More on Nana’s Meatball Story: The Long Story by Jan Richer – The Advocate

Jumping headfirst into a story is easy.

For me, the opportunity to talk to interesting people is not work. However, the news business is a never-ending cycle with many deadlines. Unfortunately, I have limited time for each story.

Sometimes, though, a story grabs me on a different level.

The story with Nana’s meatballs was like that.

Nana, also known as Rita Krifasi, is a 97-year-old mother and storyteller. She has traveled (she did ride a camel in Egypt) but has lived in Baton Rouge all her life.

Even after I talked to DeEtte Montalbano (Nana’s daughter) about the meatball recipe, she emailed me.

Even after I made the meatballs.

Even after I made Nana’s sauce (aka red sauce).

Even after I wrote the meatball story.

I still felt like there was more.

When Montalbano called to see if I would stop by to see her mother, I explained that I didn’t have time.

Still, something was pulling me to leave. How often does one get to chat with a fully cognizant 97-year-old woman who loves to cook? When I learned they were less than 10 minutes apart, I thought, “Why not?”

“I can only stay 15 minutes,” I told Montalbano.

I didn’t stay only 15 minutes.

Krifasi had too much to tell. It started with Italian sausage.

“You get your connections at Calandro’s on Government Street in Baton Rouge. They make the best Italian sausages there,” she said. “Fry them in the broiler. Never put raw meat in your sauces. Fry them on both sides and drop them into the sauce just before adding the meatballs. Let the Italian sausage have time to cook and discard the flavor.”

She said even pork chops will do, but most importantly, in Crifasi’s 97-year-old perspective, adding pork to the sauce is essential.

From there she told me about her grandparents, all of whom made their way to or lived in Louisiana.

“All of my Italian grandmother’s children, except the oldest, were born in the States. The biggest was born in Sicily,” she said. “My French grandparents were born in New Roads. Their parents are from Bordeaux.”

Her Italian grandmother was Annie Brocato.

“My grandmother, bless her heart, had her big iron pot of gravy every Sunday,” she said. “Her children came and visited on Sundays, but at their pleasure—their time of day. She always wanted to eat. He was eating a pasta dish. She had chicken and gravy and roast pork and she snorted.”

She explained that her mother learned to make Italian dishes from her mother-in-law.

“And as it goes, you always want to do something a little bit better than your in-laws are doing,” Krifassi said. “Mom started with grandma’s recipes. Then she said, “I can do that a little better.”

Krifasi looked at me in a way that let me know we were talking about a lot more than her mother learning to cook.

She told me that one of her daughters, Montalbano or Renee Crowell, who lives a block away, has her grandmother’s large iron pot.

Krifasi was born on April 19, 1927. We talked about Jimmy Carter, who died at the age of 100. I mentioned that Carter, who was less than three years older than Crifassi, was alive more than 40% of the time in the United States of America was a country.

As is Crifasi.

“God has blessed me in so many ways,” she said. “He gave me a wonderful husband – one of the best men ever made – and two wonderful daughters.”

She told me about meeting her husband. She was in nursing school at Our Lady of the Lake. He was a dentist, just home from WWII and 13 years her senior.

“We only met after he got out of the service. He was released about a month or two ago. We met and went out on a Saturday night at the end of January,” she said. “He wanted us to get married in April.”

“Did you get married in April?” I asked.

“I said, ‘I’m an only child. My mom can’t arrange a wedding this soon, but we’re going to ask.’ Because I knew he was my soulmate,” she said. “I mean, back then, you know, you hardly kissed your boyfriend goodnight.”

“Did you kiss him goodnight?” I asked.

“Not until the third date,” she said. “And then, you know, it was a sweet kiss—not a sexy kiss. Because I knew my dad was right by the porch window.”

They were married in November 1946. and moved into his old family home on the corner of 21st and Northern avenues.

“We painted it. My mother was a seamstress,” Krifalsi said. “She made the curtains for the windows and we had such a happy marriage.”

From there she shared her artichoke recipe with me and insisted I see her stove. Not knowing what kind of stove a 97-year-old woman would like to see, I got curious.

It turns out to be a 77-year-old Chambers stove that she and her husband bought shortly after they got married. He’s been using it ever since. When she and her family built her apartment attached to her daughter’s home, they brought the stove with them, repaired it and brought it up to code.

She still has the pot of rice that fits in the background.

This stove is a thing of beauty.

She too.

I asked if I could take her picture and she said yes.

When I showed her the picture, she held my phone and said, “Rita, what happened to you?”

“Time,” I said. “The time happened.”

She immediately instructed her daughter to show me her portrait and the picture on her bedside table in the next room.

Montalbano obeyed his mother with a smile, as he has done for 72 years.

Yes, there was more to this story than meatballs.