What does one write when our families do not have cultural traditions? Are our family traditions cultural at all?
Hork Family Traditions
When growing up, we had some holiday traditions. Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners were always at the Hork house, as our house was large enough to seat everyone. The maternal grandparents and great-aunt came to us, bringing salads and dessert. Mom cooked the rest: turkey for Thanksgiving and a ham for Christmas. The side courses were always candied yams, mashed potatoes and gravy with giblets, cornbread stuffing, and peas with onions. Hors d′oeuvres consisted of potato chips with onion dip, carrot, celery, radish, and green onion sticks, and smoked baby oysters. Dessert was a variety of pies: pumpkin, mincemeat, pecan, or apple. My mother made us recipe books when we married and here is her recipe for the turkey and stuffing.
Gorrell Family Traditions
At the Gorrell house, they also had turkey on Thanksgiving with a sage stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy (no giblets), green bean casserole, a Jello salad, and a fruit salad. On Christmas Eve, the tradition was potato soup and potato sausage, dishes from Thelma’s Swedish heritage. Often during the Thanksgiving weekend, we made the fresh potato sausage, a labor-intensive process involving at least three to four people rinsing the sheep casings, peeling potatoes, dicing onions and potatoes, grinding pork and beef, stuffing the materials in the sausage press, and then boiling the sausage for forty-five minutes. But boy was the sausage good! Here are the recipes for Potet Suppe (Potato Soup) and Potatiskorv (Potato Sausage).
Current Traditions
The older generation is gone. Most of the traditions are gone, too. Turkey is still on the menu for Thanksgiving but side dishes tend to be healthier, no candied yams, instead we have baked sweet potatoes. Instead of starchy peas, we eat dark green vegetables. We may even skip dessert, since we’re forgoing sugars now. We used to purchase potato sausage, but the Scandinavian store in Berkeley went out of business during the pandemic. It is just too much work for two people to make the sausage.
#52Ancestors-Week 46: Cultural Traditions
This is my seventh year working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow (https://www.amyjohnsoncrow.com/) at Generations Cafe.
I write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or My Trails into the Past. I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways.
The Potato Soup recipe looks sooo good! Colder weather here in CT right now and I'm always looking soup recipes. I'm going to try this one!
ReplyDeleteIt is delicious. We skip the dumplings. I use sheep milk now, as cow's milk gives me a stomach ache. So good!
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