Foodways and family - stray thoughts
Foodways link us with our younger selves. The create bridges across time and space.
This week I’m doing a bit of a clean out. My cupboard is a bit emptier. There’s no flour, no yeast. I’ve thrown out the very few things that were past their use by date and, if I have time, I’ll haul the last bits of food out and reline the shelves.
This is an annual event. I come from a kosher household, you see, and one big thing about kosher households is Passover. So this week my links with my childhood are through tidying my own kitchen a bit. I can’t leave it untouched, but I really don’t feel up to the megasort and clean much of the rest of my family does.
From Saturday night, the foodways bridge across time isn’t quite as alone. So many of us. A whole big family drifting in and out of each other’s presence. We eat fabulous dinners, and my mother’s macaroons and lots and lots of buts and dried fruit. My father used to threaten that we would turn into nuts. My stepfather has his own jokes.
What do these foodways do? They reinforce our family culture and remind us of where we belong. They keep recipes alive and make sure that even the relatives who don’t get on will talk once or twice a year. It’s a time to forge new communities and to reforge establishing ones. And the preparations are the time we rewrite those bridges in our mind and think about who we are and why these things are important to us. For some people they are and for some they aren’t. For some families they are and for some not.
This is the heart of cultural variation and finding our place in the world. Food counts.
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