The First Story

It might have happened during an episode of “No Reservations.” Maybe Tony was talking about the generational talents of pasta makers in the south of Italy, or maybe it was while reading through another Lidia Bastianich cookbook when I realized I have no family heritage when it comes to food.

Zero connection through food, memory, or recipe to the generations of women who moved from Scotland, Ireland, and Scandinavia to land in New England and have families who had families who had families who eventually had me.

It feels like a dirty secret, but I doubt I’m alone.

I grew up in the Southwest, right on the border with Mexico, and have so many memories of being at my friend’s houses while their grandmother (“abuela/abuelita”) made dinner. The sounds and the smells. The recipes they knew by heart, handed down through generations. The simplicity in the ingredients. Heirloom ingredients.

Back at my own house, I’d make myself a box of Kraft Mac'n’Cheese and think about food and family heritage without really knowing a thing about food and family heritage.

My folks weren’t bad cooks—they were both born of New England stock with sturdy parents and plenty of siblings and both headed west to Texas for very different reasons at very different times…but neither ever had strong kitchen connections to the locations that raised them.

They cooked what they liked when they had time to—but other than that, food was convenience and calories. Or in my mom’s case many times throughout the years, a concerted obsession WITH and LACK of calories.

Me with my mother and grandmother, 2012.

Thinking back to the days growing up in Austin and El Paso, it’s obvious that eating at historical and iconic restaurants is definitely part of my food history and heritage. Nothing beat eating at Threadgill’s with my parents, even before I could really appreciate it. El Paso is home to some amazing eating experiences, and those, too, are part of my heritage.

But when it comes down to recipes I witnessed time and time again in my grandmother or mother’s kitchen?

Not much to cling to.

It doesn’t mean the history and the heritage from my family line isn’t there—I think it means that some point in the 1960s my grandmother was busy raising nine children with an often missing husband and the more labor-intensive recipes from her own mother’s kitchen (another woman who had to work more than she had time to cook) made way for convenience foods.

My mother was a great cook, but it came out later in life, when she became a grandmother. My early food memories with her involve a lot of convenience foods because she was busy working and getting herself a college education.

Now, with children of my own (one grown, three not), I find this need to track down our own family foodways and legacy getting louder and louder. The world is so fast and disconnected and food has always been a means of connection for us.

It’s my hope that this project leaves a lasting connection to the ones that came before me for my children, and for my readers, I hope it gives that blast of inspiration necessary to start their own research and storytelling.