Yesterday I enjoyed a wonderful Easter lunch with my mother and a great Easter dinner with my aunts, uncles, cousins, and others. As I ate my way through the day, I made a few connections between the things that I was eating and some stories from my family history. I have written these connections down in my family history notebook, so that some day I can share this “slice of family history” with my son.
The first family history food story involves my mother’s meatballs and sauce. My mother served us meatballs and sauce for lunch. I knew that she made the sauce and the meatballs herself, but I had always thought that she had learned the recipe from her mother, my grandmother. Yesterday, as we munched on meatballs, I asked her when she had learned the recipe from my grandmother. It turns out that my grandmother was not the source of the sauce recipe – my mother had learned it from her aunt, my grandmother’s sister. Not only that, but my grandmother had not been too pleased that my mother learned it from her sister instead of from her. As I heard her recounting the details, I thought to myself “here it is – my family has its very own saucy scandal.” I also told my mother that since she had always made meatballs and sauce herself while I was young; I never buy premade meatballs at the store. I do buy sauce, because I have not learned the recipe yet, but I make my own meatballs. I don’t use a recipe or anything, but I enjoy making them myself because it reminds me of all of the wonderful cooking that my mother did for me. I want my family to remember my cooking just like I remember hers.
When we were at my aunt’s house, I was so happy to see that the Easter dinner had all of the favorite dishes that I have come to droolingly anticipate each year. There were two honey hams, my aunt Cheryl’s delicious potato and cheese casserole, a broccoli and cheese casserole, butternut squash, and a few other things. My seventeen-month-old son proved himself to be “one of the gang” as he devoured bits of everything that was on my plate, much to the delight of my relatives. He’s a good eater, just like the rest of us. When dessert was served, it was nice to see that my cousin had recreated a pistachio bundt cake that my grandmother used to make. While I had my hands full with an active toddler, I think that other people were taking lots of pictures so that we can all remember what a great time we had that day.
Did your family create any special Easter memories this year?
Photo by alvimann on morguefile.com.