This year I attended both a Passover Seder and an Easter dinner. The Seder was exquisitely cooked and the Easter dinner was pretty awful, as far as the food. Company was lovely at both events and I am grateful to my hosts for inviting me. One dinner was more delicious than the other, but the food was just as appreciated and liked at both. I told my daughter that there are some really bad cooks around and I started thinking about our cultural differences. She said it wasn't just culture, it is a particular family's particular culture.
My Jewish friend owns a catering company. Some of the foods were familiar to me from my childhood, but done so much better. My Christian friend's dinner was a committee affair. I made some little salmon cakes and sour cream dill sauce because I've never cared much for ham. There was a ham, and pork chops so tough I could have tied them on with string and used them for sandals. Store rolls, (no Clara buns for this family!) and one of the aunties made her famous, secret recipe banana cream pie. Save room for pie I was warned.
I was sitting with two teenaged girls when pie was served. They were hoping that their aunt would give them the recipe if they ever got married. I took one bite and told them I knew the recipe. Roll out refrigerated sugar cookie dough, line pie pan and bake. Make instant vanilla pudding and slice bananas into it. Spoon over crust, top with Cool Whip, let set in the fridge and serve. I mentioned that it might be more delicious with real whipped cream, and one of the girls suggested an Oreo cookie crust. And that is how recipes grow and change and hopefully get better.
Yet, should the young lady make the tastier pie and serve it at Easter dinner, inevitably it will pale in comparison to the one her auntie made. Not because auntie's pie was better, but because it is enshrined in memory of time and place, of family and love. Those tastes are inviolate and we never want them to change.
Every Thanksgiving the magazines are full of new ways to cook turkey or potatoes or pumpkin pie. And every year we want the same. The cook might want a change but the guests usually look forward to what they are used to, be it sweet potato pie or green beans with almonds. I am sure my family could not imagine Thanksgiving without Clara's famous buns. I remember one year that my late father-in-law made a small turkey roast and a huge standing rib roast for Christmas dinner. Oh the disappointment of the grandchildren as he parsed out the turkey. They didn't want expensive beef, they wanted turkey on Christmas! It was ingrained in their little minds and they were not open to change.
My father always searched for the Halvah of his youth and my mother fondly remembered crullers from her neighborhood bakery when she was a little girl. Neither ever had any that were as good. I remember being a young wife coming home from a wonderful party with my husband. We stopped at a Baskin Robbins store and had coconut ice cream cones. They were indescribably good. A week or so later we went back and did it again. But it wasn't the same. We weren't the same. It was just coconut ice cream and nothing special.
When we feed each other, hopefully the taste and nutrition is of the highest quality. That is a plus, but most importantly love and caring and good wishes should go into the food. That way, even if the pork chops are tough as old leather, all our families taste is the love; good company, good food and sweet memories.
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