From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home

Part 1, “Before,” shifts between two timelines to tell the story of Tembi and Saro’s love, from the moment they met in front of Vivoli until Saro’s death in their Spring Lake home. Like the rest of the book, Part 1 places food at the center of Tembi and Saro’s relationship. Early in their courtship, for example, the presence of food takes on an almost sensuous presence as Tembi leans close to say goodbye to Saro and drinks in his scent of “charcoal, olive oil, and garlic” (20), confiding in her memoirs, “The combination was salty and beguiling. It took me a moment to recover” (20). Food is also central the night Tembi falls in love with Saro at Acqua al 2. Saro, a chef, wooed Tembi with his delicious menu, starting with his delectable risotto con sugo verde, the aroma of which “reached [Tembi’s] senses before [her] eyes could process what [she] was looking at. It smelled earthy, creamy, and woodsy with a hint of mint” (29). Soon after, Tembi not only understands that Saro was expressing his love through food, but that she reciprocates his feelings. The descriptions in her memoirs romanticize this dynamic with the statement, “By the third and fourth courses, I accepted that this chef who wore elf boots was making love to me, and we hadn’t even so much as kissed” (31).

Food remains a pivotal part of Tembi and Saro’s lives throughout their relationship, even in bad times. During Saro’s long illness, for instance, Tembi brings home-cooked meals to the hospital to spare him from eating food that is “both nutritionally vacuous and psychologically oppressive” (47). She also makes him homemade ice pops, wanting his last moments to be soothing and pleasurable. Tembi also finds comfort in food after Saro’s death, cooking his risotto con sugo verde, the first dish he made for her at Acqua al 2. Tembi cooks to feel close to Saro, but the experience also brings her loss into sharper focus: “I had watched Saro bring raw ingredients to a state of surrender […] He was my master alchemist. I felt like the onion I placed in the pan, translucent and vulnerable” (70). The gifts of food that she receives after Saro’s death further emphasize her loss, for although the food is high-quality and made by talented cooks, Tembi and Zoela find the texture and taste “unfamiliar and difficult to digest” just as Saro’s death is itself an indigestible fact that they nonetheless have to consume (68).

Tembi and Saro fall in love despite their cultural differences. Tembi is drawn to Saro’s kindness, certitude, and willingness to take a leap of faith for love, and she admires the fact that “he was unwavering. He saw what he saw, and his every action inducted me into that vision. And I felt safe. Safe to open my heart, to be vulnerable” (36). Saro not only declares his love, but also turns that love into action by buying Tembi a bicycle, cooking for her, and standing in the rain for hours until she comes to the window. Saro warns Tembi that his parents disapprove of diverse cultural relationships, even frowning on his previous relationship with a Sardinian woman. (His father, Giuseppe, believed he would be gossiped about and mocked if his son married a Black American woman.) Undeterred, Saro and Tembi marry in a private ceremony at New York’s City Hall and then undergo a second ceremony among family and friends in Florence. Giuseppe disowns Saro, refuses to attend the wedding, and prevents other relatives from attending, and Tembi’s memoir observes that “in creating one family, Saro had lost another” (94). Saro never blames Tembi for losing his family. Rather, his love remains strong to the end. In a final act of love, he urges Tembi to move on with her life after his death, telling her, “I want you to know love someday. Another love. Your love is too beautiful not to share” (59).

Losing Saro has a profound effect on Tembi, and she uses evocative language to describe Saro, their love, and her grief after his death to illustrate the intensity of her feelings. For example, she compares Saro cooking at Acqua al 2 to “a wizard behind a scrim of sizzling heat, orchestrating the clamorous clanging of pots” in a kitchen that “looked like Aladdin’s cave” (28). Tembi knew Saro would call after standing her up because she felt as though she knew him in a profound way. Her lyrical writing also conveys her grief, as evidenced by her state of mind the week following Saro’s death: “All morning it had been like having one language in my head while the world spoke another that pierced in my ears like hurried gibberish through a scratchy loudspeaker” (46).