A Family Tradition

Another Christmas has come and gone and one thing that was very evident during that time was my family's love for food and cooking. Across the globe, family members planned, prepped, cooked, ate, photographed, and blogged/Facebook'd/tweeted/Instagram'd about all the good stuff each prepared for our respective Christmas and New Year's feasts.

For me, it started with watching my dad prepare our Noche Buena feast of chicken stuffing, corn soup, and the infamous ham sauce. In my house, my dad was the primary cook during special occasions :) I can still remember being tasked to prep the ingredients and how he would ask me to repeat the process if I didn't cut something to the correct size. I eventually graduated to helping in sauteing and stirring, under his guidance, of course! I don't remember exactly when I was finally "allowed" to cook a dish on my own but I can still remember the feeling when I finished cooking the corn soup!

The one thing that my dad didn't do much but I seem to have gotten a knack for is baking. One day I found this Betty Crocker cook book passed on to him by my Lola Mama. I started looking through it and asked if I could try making one. He told me the easiest to make would be the Pineapple Upside Down Cake. So Pineapple Upside Down Cake it is! It turned out really good and soon I was trying out the other recipes in the book. To this day, it remains my "bible" for baking. My now "famous" Banana Cake is from this book -- with some modifications, of course!

My mom was with me during the holidays and after seeing all the posts from the family about cooking and food, she made a comment on how I inherited my love for it from my dad, who got it from my grandmother, and it looks like some of my cousins got theirs from a parent from my dad's side of the family as well. This made me realize cooking is one my ways to honor my dad. Come to think of it, of all the modifications I've done to recipes I've tried, I have never deviated from my dad's recipes for corn soup and stuffing.

Oh, about that ham sauce... I never did get the recipe for that... my brother has it and has continued the tradition of making it!