Buzzy Holzhauser was my grandpa.

I haven’t had his spaghetti since 1997: the year I watched him die and the year I came out. I was 17.

If I’m honest, I don’t feel like I really got to know him. I just know things about him. I know he loved the St. Louis Cardinals, and he came to a few of my softball games. I know that he liked to drink and smoke before he had to go on dialysis. I know he was a Korean War veteran. I’ve heard some things I find problematic to reconcile with my values.

In the year before he died, swing music became popular again, and I was exploring big band sounds. I had a conversation with him about how I loved it and felt maybe I was born in the wrong era. He said he’d show me some good swing music and made me several mix tapes of some big band, a lot of Western Swing, waltzes, and a few classic country standards. (Here’s the essay I wrote about it). While typing this, I got distracted wondering where those tapes were. Then, a vision: I put them in our fireproof box with our other important papers. I ran to the garage, dug through, and found all seven of them. The last tape he made was in February of 1997. He handed it to me and said, “So you’ll remember me. I won’t always be around.”

He died three months later.

That last tape is called “Good Old Dance Music.” I took a break from writing, and popped it into my boombox hoping the strip was strong enough to make it through both sides. It held.

I cried the whole time I was listening. Not because the songs are sad (the B side is all unrequited love and suffering) but because I guess I was realizing, from a more mature place, what this tape was: his last message to me. This is what he wanted me to know about him and how he wanted to be remembered. I imagined him with these blank tapes and his records lined up, picking the songs he loved or maybe the ones he thought I’d enjoy. I wondered, since his health was failing, how he felt hearing the songs of his youth. I think making the tape wasn’t just for me; he was reliving his own memories of a time when he was able to dance and drink and felt like he’d live forever. I cried because I’m already old enough to have those songs, too.

I have made many mix tapes and CDs in my lifetime. I have spent hours on one tape, doing the math of the song lengths so that I can try to get everything I want to say on there. I consider the sequence of songs, how they all fit together, and I give them a full listen in the intended order until I think everything is where it needs to be.

When I was just about emotionally spent listening to this tape, and my eyes absolutely pink and swollen, I heard the lyrics: I’ll hold you in my heart (’til I can hold you in my arms again.) I thought: was grandpa an affectionate guy? Did I even enjoy hugs when I was a kid? Wait, did he mean these lyrics for me or was he just adding a song he loved? And, then, as the tears came even harder: CLICK! Then complete silence.

Grandpa made enough mix tapes to know how long each side was. He tried to squeeze in that last one.

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People like to ask Gaby, “can you write down that recipe for me?” without considering the effort it takes to ponder, measure, and calculate so the the flavor remains the same. Writing a recipe requires deciding how much of which specific ingredient, when to add it, and how long it should cook. It is an emotional act- an act of love to pick and choose and record all the details in an attempt to convey the same message, the exact feeling, for the person who will be cooking and eating it.

When Grandpa was making and writing this recipe, most of the ingredients probably came from the 1 acre they lived on. The green pepper, onion, tomatoes, and hot pepper are from the garden-maybe even the celery. The beef, you can rest assured, was from one of the cows that my grandpa kept up in a small pasture. This spaghetti was always a hit at Holzhauser family gatherings. If I remember correctly, there were even just nights we were invited up for spaghetti dinner, just because. What I loved most was the way the sauce clung to every part of the noodle, making every bite full of flavor. I liked the way the leftovers stained the Tupperware.

Like most recipes in this book, he used what he had on hand. What makes this recipe unique (in the cookbook and overall) is in a time of buying canned things from stores, my grandpa was making his own sauce from his own garden.

And the star of any good Missouri garden is the tomato, right?

Gaby has been canning our tomatoes and preserving a lot of other things for years, but this summer she decided to try canning tomato juice. It’s more work than just making your own sauce because there’s blanching, peeling, crushing, and straining. The result, though, was nine quarts of salty garden goodness. I grew up drinking tomato juice straight from the Mason jar, so just seeing the deep red color sitting on our shelves sparks a whole nostalgic sensory experience for me. This is also one of the reasons I chose to make the sauce when I did during this project: I figured those of you reading along might have just canned your tomatoes, too, and even still have a few on the vines.

I used a stick of butter instead of Oleo, and couldn’t find a green bell pepper in the garden that was ripe enough, so went to my old standby: the poblano. For the “red pepper pod” I used a fresh cayenne. It wasn’t until I was mostly done cooking that I remembered how, in the little entry way into my grandparents’ house, there were always drying red peppers hanging on the walls. I should’ve used one of our dried peppers. The only other modification I made was adding more garlic.

I admit that I paused when I read that two tablespoons of parmesan cheese should be added while the sauce cooks. I wondered why and how he came to that decision. And how long did he experiment before he came up with that amount? I’d never heard of cooking cheese into a sauce like this, but I listened and threw in the correct amount.

After all, Grandpa was the mix master.

Chef Gaby rating on a scale of 0-Mexican Casserole: Spaghetti Sauce!!! She loved it so much, it has now out-ranked Mexican Casserole, so we’ll be using that scale from now on. Cyrus and Camila (Gaby’s sister) all loved this. There were no leftovers.

Up next week: Crunchy Hot Chicken Salad (hint: it’s not a salad at all)

Buzzy’s Swingin’ Spaghetti Sauce

1 stick of butter

1 cup chopped celery

1 cup chopped onions

1 cup chopped green pepper (I used a whole poblano)

1 red pepper pod

5 garlic cloves

4 tablespoons olive oil

salt/pepper to taste

1 can tomato sauce or puree (I used a small can of tomato paste and two tomatoes from the garden)

1 quart of home-canned tomato juice (you can buy it if you have to)

2 tablespoons of parmesan cheese (plus a lot more for serving!)

1 pound ground beef

1 pound of spaghetti

Melt the butter in a large pot and cook the celery, onions, green pepper, hot pepper, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and garlic until they’re nice and brown. Be careful not to burn the butter or the veggies! Meanwhile, cook your ground beef, adding salt and pepper to taste.

Add the tomato sauce (or paste or puree), tomato juice, olive oil, and parmesan cheese to the large pot. Add the hamburger and all of the grease, too. Simmer on low for about an hour or until thick and delicious.

Cook a pound of spaghetti, and use as much sauce as you want.

I promise it’s like music for your mouth.