Food & Nutrition Column

Mary Ann Lienhart Cross

County Extension Director

Extension Educator – Health and Human Sciences

574-533 0554, lienhart@purdue.edu

For Release: December 3, 2012

Recipes and Traditions

The holidays would not be the same without our families and traditions. Some traditions may be preparing special foods, decorating, church and community services, music, lights, family gatherings, and shopping. Christmas, Hanukkah, and other special holidays have more traditions than most holidays. Many of these family traditions are centered on special foods. Some traditions your family practices may have come from foreign countries, while others are created within your family.

Let’s think about all the foods that are special to you and your family this time of the year. My list begins with good fruitcake, followed by cheese ball, eggnog, cranberry glog, cranberry salad, Christmas cookies, chocolate candies, rum balls, peppermint ice cream and more. I am sure many of you also have special family traditional foods. My heritage is Belgian which includes Belgian honey cake. My favorite cookie is a special honey cookie that my mother made for over fifty years, and yes, the dough is really good. My father made smoked turkey breast. For the Cross family, it is date bar cookies, date pudding, and cranberry salad. And for my family, it is cheese ball and cheese spreads.

You may go home for the holidays or family members may come home, and the question most often asked is, “What do you want to eat?” For many of you that sense of food with the holidays is just as important as going home. It could be a certain aroma or the memories of a special recipe whether preparing it or sharing it. All of these bring back links to a time past and sometimes a flood of emotions.

Some of your family holiday recipes have been passed down through many generations. These recipes were prepared for years without being written down. Many family recipes are too easily lost, so learn them and preserve them now! When you have a family recipe, you are working with a piece of the past, remaking it, and connecting with times gone by. Most of us have a cooking link to the past, especially during the holidays.

Many families have family recipe books that are over one hundred years old. These recipe books sometimes carry a lot of family history along with recipes. There is something very special about baking or preparing a recipe you used to make with a family member. You can often picture the experience of the past, as well as smell the aroma. Family recipes are made year round and often you visit memories of the person who shared them with you.

Something special you could do this year after a family meal is to make copies of shared recipes. A couple of old fashioned ways are to have family members copy them on special recipe cards or write them in pretty, bound books. In working with the bound book, you could start your own family cookbook. The modern way would be to work with the computer and share copies of the recipes. The best way to learn and share recipes is in the kitchen, elbow to elbow, actually preparing the food and washing the dishes. What's wonderful about the kitchen are the great stories that get told during the recipe preparation. In fact, these oral history stories should be included along with the recipes.

I really encourage you to do something with family recipes. Here are some hints to help you get started now. Begin with recipes you love and remember, convert the recipes to measuring tools like spoons and cups. You may want to make notes about the comments the cook makes using their senses, an example would be the color, feel or aroma. When you’re making toffee it is the color of peanut butter, the feel of dough is that it is soft and not sticky or too firm. Some other hints would be: plan the time to do this! Please don’t trust your memory, make notes about brands, and most of all, do this recipe gathering now before it’s too late! ###

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