Tia Levings's Trad Wife Red Sauce Recipe
And the secret to bringing family together during complicated times
Dear readers,
I’m going to do that thing where a recipe writer shares a story before the recipe. Forgive me? The story feels more important than any sauce. Also, my apologies if paid subscribers received a portion of this post yesterday. I think Substack sent a version instead of updating my draft.
Much love and happy-all-the-days,
Tia
When my family—the big one—assembles, the women cook, and the men clean up. The women—my mom, sister, daughter, daughter-in-law, and myself each take a night.
The new daughters-in-law, one a new mother and the other new to the family aren’t in the rotation yet, and neither are my nieces, although they take over more of the baking every year. One of my nieces can throw pizza dough while raising one leg and talking. She’s amazing. My other niece specializes in chocolate.
My sister and mom do the detailed planning because we assemble in their neck of the woods—a southern city like a world unto itself, with ever-changing traffic patterns and social mores I stumble over. I watch them review lists they made weeks ago, carefully considering everyone’s taste and dietary needs. “He won’t eat fruit,” “We need to know what little man likes to snack on,” and “We need two trays of that mac and cheese because it’s always a crowd pleaser with the boys.” The level of detail is tender for me—when I was younger and absorbed in domesticity, I was good with the lists, but now they overwhelm me. The level of their consideration goes well beyond who eats what and why.
Meal planning for 23 is not our biggest challenge.
We are a politically blended family attempting to navigate the same tensions many of you face. One of us is in a high-profile position as an anti-fundamentalist author who spotlights the abuses of Christian Fundamentalism, and several others still attend a church within the denomination I most frequently expose.
Some of us openly pray, while others are private, atheist, or agnostic.
Some voted red and others blue.
Some of us state our convictions boldly; others prefer to go with the flow and rely on the “let them theory.”
Holiday get-togethers can be challenging, but we’re also devoted to them. We love each other, and somehow, as daunting as you know it is, we prioritize “consider one another” overall.
We’ve had our moments.
There was the time we agreed Fox News had to be turned off. I shared the irony that the Fox family themselves have a Fox News problem, a moment within a moment.
And the time my sister and I got a head start on Festivus, which is not a holiday we ordinarily observe, but we had some grievances to air, and our celebration required a four-hour coffee date to iron it all out. We were successful and better off for it.
Our moments steer through floes of different perspectives on generational language, attitudes, marriage, backgrounds, goals, and fears. I’ve been half-joking about our “family tism” because we're all neurodiverse in various ways, and also kind of the same way. There are a few nascent and active grudges that I’m worried about, as well as all the travel as they go “over the river and through the woods” to grandmother’s house. I mean to say, I don’t think our family is much different than yours.
My contribution as far as the meals go is the wild card sous chef and “the Sauce.”
I haven’t made it since before my second divorce, probably in 2021. Not only has the big family not been completely together since then (the sauce feeds a crowd,) but I also had to unpack a loaded trigger with the recipe. You see, The Sauce was the last vestige of my Trad wife years.
Long after the heavy cooking for a large family was needed, I used kitchen skills to “make things better” with my very traditional, patriarchal second husband when he was cross with me. “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” was always true with him, and when he met me, I was in the kitchen often.
I resented that.
I resented the idea that I could repair marital strain by being good in the kitchen, so for a long time, I refused to cook. I also resisted being valued for my service in the kitchen.
We had a dance that wasn’t about “consider me.” It was about “reassure me you’ll never change.”
The steps go: grow, grow, grow, arms up! Change. Then, fear your partner: stomp your feet. Sashay, sashay, anxiiiiiiiiiety. Fight a little. Now, some more. Stalemate, stalemate, one-two-three. Want to stop walking in circles?
Make the sauce.
“I love it so much when you make this,” he’d say. “That woman really knows how to cook!” He’d smile and wrap his arms around my aproned body and breathe he loved me in my ear. Tomorrow, he’d carefully label ziplock bags with a black sharpie with “Tia’s Red Sauce” and the date for the freezer to remember me by when I was too long working, back in step with grow, grow, grow…
The sauce was loaded, so I had to step away for a while. I needed to remember that my value didn’t depend on what I did in the kitchen and that healthy relationships allow each partner to grow. Healthy people grow and change, and two strong individuals make a stronger, healthier couple. This is my primary problem with complementarianism and top-down traditional power structures: they only thrive when one partner agrees to be weak, to be valued for what she does rather than for who she is.
