Food Traditions

Growing up, there were a myriad of food traditions in my house. From savory sheet bread stuffed with salami, ham, ricotta, mozzarella, and herbs at Easter to homemade sausages, ketchup, and wine, to canned fruits and pickled pigs feet, food was a big part of life at the DeLuca house. My friends would ask, “Is your mom cooking today?”, of course, asking wasn’t necessary because from outside you could smell what was on the stove or in the oven.

My mom and dad always got us involved. We’d break up the stuffing bread and help mix it with the onions and spices for Thanksgiving (just like my niece and nephew do now), make sheet cookies and pizzelles at Christmas, frost cakes, help cook breakfast, help pick and mash grapes for wine, or be a “taster” for the meatball mixture for Sunday dinner. In our house, life happened in the kitchen.

Another tradition that’s still upheld is the birthday dinner. Whenever it’s your birthday, you get to pick what mom will cook; and she’ll cook whatever you ask for. The whole family gets together to celebrate each birthday and have a great dinner. Usually, the dinner is one of the old stand-bys that we don’t get much opportunity to make on our own or simply can’t make as well as mom, like lasagna.

Renée and I have our own food traditions, too. Baking cookies, cakes, and breads, roasting pumpkin seeds, making homemade pumpkin pie, grilling, overseeing the kids as they cook (Matt makes a mean stir fry!), or making pasta from scratch with the kids. We try to teach basic cooking techniques along the way.

Television plays a bigger role these days in cooking than it ever has before. I watched Julia Child, Graham Kerr, and Jeff Smith. Our kids watch Iron Chef and Ace of Cakes. They find it entertaining, but they’re learning, too.

In the end, the food I ate growing up causes me to try to recreate the flavors and aromas of my youth, and to better understand how to cook so I can pass on traditions of my own.

Tagged as: Ace of Cakes, Baking, Christmas, Cooking, food traditions, Graham Kerr, Iron Chef, Jeff Smith, Julia Child, Mom