Volume 15: Signs & Symptoms of Homesickness

And a recipe for vegan lasagna

The summer I graduated from college I drove my parents car south to Charlottesville to gather my things, close up my apartment, close the chapter. I had never made the drive alone before. But as I left from Boston at dusk, after a long day of work, which makes me sound like my father when I say it out loud, and made the nine hour drive, I felt something shift, the comings-on of self-reliance like the early symptoms of illness. Freedom and fear sit the same in our stomachs. What I mistook for the former then, I have come to realize was actually the early onsets of homesickness.

I was homesick when I woke up on a Thursday craving my mother’s lasagna and realized I’d forgotten the recipe. My mother’s language of love is lasagna. She would make it for my father–his favorite meal–for his birthday or for the Jewish New Year or after a long week of work. She makes it for neighbors and for friends in winter, after their dogs died or their kids move away to college. And that one semester at UVA when all my friends were depressed, she sent me the recipe from Boston so I could make it for them, speak her language for a day. I went back through our texts to find it and what I was surprised to discover was that most of our conversations are predicated on the exchange of recipes. I once thought my mother and I didn’t know how to communicate but I think I was wrong. I guess this is what they mean by mother tongue. I don’t speak the same way with anyone else.

I was homesick when I fell asleep on a bed of sweaters that once belonged to my grandmother and I realized that they no longer smelled like her. They had lost the scent of must and baby powder but had been drowned in commercial perfumes and the city where I now live.

I was homesick when I cut myself the other day while cooking and my blood ran red and tasted of something small like pennies. I wish my blood was made of apple cider like it was when I was in college and that was all we drank at parties and at dinners and on the first afternoon in fall. Hard, crisp, sweet cider made at the local mountain on the edge of Charlottesville, from whose peak you could see the whole town. I haven’t had a cider like it since but I made some on Friday but it was hot and spiked with whiskey and seasoned with cinnamon and reminded me how much space existed between here and there.

I was homesick when I was standing in my kitchen crying after one or more too many glasses of wine at Smør. They had hosted a pop-up late on a Sunday, casual, cozy, well executed. These are the things for which they have an innate flair. Serving natural wine and Danish hot dogs, they attracted a mix of familiar faces, people in the industry, strangers who had been drawn into its warmth just as I had been over a year ago. Everything about it was devastating. Walking in was like drowning in a sea of wool. It was comfortable and familiar, its vague itchiness reminding me that this was not a space I was meant to linger. 

I was homesick when I thought about leaving New York. I thought maybe I’d go to Europe, start over there, work on a farm or in a café. And I imagined someone else living this life. Someone else sleeping in my bed and waking up to drink tea in my kitchen and cooking dinner for my roommates and my friends and sitting at the counter at the coffee shop where I go most mornings and waking up one day to realize it’s fall and the leaves had changed colors just like I hoped they would. 

people sitting in warm light, New York, fall 2023

“The first place you live alone, away from your family, is the first place you become a person, the first place you become yourself.¹”  I believe this to be true but I can’t seem to pinpoint a single moment, nor a single place, whose imprint was uniquely formative. Perhaps this is because becoming is a process similar to the process of creating a home. It’s slow and arduous and happens mostly in ways that are small like cooking dinner or lighting a candle or taking a bath until one day you wake up and realize nothing has ever felt better. Always in fall I miss the places I have called home, their smells and tastes and the arrival of colder weather. Whatever I do now, I do in the shadows of these places. The following is my own recipe for lasagna, inspired by mother’s, but made of my own accord.

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Vegan Lasagna with Mushroom “Ricotta”

Ingredients

1 pkg lasagna noodles of choice, prepared according to package directions²

6oz (about 1-1/2 heaping cups) mixed mushrooms, roughly chopped

1 clove minced garlic

1 shallot, finely diced

1/2 yellow onion, finely diced

2 tbsp olive oil

1/3 cup dry white wine

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

1 tsp dried rosemary

1 tsp dried parsley

Juice from 1/2 lemon

1/3 cup vegetable broth

7oz (1/2 14oz package) firm or extra firm tofu, pressed to remove excess liquid

Salt, pepper, and red chili flakes to taste

1-32oz jar marinara sauce of choice³

1 lb mixed summer squash, thinly sliced—I use one large zucchini and one large yellow squash

Vegan parmesan of choice, I use Follow Your Heart Shredded Parm (optional but recommend)

Preparation

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Prepare lasagna sheets as instructed.

2. Meanwhile, in a sautée pan, heat your olive oil over medium. Add your onions, shallots, and garlic. Cook until soft, about 3-5 minutes and add your mushrooms. Continue cooking until your mushrooms have softened and shrunk about 25%, stirring occasionally so they don’t stick to the bottom of the pan.

3. Once your mushrooms have wilted slightly, turn the heat up to medium high and add in your wine and vinegar and cook until all the liquid has reduced and evaporated. Season with dried herbs, salt and pepper to taste.

4. Prepare your tofu. Press between paper towels or a cloth until most of the liquid is removed. Add to a blender and top with 1/2 of your mushroom mixture, vegetable broth, lemon juice and chili flakes. Blend on high until smooth. This will serve as the cream layer of your lasagna.

5. Pour tofu mixture over the remaining 1/2 of the mushroom mixture and fold until the mushrooms are evenly distributed throughout. Season with salt, pepper and chili flakes. Set aside.

6. Slice squash evenly and set aside.

7. Begin layering your lasagna. Spread an even layer of red sauce at the base of a 7 x 11 oven proof baking dish. Layer with pasta, then your tofu cream sauce, sliced squash and red sauce. Repeat. Finish your lasagna with a layer of pasta topped with red sauce and sprinkled evenly with a layer of vegan parm.

8. Bake at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes until the pasta and squash has cooked all the way through and the edges are crispy. Serve hot and garnish with fresh parsley or more cheese!

1. Ling Ma, Severance

2. My mother would instruct you here to buy Barilla’s no-boil sheets to save yourself time and dishes, I used Wegman’s classic sheets which fit in my 7x11 Pyrex perfectly

3. Here my mother would recommend you make your own, using the recipe from the North End Italian Cookbook, which she let’s stew for twice the instructed length of time