What IsYour Most Treasured Food Tradition?
Jessica Bradley: Every Christmas my mom and dad make homemade ravioli. The recipe was my great grandmother’s and has been handed down through the generations. Each year, I find myself thinking of the generations that came before and imagining their Christmas celebrations. It’s a tangible way to keep our family’s history alive. . .and it’s the most delicious ravioli you’ll ever eat.
Karen Covey: My favorite family food tradition is all about Thanksgiving. It was the one holiday we’d spend with all of our extended family watching football and sharing a pretty untraditional potluck meal together.
Mike Gioscia: My favorite tradition is “family dinner.” Five nights a week we sit at the table for dinner and eat, talk, and play games like “I’m thinking of” as a group. Spending that quality time with our kids is priceless, and it gives them an understanding of food’s role in the social makeup of everyday life.
Paula Marcoux: Commonly in my youth, some bright late October day would lure my family to hike up Mount Monadnock. From the summit’s granite slabs we’d survey the autumn kingdom below and relish every bite of our picnic lunch: ham sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, the last tomatoes, crisp apples of recent picking.
Brooke McDonough: We have a big Italian family and Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. My mother cooks a sit-down turkey dinner for 25, but only after we have all feasted on her stuffed artichokes, pumpkin ravioli, accini di pepe soup, roasted peppers, and balsamic portabella mushrooms. It’s truly a tradition to be thankful for!
Lee Manahan: Traditional sit-down family dinners have always been important in the Manahan household, but the most treasured family food tradition would have to be Sunday morning breakfast as a clan. Even though I’m tasked with all of the cooking. And the cleanup as well.
Lauren Mosher: At the end of each summer my family would spend the day blueberry picking. Buckets upon buckets of blueberries would be brought home to freeze. And every Sunday morning my dad would use the berries we had picked for his infamous blueberry pancakes.
Julia Powers: My most treasured family food tradition is sharing our evening meal together. With a husband who works late and three teens with busy schedules, we often don’t eat until eight pm. However, each evening we share our days, a laugh, and good food.
Katherine Rossmoore: We usually have shrimp and chicken fajitas with homemade guacamole for Christmas dinner! My husband is originally from Texas and doesn’t have family in the immediate area, and my side of the family is Jewish so we often just have our nuclear family for dinner. My three sons all love this meal so they always ask for it when given a choice. So one year we thought, “why not?” and thus, the tradition was born.
Kate Strassel: Every June, as soon as we hear that the strawberries are ready at CN Smith Farm in East Bridgewater, we buy at least two quarts and stand at our kitchen counter eating them straight out of the basket (sometimes without washing them).
From our Facebook Community
Renée Beaty: My grandmother teaching me to make biscuits when I was so small I had to stand on a board balanced atop the open bottom kitchen drawer so I could reach the counter; eating them with home-made choke cherry preserves.
Lauren Bernardo: Wineberry tea cake with Grandma.
Bonnie Corso: My dad’s Portuguese kale soup! We grew up eating kale before anyone considered it a trendy superfood.
Kaisa Holloway Cripps: Beef Stew in a Crock Pot! There are very few smells better in fall than coming home on a cool autumn afternoon to the savory aromas of beef, potato, carrots, onions, and spices. . .and then gobbling it up with fresh bread for dinner!
Jean Roberts Guarino: Thanksgiving. We love getting together with neighbors (25 years now) and family, friends, and others, sharing our favorite dishes and trying out new ones, and sitting around the table talking and enjoying each other’s company. We have had people from Cape Cod, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, and Belize. Each year brings someone new to the table.
Heidi Harting: Pesto and spaghetti sauce weekend. We would gather at my parents’ and make batches and batches of both in late summer to freeze for winter.
Beth Marois: “Tootalings”—handmade pork and cheese tortellini. This recipe has been passed down through the generations by my northern Italian family. Served in chicken broth, only for special occasions.
Heather Smith: Cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning.
Join the conversation on Facebook. Watch for our winter question to be posted in early November: Who inspired your love of food? Why was this person such an inspiration? Or email your answer to editor@edibleSouthShore.com and you may see your name here.
