Food Today –  a family story.

Preparing foods for people is a holy activity.

Usually one finds the Buddha (male & female Buddhas) in the kitchen.

Today is our last day of Scorpio.

Tomorrow is Sagittarius –

Sagittarius (the food sign) Sun begins tomorrow, Wednesday.

The day after, Thursday, is Thanksgiving.

Today Pisces moon, Mars sextile Pluto (another friendly day w/ Pluto), ruler of Scorpio w/ Sun & Mars in Scorpio. Venus in Libra.

What traditions do you have in your family during Thanksgiving?

What traditions are you honoring? What traditions are you breaking?

What new traditions are you making?

Today – Tuesday, November 21 – Mars (Ray 6) day.

Actions – what are our actions today? Why are we performing those actions?

For what purpose? With what desires & aspirations?

My family’s tradition.
My mother was what we would call today a home chef. Everything we ate (five children, a mother & a father) was homemade & most of the vegetables & fruits were from her garden and trees wherever we lived. We were a family that moved a lot. Our father was in the Air Force, and often on a mission somewhere. He would leave early in the mornings, in the dark. As a child in those early dark mornings, I could hear my mother & father talking quietly, their whispers filled with a sort of sadness, a longing. Mother knew once my father left the house, we would not see him for perhaps many months.

We lived on the east coast at the beginning of my life. Then slowly over the years we would move to different states, living there for several years. Then moving on once again. Different schools, different climates, different people, different traditions. Difficulties w/ having & maintaining friends.

The constancy in our home was our mother, her traditions, her foods, rules, disciplines. Mother was found either in the kitchen or in the garden. Our home was spotless, always organized and in order and always beautiful. We were a Catholic family – Mass on Sundays & holy days, reciting the rosary at night on our knees and every one of the five children in our family attended Catholic school. As we entered and settled into a new town or city, mother would find the Catholic Church and school and set about making sure everyone of us was accepted.

So many towns – McKees Rocks, PA; Pittsburgh, PA; Bryan, Texas, Colorado Springs, CO, Tonawanda, NY; Plymouth, MA; Oahu, Hawaii; Camarillo, CA, (to name a few).

Mother in the kitchen

At Eastertime, Thanksgiving & Christmas, mother made strudel, nut strudel & poppy seed strudel. Mother would have the light sweet bread dough. Her mother had given her cooking pots & mother made the bread by hand in one of those pots. I would watch her mixing the ingredients for the dough, letting it rise, punching it down in those silver pots. The dough is like a brioche dough, a light silky dough.

The nuts (walnuts) were bought at local nut farms, bought in their shells & we the children would sit around the table together & shell them. The poppy seeds were sent from places far away, places that sold poppy seeds. The stores in Texas or Colorado or Plymouth or Tonawanda (near Buffalo, NY), didn’t have poppy seeds usually available.

Nut & Poppy Seed Fillings

Two pots were on the stove in mother’s kitchen. One for the walnut filling and the other for the poppy seed filling. Both had butter, honey, and a little milk in them. The poppy seed filling had lemon juice as poppy seeds can sometimes be bitter. After the first rise, the dough was rolled out. It wasn’t rolled out too thin. The fillings were spread out onto the rolled-out dough and then the dough was rolled up like a jelly roll & placed on cookie sheets. After another rise, the strudel was placed into the oven to bake till they were brown on the top.

Recipe

And so we all grew up and each of us children became adults and went our many different ways –here there and everywhere. Several of us lived far away from mother. And we began to forget the traditions, busy with many other life tasks.

And then this year, it became important for me to recreate the traditions, especially the strudel. And I realized over time that there was never a recipe written down for the strudels.

And so I wrote my siblings (Bob had passed on into the light), asking if they had mother’s recipes for strudel. One by one each responded saying no they had no strudel recipe from mother. And so we all realized that no one had the strudel recipes. As mother made these strudels every year of our lives, there was never a recipe written down. How could that be?

And so this  year I am trying to recreate mother’s strudels, going through multiple online recipes to find the one that most reflects mother’s recipes, which were simple with only a few ingredients. Some of the strudel recipes I found had so many ingredients & were so complicated, I immediately eliminated them.

I am continuing my search for the right strudel recipe. When I find one I will share it.

Now onto the next food subject – the charcuterie!

In conversations with friends & family, when sharing what we are bringing to the Thanksgiving table, many of my friends & family members said they were going to “bring a fruit or vegetable appetizer” but that it felt so tired to do this – veggies on a place with some sort of dip. Yes, that does sound tired.

But there is something new happening on tables these days! The Charcuterie Board!

So I suggested to many of them to consider a Charcuterie Board or plattter. Charcuterie is a word that means meats. However, the definition is expanding to include all types of foods on a platter – some with meats, some with cheese, some vegetarian, some with fruits & jams, olives, pickles, crackers, etc.

At first there was hesitancy concerning a charcuterie board.

Why? Some had never heard the word, some could not say the word, and some didn’t know how to make a charcuterie board/platter. So I sent photos consisting of many types of charcuterie boards/platters. These boards/platters lend to a great level & possibility for creativity, no matter what is being served.

Here are graphics for strudel & for a charcuterie board.

What are your traditions?

What will be on your table?

What is your story? Love, Risa