What hobbies have been passed down from your family?

     A lot of my family traditions involve food. For example, every year on Christmas, I eat dinner with my extended family at my great aunt’s house. I remember watching my aunts and my grandma cooking Christmas dinner when I was younger, and I always wished I could be a part of the cooking.

    Honestly, I’m not sure why I wanted to cook with them. Maybe I felt left out. I wanted to feel like I had a role in my family traditions, and by helping out with the Christmas dinner, I would be able to feel like I had a purpose. Plus, these are people that I looked up to, so I wanted to find a way to connect with them. Of course, I was still young, so there wasn’t much I could do without getting in the way or just slowing things down. 

    But one year, my grandma gave me a job. I helped her make a dessert we always eat with Christmas dinner. She used to tell me it was a family recipe, but I think it was just an easier version of a Charlotte Russe cake (I don’t know if people have heard of it, but it’s cake layered with custard and lined on the outside with ladyfingers). The recipe involves breaking a store bought angel food cake into pieces, and that was my job that year. 

    Now, there must have been some kind of miscommunication, because my grandma left me alone for a few minutes to finish my task, and by the time she got back, I had completely turned the cake into crumbles. At that point, we couldn’t even use it for the dessert. It wasn’t that big of a deal, of course, because it was a store bought cake, but at the time, I felt like I had let everyone down. The one time I actually had a chance to help out and contribute to the family tradition, I made a mistake.

    As much as I thought I had ruined everything forever, life went on, and we laugh about it now. My grandma taught me how to make the entire dessert on my own (correctly), and I still make it sometimes. It’s not my favorite dessert or anything, but it’s a good way to remember those memories with my grandma. Plus, I might as well put my new knowledge to use. After all, that’s kind of what cooking is about. It’s a learning process, and as you learn, you will improve and eventually be able to make new things. 

    Since that one Christmas, I’ve branched out and taken up cooking (and baking) as a hobby. I started making different things, including a few family recipes but mostly things I Googled. Not only am I constantly learning and getting better, but I’m also using what I learned from my grandma, my aunts, my parents-- all the people in my life that I used to watch cooking and wish I could be like them.

    Making food is one of the few ways I’m able to connect with my family members that I don’t have much else in common with, especially the relatives I only see a few times a year. So every so often, while I’m scurrying around in the kitchen making a new recipe, I can’t help but imagine myself cooking alongside my family members making Christmas dinner.