Cooking History: Celebrating the Food of Our Family

Today was a day off for me, so I spent some time getting some things done that I had been intending to do for a while now.

I roasted a pie pumpkin in the oven, with the intent of mashing it down and freezing it for our Thanksgiving pumpkin pies.

I also made some veggie scrap broth, which is currently simmering on my stove.

I also cut some older bread that had been made two days ago by my husband into cubes to make some dressing for a meal in the coming weeks.  The crumbs were also saved and will go into our breadcrumb container for meatloaf and other breadcrumb needs.

I do some of these things out of necessity - the bread is homemade, made with whole wheat flour, and has no salt due to my husband's dietary restrictions, as well as the veggie scrap stock since it also is better than the salt-laden broths from the store.  But I also do these things to keep a connection with my past.

My mother's grandparents and some of their descendants eating outdoors, c. 1930s

My mother's mother was a caterer.  She taught my mother how to cook from a very young age.  My mom did the same for me and my siblings.  All of us were helping her from the time we could lift spoons, and by high school I was able to help her in the kitchen by cooking meals while she worked nights.  Because of her mother's catering, my mom knew what could be substituted in cooking should someone run out, and she taught me how to make things from scratch the way she learned, which is why I prefer to roast my own pie pumpkins and mash them versus using canned pumpkin, although my shortcuts in the kitchen involve using my food processor to do the actual mashing versus doing it by hand as it was done in past generations. 

After my parents got married nearly forty years ago, my father's mother gifted my mom handwritten recipes of the foods my dad liked so Mom could make them for him.  Some were deemed "not the way Mom made them,"  but others still live on to this day... and I make them now as well for my husband and I.  When she was alive, my gram loved it when I messaged her via email to tell her I made her No-Peek Chicken (or Pork chops) and that my own dear husband loved the recipe.

My Gram and I at Thanksgiving dinner, 2005

Food is very much a part of history in any family...... When I ask for memories of family and get no response, I ask people to tell me what kind of food they had at family gatherings.  Memories seem to flow when people think about food.  My maternal great-grandmother was known for boiled chicken, which some of her grandchildren remembered fondly while others remembered with horror.  My great-great-grandmother had raised a hog every spring and butchered it in the fall.... so that the Alsatian tradition of having pork and sauerkraut on New Year's Day to bring luck to the new year could be celebrated.  My paternal great-great-grandaunt loved carrots, so much so that she put them in EVERYTHING, or so I have been told.... in soups and roasts, in mashed potatoes, even in lime jello.

My dad's grandparents and family gathered for a meal, c. early 1960s

It is these stories that make my family history come alive.  Since so much of family gatherings, indeed human culture, is spent around the table, it is natural that I have this connection to past generations each time I make a traditional meal for a celebration or make my grandmother's cucumber salad or even bake a loaf of bread.  I remember the stories that have passed down from my ancestors at the holidays as I celebrate their cultures in the foods that I choose to eat, from the Sauerbraten at Christmas to the turkey with homemade dressing at Thanksgiving to even the corned beef (rinsed really well and soaked to leech out the salt) at Saint Patrick's.  And yes, it is still traditional in this house to eat Pork roast and sauerkraut at New Year's to bring good luck