Diana Baldrica

Affare Di Famiglia

Growing up in the Central Valley of California in an Italian American family of farmers I remember eating was always a social occasion at my grandparent's house. It was an unspoken rule that three meals a day should be enjoyed with family and friends. Fast food was sacrilegious. Recently I have photographed the ritual around the tomato that has been around for three generations in my family. I like the idea that seasons determine your diet and you must prepare and plan for those months that certain delicacies are not fresh.

Aunt Chris hangs the laundry while the tomato sauce cooks on the stove. The garden soaks up the sun in the background.

Each season the tomato seeds are planted.

Seeds from the best tomatoes are saved for the next year.

Family comes together to learn the way my grandmother made sauce.

They are picked washed and sliced before cooking.

The vintage 7 up bottles my grandmother used are still used by my aunts to bottle the tomato sauce.

The brilliant green hues of the old 7 up bottles are dazzling.

This is all that exists of a handwritten recipe written by my aunt. My grandmother never wrote anything down. It was in her head.

A beautiful plump Pritchard tomato ripens on the vine.

Tomatoes with the fewest seeds are used to collect seeds for future use.

Uncle John walks through the rows of Richard tomatoes checking the progress of the tomatoes.

Eryn pauses to look at the mail box that still bears my grandfather's name.

by Diana Baldrica

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Diana Baldrica

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Photographs by Diana Baldrica

Affare Di Famiglia

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