Tasty Traditions
Food can be a great way to incorporate family traditions even if your family has made new or different decisions about your December holiday celebrations than you had growing up. Food is also a great way to be creative, providing infinite opportunities to mix interesting flavors and cultural traditions. While it might seem difficult to mix and combine other rituals and traditions, food is one place that is ripe (pun intended) for the mixing!
Trying new foods can also add to your holiday experience with your family by representing who you are. The old can be new again and even re-imagined.
In my family, my mother, who was raised Catholic, ended up being the Latke Queen, but she also fills my stocking each year with tasty treats and other bits and bobs. She uses her grandmother’s platski recipe, which is the Polish version of latkes, but also made it her own, grating the potatoes instead of pureeing them as her grandmother did, for more texture and crispiness. When I visited her parents during the Christmas season, I also got to taste and try all the flavors from her Polish heritage that were more traditional for them on Christmas, such as babka, kapusta (cabbage soup with dried green beans) and pierogi (stuffed with cabbage or farmers cheese). That heavy smell of oil always represents this time of year in my mind and while we have tried many different recipes over the years, I always go back to the old standard latke/platski recipe.
