My family invented pink lemonade—at least that’s how the story goes. My ancestors Jeremiah and Edmund Mabie founded the Mabie Brothers Circus in the early 1800’s. According to The American Circus, acrobat Pete Conklin was making lemonade one day in 1857, when he ran out of water. Searching around the lot, he grabbed a tub in which the equestrienne, Fannie Jamieson, had just washed her tights. Red dye colored the water. He used the water anyway, and pink lemonade was created. Conklin called it strawberry lemonade and sold it successfully for many years.
This is one version of the story, and it is probably true. True enough to be included in our family food history, anyway. The veracity of the story isn’t the important part—it’s the tradition that matters.
Every family has a
history—where they are from, what religion they observe, how many children they
have. Families also have a food
history—the story of what they eat from day to day, how they celebrate, and how
the memories are passed down. The
history isn’t just the method of how the food is prepared; there is also a lore
that goes with it.
Long ago, the memories of
food were important because they were a record of which plants were edible and
how they should be prepared. This
knowledge was passed down from parent to child as a sort of “oral”
history. Our grandmothers recorded
their recipes in the margins and blank pages of their cookbooks, on recipe
cards, and in the memories of their children.
Food memories, unlike other memories, are reproducible. You may not be able to reach back in time and bring back your first kitten or re-walk your first steps, but you can make some of the same dishes you ate when you were growing up. Did your mother bake bread? You can also bake warm, fragrant loaves that steam up the kitchen windows. Even if Mom wasn’t much of a cook, you can still learn to make your family’s traditional dishes.
Food is at the heart of a
family, in everyday meals and in holidays and celebrations. Keeping the traditions alive connects us to
our ancestors and future generations in a very real way. Your family’s recipes contain a certain
combination of elements that aren’t quite the same as any other family’s. You might think that there is nothing
extraordinary about the kind of foods you ate when you were growing up, but
there are tremendous differences in regional cuisine. Just compare guacamole with lutefisk, or King cake with Nanaimo
bars, and it becomes obvious.
Here’s how you can begin:
The first step in preserving
your family food history is to gather the family recipes. There are a number of ways to do this:
What are your favorite foods?
What foods did you cook for Thanksgiving and
other holidays?
Who taught you to cook?
How did you celebrate family
birthdays?
Questions can be tailored to
the individual. You could also pass the
journal along from one person to another until it’s full. The recipes and stories can then be shared,
and the journal becomes a family keepsake.
You can also interview relatives by phone, letter, email, or in person
to collect their recipes, memories and stories.
Once you have gathered the
recipes, you will want to share them with your family. There are advantages and disadvantages to
each of these methods:
The best solution may be to
use a combination of these methods. You
can put your recipe cards into ring-bound notebooks to keep them together, or
have your recipes in a family cookbook and on a website, too. Talk to your family and get their ideas
before deciding on one method or another.
Another way to keep your
food traditions alive is to actually cook your family favorites. Whether it is day-to-day food or holiday
fare, this is one of the most important things you can do to ensure that your
family learns about their food heritage.
Your holiday meals reflect
both your religious background and your ethnic heritage. For example, some members of my family make
a traditional Norwegian Julekake at Christmastime. They also prepare a “Happy Birthday Jesus” cake (with one candle
on it) to celebrate their religious beliefs in a personal way. Every family has its own unique combination
of ways to celebrate, and their food traditions are an important part of that
celebration.
My immediate family always
has waffles for Christmas Eve dinner.
Our mother was usually busy with last minute preparations on Christmas
Eve, so our father would make homemade waffles, our favorite “Dad” recipe. What started as a necessity has become a
tradition.
For Mother’s Day in most of
our family, the children make crepes with strawberries for breakfast in
bed. (And if you teach your kids how to
make crepes, you’ll be sure of having a good breakfast on Mother’s Day.)
Thanksgiving, of course, is
the big food holiday. It can also be a
challenge for newly married couples, especially if they are from different
backgrounds. Should you fix Grandma
Rita’s stuffing with cornbread and walnuts?
Or would it be sacrilege not to make the white-bread-and-onion stuffing
that your husband’s family has made for eighty-seven generations? Holiday traditions can be kept, adapted, or
eliminated—whatever works for you and your family. That’s how new traditions are started.
No matter what foods you
prepare for the holidays, teach your kids how to make them. They will not only pass them on to the next
generation, they may make the holidays easier for you by doing some of the
cooking!
Our lives are so fast paced
these days. It’s important that our
children’s food memories aren’t only of fast food. Cook with your children—teach them the family recipes, even if
you don’t think your recipes are anything special. Children love to cook, and they will usually be your willing
apprentices if you let them. There are
so many creative recipes to make with young children, such as pear bunnies or
bread-dough bears. When you cook with
your children, they will not only learn about kitchen safety and
food-preparation techniques, they will also learn your family history through
your stories.
You and your children can take pride in cooking, and you will enjoy eating what you’ve prepared. Family memories are built on things like this. When I was growing up we often had a “gourmet” night in which we’d prepare all sorts of new dishes. When things didn’t turn out the way we’d planned, that became part of the memory, too. (Seconds on seaweed soup, anyone?) My children still remember the time we made a “Middle Eastern Feast” with homemade pitas, hummus, tabouleh, falafel, tsatziki, and other dishes.
Teaching your children to
cook will also help them when they are on their own, and they will be able to
pass on the family recipes to their own children. Food traditions become part of our daily lives, and also part of
our celebrations, where the food is integral.
By cooking our ancestor’s foods, we get to know them better, and our
children’s children will remember and use their recipes. So, whether your ancestors are circus folk
or just plain folks, you can celebrate your heritage every day, with every meal
you prepare.
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