If someone’s internal sense of safety requires you never to grow or change, they’ll project their insecurity through high control. This is true of religious and political systems as much as one-on-one relationships. Fluidity, flexibility, and consideration of one another’s needs are the only ways I’ve found to remain in harmony with others. This is another way I grow.
Today, I’m surrounded by people I love who are patient with my fragility, respectful of my strength, and flexible with the demands of my work. As a result, I feel calmer, and the effort I’ve made to protect my nervous system, regulate my emotions, and address my old wounds has resulted in more bandwidth to, in return, consider them too.
My children say they sometimes miss what I make in the kitchen—the waffles, holiday cookies, and thick, simmering roasts—but we’re returning to it now. Their sentiment for Mom’s cooking is far from dependent on it. Enough time has passed for me to look back fondly on something I loved—cooking for a big, boisterous family, feeding them good food, and contributing meaningfully to the shared workload—without the emotional baggage or value statements.
The Sauce is great. It’s a bolognese, probably not completely authentic, and it gets better the next day. For years it was the large batch that became many meals, and it’s perfect for a large gathering. I have a family reputation for messy measuring, and the amounts are approximate. I’ve been tweaking it since 2005, and it’s outlasted two husbands, an ex-communication, trauma recovery, the years of four teenagers, numerous family get-togethers, and, hopefully, soon, Fox News.
Tia’s Red Sauce
Ingredients listed in order
Enough glugs of olive oil to coat the bottom of a large soup pot
1 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped celery
2 heaping Tablespoons of minced garlic
1 cup chopped carrot
2 lbs ground beef
1/2 lb (or more) ground Italian sausage
1 quart beef stock (might need more later)
1/2 cup or so red or white wine
12 ounce can of tomato paste (or two 6 ounce cans)
A large can of San Marzano whole tomatoes
A whole tall jar of pitted kalamata olives, half drained of water
salt and pepper (pretty generous but seasoned throughout)
1/4 t. cinnamon
1/4 t. nutmeg
handful of fresh parsley
about a 1/2 t. of brown sugar
about 1/4 t of crushed red pepper (or to taste)
about 3/4 c half and half or cream
fettuccini and SHAVED parmesan (for serving)
Instructions:
Sweat the veggies and then add the meat. Stir until cooked. Add everything except the cream. Low boil, long simmer uncovered for at least 3 hours (I often do it for 6 and sometimes use the crock pot). Stir frequently and scrape the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon to incorporate any chunks forming. The tomatoes and veggies will break down. Add more stock if it gets too thick. Sometimes I cook it with parmesan rinds too; that’s good. I also sometimes throw in handfuls of spinach.
Season for more as you go. Careful not to make it too salty if you salt your pasta water (I do.) Add the cream very slowly, stirring well in between each small drizzle about a half hour before serving. I also love it on egg noodles and “Carbonata” pasta, which is low-carb and high-protein.
GLAZE YOUR NOODLES BEFORE SERVING: this means you’ll take a few ladles of sauce and toss your cooked pasta so that they’re coated with a light layer of sauce before you disperse into serving bowls. THEN ladle the sauce over and add generous amounts of parmesan.
I always pair with red wine, and usually Pinot Noir because I love it with the fruity olives in the sauce. But a big Cab is good too.
May your season be full of peace and loving consideration. Stay foxy, not fundie, friends!
Buy A Well-Trained Wife
More on trad wives and fundamentalism:
What its Really Like to be a Trad Wife
I Would Have Been a Trad Wife Influencer
The Chronic Fatigue of Trad Wife Life
I can smell it from here. Your story before the sauce also reminded me of the 8-year relationship with a man 20 years older than me before I married my second husband. I wish I had the insight I do now to understand the dynamics, his insecurity, and his need to control me.
You won me over with “enough glugs to coat”
That’s my kind of recipe!