About The Kitchen Dance
The Kitchen Dance is about my efforts to connect with my ancestors—focusing specifically on my four grandparents—through their culinary traditions. The title comes from watching relatives or old friends cooking together, gracefully navigating around one another, chatting happily or in silence, but seeming to know without negotiation who needs to be at the stove or at the sink or at the cutting board at any given moment. The trope is that I might somehow be able to achieve, figuratively, a similar choreography with my grandparents and their forebears.
The Kitchen Dance is not a traditional cookbook. In fact, it is not a cookbook at all; a genuine cookbook includes only recipes that have been tested and retested. Rather, it’s the account of my attempt, after years of researching my family history, to find a different way of deeply knowing my forebears.
But don’t worry, there are also recipes!
And there are photos! Over 80 years of photos of family and friends cooking together and eating together, and of the dishes we’ve shared.
This is the kind of history that happens not in libraries but at the kitchen table. It is the kind of history that can easily be lost if not lovingly tended. I hope readers who share my family backgrounds will help me preserve our shared heritage by contributing their own recipes-cum-family stories.
Culinary Traditions I Inherited
At Daisy’s Table: The culinary tradition inherited by my maternal grandmother, Daisy Ward, and passed on to me by her daughter Elsa, reflects nearly 400 years of North American English survival. Daisy’s New World journey started with the Puritans who migrated from England to the colonies in 1638 and relocated to Canada in the mid 1700s through the Planters movement. Daisy herself was born in Canada and brought to central Massachusetts as a child.
Dishes Fit for a King: My great-grandfather Arthur King immigrated to the US from Victorian England in the 1870s. My maternal grandmother, Beatrice King, represented a link through her father Arthur to the formal, disciplined traditions of the English “Old Country” in a new world. A shout-out here to Vergetta Jane Sayers, my grandmother’s mother, whose heritage, going back a couple of generations, was Pennsylvania Dutch.
Culinary Traditions I Had to Go Looking For
Rescuing my Dahart Heritage: Because my mother was not on speaking terms with her father during my lifetime, I never met my maternal grandfather, John Dahart (originally DesHaies), though he lived until I was 15 years old. It took me many years to figure out that everything I already knew from my in-laws about French-Canadian cooking also applied to my own grandfather.
Rescuing my Stodola Heritage: My paternal grandfather, Edwin Stodola, was disowned by his Ashkenazi Jewish family for marrying my grandmother, a gentile. The rift was complete. My only recourse for learning about his culinary heritage has been to “borrow” relatives with recipes from my friends. My search for the “lost” flavors of the Diaspora continues.
A Special Message to Readers of My Jersey Shore Trilogy
If you’re familiar with my Substack sister publication, My Jersey Shore Trilogy, you already know the mixed-genre essays, blending personal stories with historical research, that are the hallmark of my writing. And what topic could be better suited to this approach than that of The Kitchen Dance?!
You also know quite a bit about my father, who figures heavily in all three sections. Through his mother Beatrice King and his father Edwin Stodola, he is also linked to The Kitchen Dance.
If You Share Any of These Traditions—or Even If You Don’t…
This is a community table. I invite you to join the dance:
Become a Guest Contributor: I will feature reader recipes from these four culinary traditions whenever I can. Be sure to add a little explanation or commentary to provide a context for the recipe.
Help Solve the Puzzle: You don’t have to include a recipe. If you have roots in these specific cultures, your memories or family stories might be a missing ingredient in our shared culinary tradition.
Don’t be a Stranger: While this space is explicitly dedicated to documenting my family’s traditions, if you are trying to connect with your own ancestral culinary past, wherever it may take you, you are welcome at this table. We can all benefit from each other’s experiences. The comments are always open as a space to share who is dancing in your kitchen!
Subscribe: Don’t miss a post or an opportunity to contribute a treasured recipe or family food story of your own!
