the recipe book

I am putting together a recipe book for Mira's Brownie troop. The premise is easy. Everyone emails me a recipe that is significant in their family and includes the story behind the recipe. I included my challah recipe. My story was about how after both kids started school I needed something to do with my hands. I started making challah on that first Friday after I dropped them both off and experimented until I found the perfect recipe that all four of us like the best. I'm pretty sure I put in something about how my mother never made challah (I can't seem to stop finding fault with her can I?) but that baking challah is sort of the pinnacle of what it means to be a Jewish mother. I was pretty shocked at what came in.

So many of these moms had no recipes to send. They don't cook. They shop and prepare food for their families but it's not like me. This is a very white troop. Still, this is America and these families had to come from somewhere. But by and large they don't connect to their families and their heritage through what they feed their children. Why is this? Have they been a part of this country for so long that they don't feel any tie to where there grandparents (or more likely) great grandparents came from? Are they so busy and frazzled in living their day to day lives that cooking is not a part of the culture of their families? Is that what it means to be a white Christian American? In the end they sent me their recipes; recipes from the back of the box of flour, from the chocolate chip bag, or the internet. Recipes without stories.

The one person who got it was Erin's mom. She wrote about her great grandmother's biscotti recipe. Apparently many members of this generation claimed ownership of this particular biscotti recipe. Erin's great-great grandmother and her sister nearly came to blows over it. They made an appearance at every family gathering and still do. Exactly like Ma's mandelbroidt. Really, I think it's the same recipe.

Mom didn't cook much but she would have had a recipe with a story to share. Her Passover brownies probably or maybe even the mandelbroidt. I don't think it would be hard for most Jews to come up with something. We really do connect through food. We are so aware of our past and our heritage and our culture it feels like we can drown in it sometimes. But we are lucky to have it. We have no recipes unaccompanied by stories. We have learned enough about hanging onto who we are and we know food is a big part of this. It tells a story. It tells the world who we are.