From the upscale to the offbeat, every family brings its unique story to the table
Food is a family’s fingerprint. Take any family, stick them in a culinary police lineup, and the odd idiosyncrasies they spread across their table will ID them like a smoking gun. And the strange thing is, no one in the family seems to notice how bizarre some of their signature dishes are. I mean, until somebody pointed it out, it never struck me as odd that a few times a year, my mother (who was a wonderful, albeit traditional Southern cook) would bust out the canned pear halves and the Dukes mayonnaise. She’d perch a pear half, divot up, on a single piece of iceberg lettuce, fill the small hole with a dollop of mayo, and then top the mayo with grated cheddar. Admittedly, this pear/mayo/cheese delight was most prevalent during the 1970s, when gooey, wiggly foods seemed to reign. Which probably explains why our refrigerator was packed with Jell-o molds and Watergate salads.
On the tastier side, my mom whipped up pound cakes I could identify blindfolded, with a single bite. She never used a recipe. Never measured. She just sort of knew. When I was in college, every month, she would mail me a shoebox full of slices, and I’d spend the next week fending off the guys on my hall who demanded some of Mary Ann’s pound cake. Not just any pound cake. It had to be the one from Mary Ann’s kitchen.
During the holidays, these family fingerprints will become most visible. We’re all getting ready to sit down to meals and snacks and leftovers and buffets that put a sharp spotlight on the singular weirdness of our families. The can-shaped cylinder of cranberry sauce gets sliced up and layered onto a peanut butter sandwich. The green bean casserole topped with crushed cheese Nabs. The “Reception Salad” made with a lime-Jell-o-and-hot-pineapple-juice concoction. Pink cocktail shrimp stacked and pinned into the shape of a tiny Christmas tree. The honey-glazed tofu ham.
We’ll sit down, and we won’t consider how strange it is that our family bakes a tuna casserole every Christmas Day or drizzles eggnog on chocolate ice cream or eats day-old oyster stuffing for breakfast. We’ll be too busy doing the things families are supposed to do over food—laugh, cry, argue, debate, poke fun, catch up, tell stories, tell lies. Ultimately, the food—weird or not—in front of us won’t matter. What really matters is that we all have a place at the table.
Scott Gould is the author of four books. His latest is the novel, The Hammerhead Chronicles. He lives in Sans Souci and teaches at the SC Governor’s School for the Arts & Humanities.
