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