Recipes create family memories

Culinary teacher Jen Pope has memories and traditions surrounding the holiday season, including recipes to try.

Families+use+old+recipes+to+make+cookies+for+the+holiday+season.+The+smell+of+cookies+bring+back+the+memories+of+the+past.+

Photo by Mitchell Garcia

Families use old recipes to make cookies for the holiday season. The smell of cookies bring back the memories of the past.

Miguel Trujillo, Staff Reporter

Many memories and traditions are passed down during autumn family holidays. Many memories are surrounding food: making food and eating meals together. 

Culinary teacher Jen Pope has memories and traditions surrounding the holiday season, including recipes to try. Some people have many recipes that could bring fond memories to them from when they were children.

Pope said, “A recipe that I can remember making, like since I’ve been a kid, … [and during culinary] first semester, we make these things called peanut butter bars. And this is a recipe that my mom always made during Christmas. And I feel like it was just a recipe that was always there. I don’t know where it came from, or how… she found [it] because it was in her recipe box.”

Pope has been able to keep the childhood recipes from her mother as she grew older and had kids of her own. “As a younger adult, when I was moving out, I [said] ‘okay, mom, I need your recipes… I want your chicken noodle soup recipe. I want your meatloaf [recipe] your beef stew [recipe]’. … because it’s one of those things, [if] it’s not written down, [recipes get lost] because my mom passed away.  It’s almost four years ago now. And so I’m so glad that I was able to have her tell me some of these things,” Pope said.

The time spent with your parents can be extremely important to make new traditions for the holidays and special family time. Pope’s traditions with her kids show her joy from the holidays. Pope states “for as long as I can remember, we [had] cinnamon rolls… Yeah that was every Christmas morning as a kid. I remember. …as kids we would open our stockings  then my dad and my mom would get up [then] they [Pope’s parents] would go straight into the kitchen, make their coffee, make the cinnamon rolls, and then we’d all be sitting in on the floor in the living room then…we would sit and open presents, and I feel like that’s something I still even with my husband before we even had Lydia [her first child] that’s something we would have cinnamon rolls every morning.” 

During the holidays, recipes are very important to many people because they can give happy memories to be made and traditions to start with your family. It is very important to have these happy times with family while it lasts, so that these times can be made with the future generations of kids. 

This is a recipe for some peanut butter bars like Pope mentioned above.