Passing It On: Cooking Through Generations

Helen, age 13

I never met my maternal grandmother, Helen. She died of lung cancer at the age of forty-two, when my mother was seventeen.  I did briefly meet my grandmother's mother, Freda, when I was seven, and she lay in a hospital bed, dying.  She had practically raised my mother, having left her own husband to "help" with the new baby (my mother), and "helping" until Helen's death.  Freda did most of the cooking in the house, so most of my mother's tremendous cooking skills were passed straight through from her. Freda's cooking skills and family recipes came from her own mother, Cristina, on the other hand, had immigrated from Bremen in Northern Germany, near the North Sea, in the mid-1870s.  I have no idea where Cristina was originally from, but I have a strong feeling it wasn't from Bremen, since many of her recipes were decidedly Tuscan -- especially the spaghetti sauce she passed on to Freda, that Freda passed on to my mother, that my mother passed on to me. Also, she spelled her name with a "C", rather than the customarily Teutonic "K". This leads me to believe that she might have been Italian, if not by birth, then by heritage.

Freda, in her wedding dress

My mother didn't spend much time teaching me how to cook. She was a working mother, busy and tired, and most of the time, it was just easier for her to do things herself.  But the two dishes my mother did pass on -- particularly because they were dishes that came from Cristina through Freda -- were the famous spaghetti or red sauce (which I have used as the basis for every Italian red sauce from lasagna to baked shells to spaghetti), and the Dish That Hath No Name (but which spent some time being referred to as the "sausage-pepper-potato thing", before it found it's more permanent name of "Kielbasa, Pepper, Onion and Potato stir-fry").

Cristina, in Germany

These are the only two dishes that survived the test of time because a) they were relatively easy and inexpensive to make, and they yielded a lot of helpings, and b) we liked them enough to keep wanting to cook them.  They've evolved somewhat, based mostly on the availability of produce in each generation. Peppers were the most ethereal ingredient. They do not grow well in cold, cloudy climes and once picked, require refrigeration to stay fresh for any length of time.  Peppers were rumored to have been part of my great-great-grandmother's version, but once she arrived in eastern Pennsylvania, where I reckon peppers were a rare commodity, she replaced them with root vegetables. My great-grandmother split the difference, using parsnips and peppers at one point. My mother took the dish to a whole new level by eliminating root vegetables altogether and getting back to peppers -- this time, in the lovely red, orange and yellow hues we have come to know and love today.

I hope that my addition to the dish continues to make it new and better. I figure people have messed with the vegetables long enough. I decided that the kielbasa needed a little help, so I chop up a slice of bacon into bits and use the fat to help brown the sausage, then deglaze the pan to cook the veggies in.  I am pretty sure this is an improvement, if for not other reason than... hey... it's bacon....

The weather dropped today to below 65 degrees and that means it's time for two things -- close-toed shoes and the kielbasa stir-fry.  This weekend, I'll be making it for the first time in several months. I can only hope to do my ancestors proud.

~C~