Strong pots, strong women

By my family's standards, I officially entered grown-up womanhood this week. There have been a lot of milestones in my life: first words, first school dance, first apartment. Then in 2005, my dad's aunt named a cow after me. Yeah, that's how we roll on the Barnett side...real women have livestock named for them. However, my journey to adulthood seemed to be lacking something.

That's right, a 15" Magnalite roaster. Laugh if you will, but while one side of my family marks womanhood by livestock, the other marks it by cookware.

There's a lot of significance tied to this pot. I remember "cooking" in one of these as a kid playing in our olive green and yellow kitchen. I remember the sound it made when you hit the side of it just right with a wooden spoon. I remember dropping the lid and almost crying with relief when it didn't land on my foot. My aunt and my mother have both cooked from this pot, and now it's my turn.

I come from a line of Italian women with big noses, sharp tongues and a need to cook for hordes of people. I inherited my maternal grandmother's blue eyes and her sassiness, as well as her recipe for spaghetti sauce. My mother and aunt sat in the kitchen with her and learned firsthand, and they have taught me. Nothing is written down, nor is it really measured. It's one of those it-has-to-feel-right kind of recipes that sits on the stove all day long and makes your hands smell like garlic for days. Six hours of stirring and waiting, and you have magical spaghetti. Most importantly, it's a recipe for a 15" Magnalite roaster.

My mother taught me to cook when I was thirteen. Every few months, we would drag out the Magnalite and spend a day stirring enough sauce for an entire army. It never failed that as we cooked, my mom would share stories about the sauce, about eating it every Sunday, about how when my parents were dating, my dad ate two plates of it the first time he met the family and then realized that was only the appetizer, about my grandfather stealing the cloves of garlic from the pot when my grandmother wasn't looking. It's not just a pot of spaghetti. It's my history, my heritage, steeped and served and passed down to each of the women in my family.

So after 25 years, I bought my own pot. After hunting around for just the right one (and after making my aunt haul out her pot and measure it with a ruler to make sure I got the right size), I ordered my own Magnalite. The time has finally come. My aunt and my mom both congratulated me. In just a week, I'll have my very own spaghetti pot and I'll join a long line of women I can only aspire to be like, women who do amazing things both in and out of the kitchen.