That's what the words were always trying to say anyway.

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Some things don't translate. They just live in you.