Family Traditions

Growing Traditions

Until I married, our family was blended in heritage, not religion. Family
gatherings were more about quantity of food rather than specific holiday menus.
My paternal grandmother always had enough food for three times the number of
people at the table. At Nana's, a meal would center around brisket and chicken,
or chicken and chicken, because there was always a 'backup' chicken in the oven.
I can't remember anyone on either side of our family making the traditional
Hanukkah latkes.

Then I married a wonderful man who converted to Judaism. I took it upon myself
to educate him in the ways of our people via food. Not the food I was brought up
on, but the via recipes I found in specialty cookbooks, including latkes.

When the kids were young, our neighborhood was ethnically diverse, and my kids
would go across the street or down the block to help decorate a Christmas tree,
coming home with platters of cookies. I would invite the neighbors over, and
share our holiday tradition via food. We'd have a 'latke party', and I'd
supplement the menu with our own cookies.

I baked "generic" sugar cookies, but we used menorah, dreidel and Star of David
shaped cutters. The kids would sit around the kitchen table decorating them with
yellow, blue, and white frosting. One of my daughters tells me, "I tried to
frost each one a little differently. Frosting was my favorite part of the cookie
so I made sure the ones I was going to eat had the most. I also remember packing
them in my lunch each day and enjoyed eating them!"

One year I tried rugelach, which became another holiday favorite. It's not hard,
but messy, and perfectly adapted to assembly line production. The dough was made
in advance. Then on baking day, we'd set everything up on the counter. I'd
formed the dough into 3 discs before chilling. One by one, they'd come out of
the fridge, and after some pounding to soften them, I'd begin the fruitless task
of rolling them into round shapes. I never could make circles, but we didn't
care. Jagged-edged ovals were good enough.

Then one child would brush the melted butter over the dough, followed close on
the heels by her sister who would sprinkle the filling—a mixture of chopped
walnuts, sugar, currants and cinnamon—over the butter covered dough, trying to
get it on before the chilled dough congealed the butter. Elbow jostling merely
added to the fun. Then it was my turn to cut the dough into wedges—rarely
uniform, but nobody cared. One daughter would roll them from the outside to the
center; the other would shape them into crescents and put them on the cookie sheet.

Once that was done, we'd start over with dough circle number two. I don't know
if the end results looked any better by the time we got to the third batch, but
it was more about the process than the product. A quick brush with egg wash, a
sprinkling of cinnamon sugar (except for the year I grabbed the container of
celery salt by mistake, but that's another memory), and into the oven.

Today, the kids are grown, but this year we live close to two of them, and we
gathered at our house for a traditional Hanukkah latke celebration. I'd already
made the rugelach single-handed, but the way the kids' eyes still light up when
the see them on the platter means, yes, it's Hanukkah, and we're family.

And sometimes, family works its way into my books. When I wrote my Mapleton
Mystery series, I couldn't help but include a character or two patterned after
my own heritage

For the recipe, check the 'Recipes' section.

Terry Odell is the author of mystery and romantic suspense novels. She's also published numerous contemporary romance short stories. For more, visit her website