WhyHunger’s collection of “Community Voices” is a beautiful representation of a wide range of members working to preserve and promote our country’s foodways. I was particularly drawn to Dena Hoff’s story, a farmer from Glendive, Montana. Dena questioned the changing food system; having grown up eating the food from her grandma’s garden and being taught how to be self-sufficient, she did not take lightly the switch her community was making from growing their food to shopping at the grocery store. Dena teaches others how to grow food on her farm; growing food serves as a platform to learn about food quality, food safety, and what it means to have an economically and environmentally sustainable community. She emphasizes the interconnectedness of the local and the global, and how economic and political forces shape our food system.

What stuck out to me was that Dena’s grandma, like mine, taught her how to can. Given the emphasis on local food system in this course, I think it is appropriate to end the summer with a note on the importance of keeping our own foodways alive lest we fail to recognize the rich history that they have held within all of us. With convenience foods dominating our culture, it can be easy to lose hold of what our parents, grandparents, and generations of family grew up eating.

This brings me to my own family foodways. In a class last semester I was tasked with giving a presentation on a family recipe. As a product of modern day America, a melting pot of ethnicities, cultures, and stories, there was not a wide, straight path to follow to find a family recipe that has been passed down through generations. I became frustrated by all the dead ends I was hitting. I was annoyed with my parents for not keeping their food traditions alive; I was bored after various relatives took this opportunity to give me a detailed version of our family history.

The fact of the matter is that, much like most of ours, my culture and the food pathways that come with it are not as transparent as I would have hoped. Despite the inconsistency and frustration of what seemed should be a simple task, I learned more about my family than I had envisioned. This opportunity not only forced me to be patient when conversation diverged, but it also forced my family to answer longstanding questions about my cultural, racial, and ethnic history.

I learned that oftentimes, our foodways are so embedded into us—our lifestyle, upbringing and routinized patterns; we do not see them as anything significant, especially since these traditions often came into this world before we did. Thus, foodways, to me, offer a structure to learn about history, share memories, and pass on traditions that can remind us of the ones we love and the ones we’ve lost.

Canning is the ability to hold on to, not just the seasons, but also a tradition and a memory of the things we love and do not want to lose, in a sealed jar. The preservation of the strawberry jam recipe represents the untouched, incorruptibility of the sweet, tangy memories I have making this jam with Mama, my grandmother and my namesake, Gene-Ann. The slowness—and especially the inability to cut corners or rush time—is significant to canning. This environment allowed us time to laugh, share, and use the kitchen as a space of leisure and the creation of memories. I felt honored to become part of a story—as this gift of knowledge that Mama’s mother passed on to her is now being shared with me—I long for and anticipate the day that I can share the seasons with my sister and my kids.

Lately though, I’ve been thinking about my grandfather, Poppi, mostly because I worry about him not having Mama by his side, especially as his health begins to deteriorate. I’ve been asking him to teach me for months now, how to make his famous rolls and seafood soup, but understandably, mourning the loss of his wife and taking care of his health have made writing down and teaching me these recipes far from a priority. I stress to Poppi how important this is to me because only after Mama passed away, did I realize how lucky I was to celebrate the traditions that she was known and loved for. In preparation for the day when this is no longer possible, a simple recipe can hold onto more than just a culinary tradition. It encapsulates the time shared writing the recipe down, going through the specific and precise motions of preparing the recipe, and the cultural traditions and history from which the recipe derives.

While I know it is difficult for Poppi to see how biscuits and soup are platforms to hold onto our family history, I hope he reads this post, and recognizes it as one last plea to help preserve and share with me this family tradition that he has so lovingly prepared all of these years.

And lastly, I hope this serves as a plea to everyone; I encourage you to make an urgent effort to preserve recipes. Like seeds, like stories, like any monumental moment in history, recipes, and the legacy that precedes them, are celebrated and passed on when people make the concerted, loving effort to share them.