Buttons and Bows — The Food We Make When Words Run Out

The week after. The week after a death is its own country, a place with its own rules and its own language, where time moves differently and ordinary things feel weightless and certain things feel impossibly heavy. Patty is holding. She is holding the way Patty holds things that are enormous, which is by doing: she made a phone call, she organized the food, she sat with Steve, she sat with Dziadek Wally who is ninety-three and has lost his wife of sixty-eight years and is, for the first time in my memory, at a loss.

Matt drove up from Springfield on Tuesday and stayed through the weekend. Kristin flew in from New York. The family gathered around the kitchen table in the way families gather when something is gone, filling the space with presence and food and the particular conversation that happens when people are trying to keep each other warm. Ryan held my hand under the table most of those evenings. He did not try to fix it. He was just there.

People brought food. This is what people do. They brought casseroles and pies and platters of cut fruit and a baked ziti from the neighbors that was excellent. We ate other people's cooking for a week, which is its own kind of grace, because cooking for yourself when you are grieving requires a kind of effort that is sometimes not available, and being fed by others is a way of being told: you are not alone in this, we are here, eat something.

I cooked one thing. On Friday I made mushroom soup — the one I always make on September 14th, the one I make for grief — because I needed to stand at a stove and tend to something, because the motion of cooking is a way of being in the body when the body does not know where to be. I made it and I ate it and Patty had a bowl and we sat at the kitchen table in the quiet of the house and did not say very much and it was the right thing.

Mushroom soup was what I needed on Friday — something I could tend and stir and be present for — but as the weekend wore on and the family kept gathering at that kitchen table, I found myself thinking about the simpler things, the Polish-American dishes that have always meant we are here together in this family. Buttons and Bows is one of those. It’s the kind of food that doesn’t require explanation, that asks nothing of anyone, that you can set on the table and let people serve themselves while the conversation drifts and pauses and drifts again. Dziadek Wally grew up eating dishes like this. So did Patty. So did I.

Buttons and Bows

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 35 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

• 8 oz bowtie (farfalle) pasta
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced
• 3 cups green cabbage, thinly shredded
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds (optional)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt, plus more for pasta water
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley, for serving

Instructions

1. Cook the pasta. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook bowtie pasta according to package directions until al dente. Reserve 1/2 cup pasta water, then drain and set aside.
2. Caramelize the onion. In a large skillet over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the sliced onion and cook, stirring occasionally, for 10–12 minutes until softened and golden at the edges.
3. Add the cabbage. Add the shredded cabbage to the skillet and stir to combine with the onion. Cook for 8–10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the cabbage is tender and beginning to caramelize. Add the garlic and caraway seeds (if using) and cook for 1 minute more.
4. Season. Sprinkle in the salt, black pepper, and smoked paprika. Stir to coat the vegetables evenly.
5. Combine. Add the drained pasta to the skillet. Toss everything together over medium-low heat, adding reserved pasta water a splash at a time if the mixture seems dry.
6. Finish with sour cream. Remove from heat and stir in the sour cream until everything is coated in a light, creamy sauce. Taste and adjust salt and pepper as needed.
7. Serve. Transfer to a serving bowl or directly to the table in the skillet. Top with fresh parsley. Serve warm.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 295 | Protein: 8g | Fat: 12g | Carbs: 38g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 230mg