Category Archives: Food voice

Thanksgiving

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One holiday my whole family likes is Thanksgiving. Every year we go to my grandmas house where my mom, two aunts, and my grandma cook everything starting from the preparation from the night before. My grandma’s favorite thing to make on Thanksgiving is the turkey; she loves turkey so every year she buys and cooks the biggest turkey she can find. This year she cooked a 30-pound turkey and by the end of the day more than half of it was gone. My favorite dish that she makes is lasagna; her lasagna is the best! Most of my family members can not wait to eat her lasagna on holidays she even makes an extra tray for everyone to take home. When she makes her lasagna she uses the tomato sauce we made over the summer and her homemade mozzarella.

IMG_1263My family does not only just make lasagna and turkey on Thanksgiving it is much more than that. There are four courses that my family prepares for just about every holiday. The first course my grandma calls the antipasto that is peppers, hard boiled eggs, different kinds of cheeses, different types of dry sausage and my favorite little pieces of pizza that she made and cut up tiny. The second course is the lasagna, but everyone has to be careful with this dish because if they eat too much they will not be able to eat anything else. The third course is the turkey, but along with the turkey is sweet and regular potatoes, broccoli rabe, corn, mashed potatoes, and stuffing. Finally last but not least dessert, which is everyone’s favorite part of the day. My grandma makes butter cookies, some filled with jelly and some covered n walnuts and what I love the most that she made this year was her homemade seven layer cookies. This year one of my aunts made brownies, my other aunt made cream puffs, and my mom made a homemade vanilla cake from scratch that is to die for!

Thanksgiving: My Food Voice

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In my food voice paper I wrote about my mom’s lasagna. While home for Thanksgiving she made it like always. When she was making it Thursday morning, I was able to get a picture of her laying down the layers. She gave me a disapproving look as I got in her way, but she let me take the picture. Snapchat-8497507258627261225

Like always my paternal side of the family loved it. They commented again about how the German makes the best lasagna at an Italian Thanksgiving. In fact, they almost ate the whole tray of it, and my dad’s side of the family is pretty small.

As for me, my mom made gluten free baked ziti which was amazing. As I talked about in my last pots, I really missed good home cooked meals. So when I got my plate of ziti I downed it in a matter of minutes. My grandma looked so proud.

 

Eating at Home vs. Eating in College

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A few days ago I was talking to my mom on the phone and asked her if she could make me grilled cheese and baked ziti when I got home. It is funny because I use to complain that all my mom ever made was pasta and grilled cheese. Now it is all I want.

I’ve noticed how differently I have eaten when I got to college. At home I ate a lot of frozen meals and apples. Now at college the dining hall has so much more variety. And I guess it was because of my pure laziness, but at home I never really cooked the meals that the dining hall offers. Now granted the meals at the dining hall are a little dodgy,they still have a few good dishes.

Another thing I have noticed is how conditioned my body became to meals. I never had breakfast when I was in high school. Now I have trouble at first eating in the morning. I would often feel lack of appetite or nausea before and after breakfast here. For lunch nothing changed. But after is where things I had the most struggles. After a day at high school I would come and immediately get a snack. It was something I did subconsciously. So even though my schedule is different, when I come back from class to my dorm room I always look for a snack. And when I ran out of food a few days ago I called my mom begging her to order me some snacks on Amazon. The same thing happens after dinner too. I ate dinner really late at night (at around 8-9) at home. So now that I eat at around 6 I always feel like I have to eat something at night.

In the end however, I am somewhat getting use to the new eating schedule. I stopped snacking just slightly and can now stomach breakfast. This may not seem significant but to me, the girl who was scared that I would never adjust to college life, I think of it as a small feat.

 

Exploring my Food Voice

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This past weekend, together with my sister and some friends from home, we traveled to Elmwood Park, NJ to a restaurant called Royal Warsaw. This restaurant offers a typical polish cuisine along with some typical American food choices. I thought I would write about this since in class we always refer back to our food voice. For my essay on food voices at the beginning of the semester I wrote about pierogies and what they mean to me and how they tell my story. Sure enough this is one of my favorite foods and so at Royal Warsaw I decided to order them as my main entree. As an appetizer I ordered traditional Polish soup called “zurek.” This was served inside a bread bowl which made the dish extra appetizing. Although this food is not nearly as good as the homemade polish foods my family makes, it brought back many memories of how we make pierogies and other dishes as a family back home. I even brought back some extra pierogies for my roommate to try a traditional dish from my culture. Having opportunities like dining at this polish restaurant allow me to explore my food voice further.

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Preparing Lasagna

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          Every Sunday my family and I make dinner together. During this time, we get the chance to bond over things that have happened over the week. Instead of ordering take-out food or only having one person make a meal, we cook together to create new memories and learn better ways to make new meals. A meal that my mom taught us to make this Sunday is lasagna. The lasagna recipe in my family is incredibly tasty. It includes all fresh ingredients which make it more unique than a store-bolasagna-1ught dinner.

          In the morning, we prepared the sauce. The sauce included onions, celery, carrots, garlic and tomatoes. It also contained other ingredients that are a secret to the family recipe.  Once the sauce sat and cooked for a few hours, we placed lasagna noodles on the sauce in a thirteen by nine pan. After this, we mixed the eggs, parmesan cheese and cottage cheese together in a large bowl. One third of this is spread over the noodles in a pan. My mom likes to shred her own fresh mozzarella so we took the block of cheese and sprinkled one layer over the pan. This was repeated two more times to complete the three layers. We then placed the pan in the oven set at three hundred seventy-five degrees for about forty-five minutes. Once the top layer was light brown and had a bubbly-looking texture, we took it out of the oven and prepared to eat the meal as a family. This Sunday not only taught me how to make a delicious, simple, home-cooked meal, but also that making dinner with your family can be a very fun tradition to continue on with my own family someday.

My Food Voice

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An important tradition in my Greek household that has been passed down from my grandfather is the preparation of the lamb. My parents immigrated to the United States years ago and brought this tradition from my small village in Greece all the way to my suburban home in Brooklyn. Before my parents left their homeland, their parents made sure to teach them all of the significant history and culture that was passed on from our ancestors to preserve our heritage. Lamb meat is widely used in the preparation of Greek foods but most importantly on Easter.

IMG_4425The night before Easter, my father with the help of his brother begin the preparation of the lamb. They season it with a mixture of olive oil, salt, pepper, and oregano that is called “ladolemono”. The next day after morning liturgy they place the lamb on a large spit. The lamb takes approximately four hours to cook completely.

This day is very symbolic for my family and I because it’s the one day, since I was a little girl, that all my family members gather together to celebrate Easter. Even though many years have gone by this tradition is still alive in my family. The memories I have made, are memories that I would want to pass down to my future family to be able to carry on this tradition.