There are people who can.
And then there are the Caporales and the Fittipaldis.
Over four weekends, Vincenzo and Filomena Caporale, along with Filomena’s sister, Rita Fittipaldi and her husband Frank Fittipaldi, will make well over 1,000 jars of homemade pasta sauce, enough to carry their extended Italian family through the winter.
The work began two weeks ago in St. John, Indiana, where the Caporales and Fittipaldis go to buy “bushels and bushels of fresh Roma and Sam Marzano tomatoes,” said Frankie Caporale, son of Vincenzo and Filomena.
“They bring all of the tomatoes home, wash them and spread them out on blankets on the garage floor,” he said.
Frankie, who lives with his wife and kids just three blocks from his parents, serves as interpreter for his mom, who still prefers her native Italian.
If there’s one thing Frankie’s gleaned from his tradition-loving parents it’s the importance of relationships. Every Sunday morning – in good weather and sometimes bad – he meets former classmates and friends from the neighborhood at Calumet Park Beach, a place they lovingly call “The Rocks,” to watch the sun come up over Lake Michigan. The friends catch up, salute good times, welcome newcomers, remember those who’ve passed and offer support for any who are struggling. Sometimes they go out for breakfast afterward.
On Sept. 13, Frankie will host a flag waving tribute to 9/11 at sunrise. His musician friends will perform and the group will release thousands of balloons in honor of fallen police officers.
I have been to his sunrise celebrations a couple of times. And each time, Frankie’s welcoming spirit and his genuine concern for how you’re getting on shines brighter than the sun. The ceremonies, he says, are open to anyone who can get themselves out of bed and down to the lakeshore by sun up.
But even if you show up a little late, with pajamas and bedhead, he’s ecstatic to see you. Relationships, he says, are what life is all about.
His parents feel the same, he said. Although the tomato operation is a huge undertaking, it’s also a chance to spend time with family, and to assure that aunts, uncles, cousins and siblings will be well-fed into the leaner, meaner months of winter.
“If that’s not love,” Frankie says, “well …”
After the tomatoes have been cleaned, they go into a giant pot of boiling water for blanching, Frankie said.
The pot is then drained and the tomatoes are sliced and crushed by hand, seeds going into big buckets and “sauce” going into sterilized containers, he said.
The sauce is then cooked in big pots for an hour on the stove, with someone stirring constantly. Afterward, it is ladled into steamed, clean Mason jars that have been filled with a couple of sprigs of basil, oregano and parsley – all grown in the Caporale’s back yard — and then sealed with a Mason ball cap.
It is an arduous, intensive process, Frankie said, one that begins at 3:30 a.m. and goes until 2 p.m. on four weekends at the end of each summer. But, he added, it is a labor of love.
Last weekend, the group filled 430 jars of sauce in the garage of the Fittipaldi’s Lansing home.
The week before, they made the same number of containers in the Caporale’s garage on the Southeast side.
The jars are stored in the Caporale’s basement, half of which is a kitchen with lots of shelves and two commercial Viking stoves, Frankie said.
Frankie, who is a driver for The City of Chicago’s Streets and Sanitation Department, immigrated from Calabria, Italy, to the United States with his parents when he was 10.
“My dad had just finished his military duty and my mom’s family was already here,” Frankie said. “So they set my dad up with a job at Republic Steel and we came over.”
It was 1969 and he remembers boarding The Raffaello for the 14-day journey to Ellis Island.
The Caporales settled on Chicago’s Southeast Side where they had extended family.
Because he didn’t speak English, Frankie was immediately placed in kindergarten at Phil Sheridan School. Six months later, once he had a grasp of the language, he was moved up to grade level. Later, he attended St. George School on the Southeast Side and George Washington High School.
Frankie said even before his aunt and uncle were married, he called Frank Pittipaldi “Uncle Frank.”
“We lived in the same neighborhood in Italy,” Frankie said. “I used to tell him, ‘I’ve got a beautiful aunt named Rita for you’.”
Then, they met and got married, he said.
His parents maintained many of their old world traditions, keeping a big garden in the yard and cooking up a storm.
“My dad has seven basil plants that grow taller than me and get to three times my width,” he said. “And his peppers are fabulous.”
Frankie said his mom cooks all the time.
Every Saturday, she gets up at 3 a.m. to make 10 to 20 loaves of Italian and tomato focaccia bread for the whole family, he said.
“She also teaches my friends how to make bread and pasta on Saturday mornings,” he said. “I translate for her.”
Her favorite thing to make is gnocchi, Frankie said.
Jarring hundreds of containers of spaghetti sauce is no small task, especially for people in their 70s and 80s but Frankie said they do it because that’s what they love to do. And that’s what they’ve always done.
Does the homemade sauce taste better than jarred sauce from a supermarket?
“Oh, my God, yes,” Frankie said, adding a few pointers.
“If when you’re cooking it, the sauce is too watery, add a little olive oil. It will thicken it up. But never add oil when jarring,” he said. “If you want to have meatballs or neck bones, which Italians love, with your spaghetti, heat the sauce in a pot and then add the cooked meat.”
There are lots of way to enjoy the sauce, he said.
And that’s a good thing, given there are thousands of jars being put up for the winter.
“We are lucky to have homemade sauce in the dead of January,” Frankie said.
“And we are so blessed to still have our parents,” he added. “We’re lucky, really lucky.”
@dvickroy
