Food Traditions

I am pretty sure that gardeners think about food more often and in different ways than a lot of non-gardeners. Since I am the only vegetable gardener where I work, and I get to choose most of the news “briefs” that go into the little newspaper for which I work, it wouldn’t be a surprise to any of my gardening friends that the paper contains a fair amount of food related news.

However, a week or so back, a non-gardener asked why we’ve included so much news about kosher foods (it’s a Jewish publication), threats to kosher food rules around the world, new certifications, and sources of information about keeping kosher. My thinking is that food plays a very important role in tying people to their cultures and to their families. The laws of kashrut (kosher lifestyle) are an important part of Judaism, even though not all Jews follow the rules in their daily lives.

Many less observant Jews, though, do follow the kosher laws to the best of their ability during the High Holidays, the holiest days for the community. My belief is that food traditions are a strong connection to community and to the past, that following the food traditions of Judaism during these times provides a great connection to the Jewish community, and can even light a way back to the community for people who have not been actively Jewish in the rest of their lives.

Since I think that community is important for the happiness and well-being of people in general, I keep including information about kosher foods and laws.

I am not Jewish, but my family has some food traditions, too. One that is important to me is making egg-noodles for holiday meals. The dough has to be rolled out, dried for an hour or so, cut into noodles, and then dried some more, so making these noodles doesn’t exactly provide instant gratification, but taking the time to make them connects me to a kitchen-full of older female relatives --an assortment of aunts, great aunts, and grandmothers, now all dead-- who put together huge holiday meals in Claremore, Oklahoma. The noodles, cooked in broth made from chicken “parts,” also connect me to the frugal frontier cookery of my family’s past.

Of course, we have some other food traditions that are less frugal. One is Aunt Mickey’s fruit salad, which includes Jello, whipped cream, and a whole lot of fruits that are not all in season at the same time. I don’t make this one any more, but my Mom does, and so do some nieces (who learned how from Mom/Grammy) and probably a sister or two. We also eat a lot of pie during most holidays, and some of us have convinced ourselves that pumpkin pie, in particular, is a healthful breakfast food.

As a gardener in the Southern US, the foods I grow in the yard help connect me to the South. Sweet potatoes, especially, play a larger role in my winter diet than ever before, because they grow so well in my yard. I’ve been eating more greens, all kinds, and in summer I’ve had tomato sandwiches after my neighbor-across-the-street, a Southern girl, told me how much she likes them. If I had a bigger yard, we would have more corn and more crowder peas.

I would say that these are also foods that mostly grow well in Oklahoma, but when I was a kid we ate a lot of magazine-inspired meals that involved cans of cream of mushroom soup. Holiday foods were an exception (except, obviously, for Aunt Mickey's fruit salad).

As I begin to put together my garden plan for next year, one of the things on my mind is making sure that the varieties are totally appropriate for the place where I live, the Southern US. I’ve made a lot of progress in this direction over the past almost-twenty years, but I sometimes get pulled off-track by the amazing descriptions in seed catalogues. If I choose carefully, though, the foods I grow will be great ingredients for traditional Southern meals.

In this way, gardening and then eating what grows in the yard serves as a reminder of my connection to the geographical and historical place where I live and have raised my family, and to the community that is here.