Submitted by Valerie A. Winters, Brackney, Pennsylvania I grew up in a home with Lebanese parents. My father immigrated to America in the 1920s; my mom grew up in the same home I grew up in, in Binghamton, New York. We ate mostly ethnic food, but the simplest and most delicious recipe was our salad dressing….
The Family Table: From the Lean Years of War, Cake, Creativity, and Love for My Country
Submitted by Sunny McComber, Omaha, Nebraska During World War II, all the troop trains in my area were greeted—lovingly—by the ladies of North Platte, Nebraska, at the North Platte Canteen train station with cakes, pies, cookies, doughnuts, coffee, and TLC, as this precious young cargo headed for embarkation points. Grocery shelves were often nearly empty,…
The Secret to My Great Grandma’s Cookies? Smash Them After Baking
When I stumbled upon the recipe for these pistachio smash cookies, I wasn’t sure what I had found. During one of my spontaneous urges to deep clean the house in the early months of the pandemic, I rediscovered a box of old family recipes tucked away in the laundry room. I hadn’t looked through the…
The Family Table: Norwegian Pancakes, a Treat for National Day and Beyond
Submitted by Charlotte Christiansen McDonald, Salt Lake City, Utah As the fourth child of first-generation, American-born Norwegians, my siblings and I do a lot of celebrating with traditional Norwegian foods from both southern and northern Norway, especially during Christmas: lutefisk and boiled potatoes, salmon, rice cream, and a variety of cookies. The most beloved food, often made…
The Family Table: Sorrel Soup, Slick and Sour, Pieced Together From Scraps of Memory
Submitted by Emma Buls, Duluth, Minnesota I never knew I had a sour tooth until I ate sorrel soup. It was at a lunch at my Aunt Lidia’s house, in a breezy beach community hugging Port Phillip Bay, south of Melbourne. I was around 8 years old, and at this point in our lives my…
The Family Table: Feeding a Crowd, However Big or Small
Submitted by Phyllis Pellerito Jacobek (retired librarian and mother of six children, Nana to 17 grandchildren), Mokena, Illinois My grandmother was born in Calabria and came to the United States as a young girl. She never spoke English well, and so it was difficult to understand her stories as I was growing up. She loved to…
The Family Table: A Celebration of Home, Family, and ‘A Love That Remains’
Submitted by Cara Colon-McLauchlan, Raleigh, North Carolina Rice and beans meant home to my dad. No matter the occasion, they were his way of celebrating the place he knew and longed for always. As a child, I grew up listening to the stories of tenacity from his homeland of Puerto Rico. His memories of losing…
The Family Table: Memories of Easter Baking, From My Big Italian Family
Submitted by Laura Semenza-Marcos, West Hills, California Memories of my childhood surround the holidays and food. As an Italian Roman Catholic from a family of nine, and many relatives, I have stories to tell. The family of my youth consisted of two parents and seven kids—one boy and six girls—in a three-bedroom house, with one…
My Family Charoset Recipe, for Your Passover Seder
Passover isn’t a holiday known for its food. In fact, it’s largely known for the food you can’t eat during it (no leavened or fermented foods; ditto for foods made with wheat, oats, barley, rye, and spelt). And yet, I find myself looking forward to it every year because there is one thing I can’t…
The Family Table: Mom’s Sausage Ratatouille, a Winning Winter Warmer
Submitted by Scott D. Haseltine, Aurora, Ohio Some families’ go-to wintertime dishes are a hearty stew or a pot of chili or the like. At our house when I was growing up, Mom’s Sausage Ratatouille was always guaranteed to take the chill off the worst winter weather Northeast Ohio had to offer. Much like a good…
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