Dishing Up Change

It feels as if everything has changed about the upcoming holidays. Except what is required of me. For my family, this year we will no longer be extended, but reduced. Out of caution and COVID protocols, my brothers and sisters, spouses, children, grandchildren, cousins and more will not be sitting around several tables in a dining room, family room, hallway and kitchen sharing from an overflowing buffet at the same time.

We will be in our homes with a handful of immediate family members. But for me, all that is changed is the number of guests. What I am asked by my sons to make is still the same, now and forever.

But I am more than my bruschetta. I am more than one beloved appetizer. Please let me break with convention and make something new.

No matter who is — or is not — on the guest list, I am unwaveringly expected to deliver an offering that is so keenly associated with me, and me alone, that veering from the original version is forbidden. I wonder if I would be as welcome if I dared not comply. Even in my own home.

Over the last several decades, for every family or friend event — holidays, birthdays, wedding and baby showers, engagements, reunions — I have been assigned the toasts of cheese bread topped with marinated diced tomatoes and shredded parmesan. Yes, they are grabbed and gobbled with sighs of gastronomic pleasure and I am grateful. But I want to go rogue.

Certainly in this year of chaos and confusion, horrific losses, pandemic, profound economic insecurity, brutal racial injustice and climate disasters, even complaining about recipe demands is petty and inconsequential. But I respectfully want out of this pigeonhole of flavor.

Yes, it’s an honor to have my dish associated with every fond memory of a gathering. But I am reprimanded — by my own children! — if I stray one teaspoon from the original recipe. Not even adding pesto or substituting asiago for parmesan is allowed.

One family event I brought a substitute of roasted salmon on toast instead of the original bruschetta as required.

“What did you do?” my sister asked, as if I had just ripped off my mask.

I understand the necessity not to ruin a flawless bowl of potato salad with raisins or the perfect mac ‘n’ cheese by adding kale. I understand tradition. I love family habits.

And yes, thankfully, some recipes do get retired — the red Jell-O mold with canned fruit and marshmallows comes to my mind; as does the green bean, mushroom soup with canned french fried onions casserole that we had at every holiday for more years than I can count.

Yes, specific foods can cement a family’s culture, ensure ritual and reliability, erase doubt. Passing down recipes for generations adds continuity, particularly in times of disruption. Familiar food is comforting — that’s why they call it comfort food.

Baking recipes are particularly cherished. For years my family clamored for Aunt Nellie bars, (my mother’s mother’s sister-in-law married to Uncle Red) that we mimicked and attributed only to her. That is until I saw them duplicated at a colleague’s birthday party and learned they were the popular Seven Layer Bars (graham crackers, butter, chocolate chips, butterscotch chips coconut, pecans, sweetened condensed milk), not really Aunt Nellie’s at all.

A beloved recipe is shorthand for how we love and care for each other, a way to conjure fond memories that move beyond how a dessert tastes, that transports us to perhaps a better time. The habit is similar to playing and replaying a favorite song, watching an episode of “The Office” for the 600th time, or walking every evening down the same neighborhood path.

But the practice doesn’t challenge us to try something new or to be someone who is not predictable. I want to grow, learn and be more than who I am now and who I have been. I want to surprise myself. Even if it is just trying a new recipe for buffalo chicken blue cheese dip.

Appreciative of the applause on the hundreds of batches of bruschetta that for years have made my family smile, I want this year to dare disapproval and conjure a dish I hope they enjoy, but one that no one expects. Grilled veggie skewers with peanut dipping sauce, anyone?