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Learn how to preserve your family’s food history
Family food traditions are as embedded in family trees as our genetic code.
Don’t believe me? Thanksgiving might seem like an eternity from now, but imagine your family’s Thanksgiving dinner with roasted parsnips instead of mashed potatoes, Brussels sprout salad instead of green bean casserole, a grilled pork tenderloin instead of turkey and cookies instead of pie. Think you could pull that off without protests from nearly everyone at the table?
Holiday food rituals are the biggies, but the everyday traditions — moosebread, applesauce muffins, Mexican casserole and chicken and dumplings are just a few examples in my family — are just as rich with meaning.
Dawn Orsak, culinary guru and past executive director of the Hill Country Wine and Food Festival, is getting ready to teach a two week informal class at the University of Texas about capturing family history through food.
The Recipes for Family History class costs $38 ($44 for non-residents — people who are not faculty, students or staff; members of Texas Exes, Wildflower Center or the Littlefield Society, or 65 or older) and will take place from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. on April 14 and 21 at UT. Register online or by calling 232-5277 (class ID number is 7630.601).
For Christmas presents a few years back, my mom collected family recipes in a three-ring binder to create a cookbook that is as rich in memories as it kooky dishes like Trees and Raisins and Champagne Salad. She included at least one recipe connected to each of us, and she shared a story to go with each one of them: My grandmother’s coffeecake and chicken noodles, my mom’s turkey manicotti and my dad’s gumbo.
I look forward to putting something like this together for my family members, but I’m also really looking forward to Dawn’s class to learn some other ways to capture my family’s unique past through the food traditions it has passed down from generation to generation.
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By Marisa Boesiger
June 21, 2011 8:41 PM | Link to this
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