Family reunions are usually a gambit. But at least there’s good food
Family reunions scare me. You know the saying never meet your heroes? Well, I think you should never meet all your distant relatives at one time.
I attended my first family reunion when I was 11, and even back then it was a lot to take in. It brought up many questions, like why are so many people married to their first cousins? (It was and is legal in the state these relatives resided in.)
I can understand one first cousin marriage slipping through but, wow, there were a lot. It was a head scratcher. It didn’t help that my dad (it was my mom’s family reunion) kept on making inbreeding comments.
When someone complimented him on his children, he said, “Well, it probably helps that my wife and I aren’t related.”
I remember my mom getting so mad that she told him to go and buy more ice. I think he was gone for at least two hours.
When I went to my husband’s family reunion for the first time it was also jarring. My favorite was when the second and maybe even third aunts of my husband kept on telling me that “his first wife was much prettier.”
I am his first wife, but at some point, I just started agreeing with the aunts and would remark that yes, the first wife was a singular beauty.
One thing that doesn’t disappoint at a family reunion is the food. It’s old-fashioned goodness — this means there’s probably copious amounts of lard in every single thing on the table from the fried chicken to the cherry pie.
Family reunion food for the non-culinary
There are, of course, reunion food rules you must follow. The main one is to make sure you don’t bring something that’s not homemade. To do so is to activate the matriarchs of the family, and in my experience, they will come for you.
Many years ago, I thought I could pick up a bucket of chicken and put it in a different container (as in one that didn’t say “KFC”). That decision backfired exponentially. My chicken was immediately outed as “not home brined or home fried” and was unceremoniously removed from the reunion table.
One great aunt scolded me by saying that my husband’s pretty first wife would never have dared to bring “store chicken.” (Sigh.)
For the rest of the reunion, I endured the glares of shame. Trust me, if there was a scarlet letter for bringing “store chicken,” I would have been wearing it.
Safeguarding the recipes
Now, curiously, one would think an event where the food is a main draw would mean a cornucopia of recipe sharing. But in my experience this is not what happens.
My grandmother made a reunion dessert. It sounds weird but was amazing. Some of the ingredients were apricot baby food, whipped cream and angel food cake. I don’t know what else was in it, but I still think about it to this day.
The reason I have no knowledge of all the ingredients is because my grandmother wouldn’t share the recipe, and if she did it would be altered from the original because no one was going to make a better dessert than she did.
Shout out to my husband’s family for actually putting together a reunion cookbook – the “Kuehl Cafe.” (Which has, umm, let’s call it an unappetizing cover of, I’m guessing, the first Kuehl settlers in Texas). But it seems that the favorite recipes haven’t been included.
I guess that’s how they get you to keep going to the reunion. Come for the food, stay for the desserts and then finally the relatives.
