Prefer to listen?
She smiled as the small milling machine ground the wheat into flour. She beamed at me and flowed in my direction, singing.
“I love you a bushel and a peck, a bushel and a peck.”
I knew the response and sang out,
“And a hug around the neck.”
She continued,
“And a barrel and a squeeze, and a tickle on the knees.”
Wrapping her arms around me, she welcomed me to her kitchen. She tapped her finger in the fresh flour and ran it the length of my little nose. I grinned and repeated the same act for her as we giggled.
I was the youngest of ten children, and we began making pizza for the family. It was no small task and meant a dedicated afternoon of work, but I knew that today I would have the time with her all to myself.
I loved pushing down the bread dough with my fingers and putting plastic wrap over the top again for the dough to rise back up. The four large stainless-steel bowls each had enough for a single 20-inch pizza. She grabbed a small handful of the flour and sprinkled it across the counter in front of us, then ran her floured hand up and down the rolling pins and handed me one.
I tried so hard to copy what she was doing, but it never spread out as evenly or as far as hers. She taught me to leave a bit of extra dough in the center so you could even it all out later. The circles of dough seemed to spread across the countertop. The four large pizza pans had multiple cut lines etched into the thin metal, and she helped me move the dough to cover them. Her fingers moved quickly, forming the crust.
A silver number 300 can and two large spoons were used to spread the swirling red sauce.
“Try to spread as evenly as you can. Be careful to only use so much. There are three more pizzas to make.”
I nodded, and in the center of my hands I rolled small balls of ground beef for the next layer. The pans were moved to the oven to bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes, and while they baked, I was tasked with grating the orange mild cheddar cheese. I knew it was going to be good, because this time we had real cheese and not the giant government brick we sometimes had.
The pizzas were topped with piles and piles of the orange-colored shreds and placed back in the oven for another 15 minutes. As they got closer to being finished, the family began to congregate on the edges of her kitchen, while she shooed them about and told them it had to cool.
I was 11 or 12 years old when I learned that there were other pizza toppings besides tomato sauce, ground beef, and mild cheddar cheese.
The pizzas were placed in the center of the scratched and battered brown table with a stack of plates next to them. We lined up, one of my brothers said the prayer, and then they were gone in just a couple minutes.