Joy, From Scratch Tullia Barbanti’S Tomato Sauce Did More Than Make A Few Dollars - It Brought Happiness

Tullia Barbanti’s fountain of youth is a vat of spaghetti sauce.

But instead of keeping her secret to herself, she’s bottling and selling the tomato-based potion for a handsome profit that has little to do with money.

“This is not money-making, it’s joy-making,” said the 60-something retiree who guards the year of her birth as carefully as the secret to her famous sauce. “When people say they like it, something happens inside.”

Sauce is the lifeblood of Barbanti’s Italian roots. She’s made many pots of boiling tomatoes and spices in her time. But, it wasn’t until eight years ago, as she was nearing retirement at Sacajawea Middle School, that Barbanti realized sauce could keep her young.

At the time, the petite fireball made sauce to celebrate her heritage. Then when her husband died in 1995, she made sauce to ease the loneliness.

Today, her all-natural, all-Tullia sauce is in grocery stores throughout the Northwest. More than a business venture, her “Al Dente” sauce has brought a sense of purpose to a woman who has never tolerated the notion of giving up.

“When you do something you want to do, it just comes,” Barbanti said of success. “It’s satisfying. That’s the most important thing.”

Barbanti believes a satisfied soul is the key to a good, long life.

Through the years, she has found satisfaction as a wife, mother and teacher. Now, with her children grown and her husband gone, she is building a new life around the people who buy her sauce.

“They keep me young.”

Growing up in the Pesaro-Urbino town of Fossombrone on Italy’s Adriatic coast, Barbanti learned the craft and value of cooking from her mother. But as a young adult and a budding teacher, the small town had little to offer Barbanti and her beloved husband, Terredo.

In 1958, the couple boarded a ship for America, armed with two suitcases and big dreams. The first few years in Spokane, where they came to join cousins, were marked by language barriers and exhausting work.

“For six years I cried most of the time,” Barbanti remembers. “I just didn’t know what was going on.

“I never said anything to my husband because I didn’t want to be a failure,” she said. “That would have been the worst thing, to fail.”

She learned English and took citizenship classes. Terredo was a sanitation supervisor for Wonder Bread.

Then, Gonzaga University’s foreign language department offered her a job and Barbanti put her Italian, French, Spanish and Latin language skills to work.

“I felt I was home again,” she said.

Eventually, life in a new country got easier, but it never slowed down. In 1968, Barbanti earned her Washington state teaching certificate and became a mainstay at Sacajawea, teaching foreign language and social studies. She retired last June.

She also has taught Italian in the evenings at Spokane Falls Community College for 21 years.

Barbanti began to shift from the classroom to the kitchen 10 years ago when she started writing a book of family recipes.

In 1991, “Al Dente” was published but the question of how to sell it remained. “I thought, `What am I going to do with the book?”’

She found her answer when the former Frederick & Nelson department store bought “Al Dente.” Barbanti conducted cooking demonstrations every weekend at the three Spokane stores. She felt famous.

“People kept asking me for the sauce,” she said. “One day I said `I’m going to try it.”’

In January 1992, Barbanti paid to send her sauce to the food analysis lab at Washington State University’s Department of Food Sciences and Human Nutrition. It was analyzed and approved as safe to sell.

That summer, she took her sauce to the Spokane MarketPlace on Division Street. She had her doubts, but the first week she sold 16 jars.

The next week, Barbanti made 32 jars and sold out. She began churning out batch after batch, making labels for the jars, finding out how expensive it is to run a business.

Like her age, Barbanti won’t reveal how much she earns from selling her sauce. She uses her school district pension and sale proceeds to pay her bills.

The MarketPlace, where Barbanti did most of her business, closed temporarily in 1994 before relocating, leaving her in a bind. Instead of closing up shop, she visited every supermarket in the city, sauce in hand.

Today, “Al Dente” is sold in every Spokane grocery store chain except Safeway. Barbanti chose the name “Al Dente,” which means “to the tooth” in Italian, because pasta is traditionally cooked a little on the chewy side.

She makes 150 jars of sauce once a week in an industrial kitchen she bought a few years ago on West Mansfield. Barbanti rarely misses weekend cooking demonstrations at local grocery stores.

“She has such a sparkle in her eye,” MarketPlace director Jackie Rappe said. “Vendors and customers go to her for advice.

“She adds a flavor to the market with her stories and her view on life. It’s unmatched.”

Barbanti has dozens of heart-warming tales about her sauce and the people she’s met. But, the most cherished is that of Bellevue resident Susan Williams.

Five years ago, Barbanti made a rare trip to Western Washington. Her day passing out pasta at Larry’s Grocery in Bellevue was a success. A few months later, she discovered one of the reasons why.

Williams, just another face in the crowd that day, called Barbanti in Spokane to place a sauce order and a friendship blossomed. The pair exchanged letters, photos and sauce. Barbanti slipped extra Italian biscotti cookies into Williams’ packages.

They finally met in early January when Barbanti returned to Seattle. “I would have never known such a woman without my sauce,” she said.

Such moments are what Barbanti calls simple joys.

That has been a motto and a must throughout her life, she insists, even in tough times.

“Nothing is easy. You have to start from scratch,” Barbanti said. “I am happy. Now, I’m looking only to continue.”

This sidebar appeared with the story: AT A GLANCE Her rules for living 1. Eat everything on your plate. 2. Take every opportunity given to you. 3. Respect your elders. 4. If life is getting you down, change it. 5. Success is finding the joy in everything.