Hi, friends. A favor: I’ve been thinking a lot lately about food traditions and how traditions in general can brighten up a year and give people things to look forward to. I don’t have kids, and my husband and I don’t live in the same city as our extended families, which has made me feel like it’s about time I come up with some traditions for just us, here in D.C.
So: What food traditions are your favorites? Maybe it’s a dish you make every Fourth of July, or a cocktail you have on your anniversary, or the absolute best Thanksgiving side you could not live without. Maybe it’s not tied to a special date at all. I would be forever indebted if you replied to this thread with any thoughts you have, not so I can steal your traditions, but rather to help me as I try to write something about food and how it’s so integral to the traditions we inherit and invent.
Every family gathering, my mom makes "hot cheddar bean dip." Essentially it's a can of refried beans, a bag of cheddar cheese, and chopped chiles. There's nothing fancy about it—and It never lasts more than a few minutes. The highlight of dinner is the appetizer.
We had a very large garden when I was a kid. We sold most of the produce but we always had the most wonderful slicing tomatoes. My mom would fry about 2-3 lbs of bacon and there would be a kid making the toaster to make the most wonderful BLT's. Not very exciting but to this day I cannot eat a tomato in the summer without hearing the toaster popping up repeatedly and smelling the bacon and sing my mom standing in the kitchen
My mom is full Italian. One of my grandmas signature dishes was Wedding Soup. For whatever reason I am the only one of 7 who has continued the tradition of making this recipe. My older sister would have a meltdown if I didn’t make it every year for her birthday, and I always make a batch for my family at Christmas. It’s not a difficult recipe but one that requires several steps. Like my mom and grandma I never measure my grandmas recipe ingredients it’s all by look and feel but this soup is hard to mess up!
We have certain days that we always do this (Father’s Day, College Football Kickoff) but throughout the year, we find days where we look at the sports schedule and go “today is a smoking meat day”. And while we do sometimes experiment with different things, we always make the staples - smoked pork butt, homemade Mac and cheese, and usually sneak in making some sort of cookie or cake. It’s simple, maybe boring to some, but for us this tradition has become what we do when it’s a “stay at home day”. Especially for my son and myself (but also my daughters), we now have come to do this do all the prep together and then hang out watching football, soccer, baseball, golf, whatever. It’s become family time. It’s a recurring tradition and one that I value because of the time it gives me with my kids.
At Christmas I bake my Grandma Basgalls banana nut bread and her cinnamon bread about 10 loaves each to give to family and friends. Been doing about 40 yrs now.
Every Easter, my mom makes Gourmet magazine's French almond butter cake- it has a lattice top so it is a huge pain, but it always reminds us of Easter and we only ever have it around Easter. We also make tricolor cookies every Christmas (we've been using the same recipe my entire life). It's a several hour ordeal and so tricky to get right because each layer has to be spread so thin and they burn so quickly. We always get frustrated and laugh making them! We usually rotate our other cookie recipes but the tricolors are always there.
I bake my late husband's grandmother's shortbread every December and send it to his two sisters. The whole family loved that recipe and my husband had a hand-written version framed, which is the one I use. I even use her rolling pin. I'm the only baker in the family and I'm Jewish, so it's actually pretty funny that I am the keeper of this Christmas tradition but my lovely SILs appreciate it so much. As a bonus, the recipe is SO easy. 😍
Similar to your fruit picking earlier this summer - Every summer since 2020 my dad and I have decided to take a day off work in the middle of July to drive to Larriland Farms (Woodbine, MD) during peak blackberry season. We'd pick as many as we could physically carry back to the car and then spend a few weeks making blackberry pies, jams, syrups, ice creams, popsicles, you get the point. We always end up with at least 16 cups of berries left in the freezer to use throughout the year. Whenever I pull them out to make a berry pie in the middle of the winter, I think of my dad and the day we spent picking the berries.
Every family gathering, my mom makes "hot cheddar bean dip." Essentially it's a can of refried beans, a bag of cheddar cheese, and chopped chiles. There's nothing fancy about it—and It never lasts more than a few minutes. The highlight of dinner is the appetizer.
We had a very large garden when I was a kid. We sold most of the produce but we always had the most wonderful slicing tomatoes. My mom would fry about 2-3 lbs of bacon and there would be a kid making the toaster to make the most wonderful BLT's. Not very exciting but to this day I cannot eat a tomato in the summer without hearing the toaster popping up repeatedly and smelling the bacon and sing my mom standing in the kitchen
My mom is full Italian. One of my grandmas signature dishes was Wedding Soup. For whatever reason I am the only one of 7 who has continued the tradition of making this recipe. My older sister would have a meltdown if I didn’t make it every year for her birthday, and I always make a batch for my family at Christmas. It’s not a difficult recipe but one that requires several steps. Like my mom and grandma I never measure my grandmas recipe ingredients it’s all by look and feel but this soup is hard to mess up!
We have certain days that we always do this (Father’s Day, College Football Kickoff) but throughout the year, we find days where we look at the sports schedule and go “today is a smoking meat day”. And while we do sometimes experiment with different things, we always make the staples - smoked pork butt, homemade Mac and cheese, and usually sneak in making some sort of cookie or cake. It’s simple, maybe boring to some, but for us this tradition has become what we do when it’s a “stay at home day”. Especially for my son and myself (but also my daughters), we now have come to do this do all the prep together and then hang out watching football, soccer, baseball, golf, whatever. It’s become family time. It’s a recurring tradition and one that I value because of the time it gives me with my kids.
At Christmas I bake my Grandma Basgalls banana nut bread and her cinnamon bread about 10 loaves each to give to family and friends. Been doing about 40 yrs now.
Every Easter, my mom makes Gourmet magazine's French almond butter cake- it has a lattice top so it is a huge pain, but it always reminds us of Easter and we only ever have it around Easter. We also make tricolor cookies every Christmas (we've been using the same recipe my entire life). It's a several hour ordeal and so tricky to get right because each layer has to be spread so thin and they burn so quickly. We always get frustrated and laugh making them! We usually rotate our other cookie recipes but the tricolors are always there.
I bake my late husband's grandmother's shortbread every December and send it to his two sisters. The whole family loved that recipe and my husband had a hand-written version framed, which is the one I use. I even use her rolling pin. I'm the only baker in the family and I'm Jewish, so it's actually pretty funny that I am the keeper of this Christmas tradition but my lovely SILs appreciate it so much. As a bonus, the recipe is SO easy. 😍
Similar to your fruit picking earlier this summer - Every summer since 2020 my dad and I have decided to take a day off work in the middle of July to drive to Larriland Farms (Woodbine, MD) during peak blackberry season. We'd pick as many as we could physically carry back to the car and then spend a few weeks making blackberry pies, jams, syrups, ice creams, popsicles, you get the point. We always end up with at least 16 cups of berries left in the freezer to use throughout the year. Whenever I pull them out to make a berry pie in the middle of the winter, I think of my dad and the day we spent picking the berries.