If you’re Italian, you might have a habit of showing people you love them by cooking for them. One of the first recipes that I learned to create was my grandma’s lasagna. Stacked high with layers of ricotta, cheeses, sauce, and pasta, it is a dish that not only fills up my stomach, but fills me with warm, happy memories and feelings. Now that I have a family of my own, I feel those same warm feelings while making them lasagna.

Okay so this is actually my great-grandma’s lasagna and my grandma wasn’t Italian at all. When my grandma, Louise, was younger, she moved up from southern Indiana to Chicago, where she met and married my Italian grandpa, Joe. They lived in a flat in a building shared with my great-grandparents and other relatives. While living there, my great-grandma taught my grandma how to make traditional Italian dishes. My grandma taught my mom. Who taught me. A recipe spanning 4 generations and possibly more.