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How
food traditions become treasures
November 24, 05
Suzanne Havala Hobbs
What’s a food tradition but simply a way of eating repeated
over time?
Our food traditions – like turkey on Thanksgiving, cake
on birthdays or pizza on Thursday – are familiar patterns,
often paired with a happy occasion or a particular season.
Of course, food traditions were new at some point in time
for someone.
At times in your life, it’s likely you, too, modified
a tradition or started a new one. You may have discovered
a food that was so good you wanted to make it a regular feature
at every holiday meal. Over time, a new tradition was born,
becoming even more special as the years went by.
People alter longstanding food traditions for many reasons.
For some insights into this phenomenon, I spoke with Marcie
Cohen Ferris, author of the recently published Matzoh Ball
Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South (University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill Press, 2005) and associate director
of the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies.
Her observations of Jews in the American South have led her
to conclude that how they adapt or adopt new traditions is
very specific to “place and family.”
Take the example of Jews in New Orleans, for instance.
From the early 1800s to today, Jews in New Orleans and along
the lower Mississippi integrated their lives – and cooking
heritage – with the Caribbean, Creole and African American
people who worked in their homes as cooks, Ferris wrote in
her book.
Mondays became “red beans and rice day,” because
that was the day that African American workers did the laundry.
Beans and rice could be put on the stove to cook all day,
freeing up workers to tend to other chores. Jews adopted “traditions
of the calendar,” including Mardi Gras, when the Jewish
Mardi Gras association tossed candy, beads, and gold-painted
bagels to folks along the parade route.
Those bagels, by the way, had the feather-light texture of
New Orleans French bread rather than the density of a traditional
Jewish bagel, Ferris wrote.
According to Ferris, Jews “kosherized” Creole
dishes. Her book, for example, includes recipes for fried
green tomatoes made with matzoh meal instead of bread crumbs,
and “dirty matzoh” dressing, a take-off on Creole
dirty rice.
In one case, a happy accident resulted in a praline finding
its way into a sweet potato casserole. It wasn’t long
before the sweet potato casserole with crunchy praline topping
became a new tradition for one family at Rosh Hashanah, when,
Ferris writes, sweets are served to ensure a sweet year.
Ferris also describes Jews who settled in Memphis, Tenn.,
where they encountered pork barbecue, off limits to observant
Jews. “If you don’t participate, you’re
outside a major cultural activity,” Ferris said.
How did they make peace with barbecue?
“They inaugurated the world’s first kosher barbecue
contest,” she said. By adapting and embracing a tradition
of place – Memphis, in this case – “they
were able to participate in a tradition that otherwise would
have been taboo.”
Ferris has adapted some of her own family food traditions
to better fit her current lifestyle. To save time when she’s
making a special meal, for example, she fixes a couple of
favorite recipes herself but buys the remainder of the meal
from a grocery store.
“Or a group of us do a potluck,” she said. When
there’s no time, “you make compromises and make
meals more informal.”
Greater attention to diet and health have also driven a move
toward lighter foods – more fresh salads and vegetables
to supplement less healthful old-time recipes.
“I do more roasted or steamed vegetables with olive
oil instead of creamed vegetables,” said Ferris.
And so it goes.
Eventually, those roasted vegetables will become a tradition,
too. It just takes time, but that’s what makes traditions
treasures.
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