52 Ancestors Week 2: Family Legends

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 2's theme is "Family Legend." Is there a tale that's been passed down in your family? Have you proven (or maybe disproven) it? Perhaps you have an ancestor who was legendary (or should have been).

And there came a day. A day unlike any other....

   

     Do you like the new banner? I figured with the new year upon us it was time for a change. I'm not saying the old one was bad or anything. It's just that I wasn't THAT big a fan of using a Google Maps image of Haverhill. I'm not entirely sure why I did it in the first place. Ah well. Change is good and I like what I came up with. It will be there for a long time and I still have the old banner in my archive. So, don't worry about that! 

    Anyway! Family legends are common in every family. I talked about a few of them in this blog from June of 2019. In the blog, I talked about a few family legends. One of them was about my supposed connection to Queen Isabella of Spain. There was also a bit about a possible connection to an Italian Count Ferraiolo and a third legend was about how either Jeremiah Felker or John Sargent Fisher could have played in the White House band after the Civil War. It's January 2021 and I can safely say that I still have no connection to Queen Isabella and I have no clue who played in the White House band even though Johnny was listed as a musician in the US census AND on his Civil War pension.

     This time I think I'm going to take a different route. What ancestor should be considered legendary? That's actually hard for me to say because there are so many who COULD be legends in their own right. I honestly don't like playing favorites and I definitely don't like to brag. Spotlighting an ancestor or two is one thing. Bragging is something else! How about this? Let's talk about how my grandmother and her sisters' cooking were the stuff of legends!

    Grandma Ollie and her sisters loved to cook! I mean they LOVED baking for friends and family and they were so good at it! For example, my great-aunt Josie made the best eggplant parmesan. It certainly wasn't the healthiest thing to eat by a longshot. But, I didn't care. I loved it and so did the rest of the family.

  When Josie passed away in the 1990s, I thought that the recipe for eggplant parmesan went to her daughter, Carol. Every Mother's Day, we would go to Carol's house and have a huge meal. It was a thing for us to all get together in May. I'll explain in the Mother's Day blog later this year. Spoilers.

    One of the dishes was this yummy eggplant parmesan and it was like butter! It literally melted in your mouth. For years I had thought that she was the mastermind behind the delicious confection made with such skill and grace. I mean she already made pretty decent biscotti and other dishes were just as good!

    Carol unfortunately passed away about a year ago due to cancer and at the funeral I talked to her daughter about eggplant parmesan because my father had been making it with varying degrees of success. He had been watching Pasta Grannies on YouTube and my father wanted to emulate them and other Italian chefs on the Internet. I asked about the recipe and my cousin Sandra says "Chris! I've been the one making my grandma's eggplant parmesan all these years!" I was surprised. I feel like Carol might have told me but I forgot. But, Sandra set me straight and I hope at the next gettogether we get another helping of the eggplant goodness. If I'm not met with a wooden spoon to the back of the head, I mean....

The Carrabs sisters!

    Then there was Auntie Louise. Louise was great at making desserts and being a kid I always had to sample a cookie or two...or three...before dinner. She would make these little Italian cookies that were soooo good. My most favorite of her desserts was actually something a little simple. You take an angel food cake cover it in Hershey's chocolate syrup and sprinkle coconut shavings on it. She called them icicles as she would put them in the fridge for a while.

    One of my dad's other cousins recently tried to replicate that delicious recipe and it was good. Not as good as hers of course. It was still pretty decent! I loved her cooking so much that I made a point to note how awesome it was on her WikiTree page!

    Finally, we come to my grandma Olympia "Ollie" Carrabs. Chances are you are all hungry reading this. It really can't be helped! Grandma made pasta e fajioli for my brother and I. Basically it was little pasta and beans swimming in a red sauce. It wasn't the only thing she made. Remember, she was always a hostess at her house. So, she made quite a bit of food. My great-aunts would do the same. They would make food and bring it over so everyone could have something to eat! It's honestly a wonder I didn't roll out of the door on the way out of the house!

    There you have it, Internet! My grandma and her sisters' cooking was the stuff of legends. Not because they were great chefs or anything. It was more that they did their cooking with love. They more than likely learned a lot from their mother, Clementina and those lessons were passed down to everyone including my dad. I really think that anything can make anyone a legend. Small acts of kindness can have huge ramifications for someone. It doesn't have to be gigantic and world-saving. Little things like making food can be legendary because it brings people together. That's what breaking bread is all about..

    So, do yourselves a favor! Go to the kitchen. Find your grandma's recipe for whatever you liked as a kid and cook it. Mangia! Your grandma will thank you for it because to you she will be a....wait for it.....

LEGEND!

See ya next time!