Gena Philibert Ortega - From the Family Kitchen: Discover Your Food Heritage and Preserve Favorite Recipes

F ood. I know what youre thinking: What does food have to do with genealogy? For me, the real question is why doesnt everyone include food traditions in their family history?

I have always loved genealogy. As a child I listened to my maternal grandmother talk about her life and the lives of her ancestors, and I have been listening to the stories told by family members ever since. I was one of those kids who would rather eavesdrop on adults as they reminisce than go out and play with my peers. Stories about the stuff of everyday life are so vital to genealogy. The everyday lives of our ancestors are exciting to hear about; the names and dates on charts, not so much. Whats more everyday than food? Thats why food is essential to genealogy.

Ive also always been interested in the lives and roles of women throughout history. Most genealogists have trouble tracing female ancestors. Lets face it, womens history researchers have been writing for decades that women are overlooked by historians. Their lives are often relegated to the home. They lose their identity upon marriage and subsequent marriages when they change their surnames. Its not uncommon to look at a death certificate and in the place reserved for the name of the mother of the deceased there is the word unknown.

As I started teaching about ways to research female ancestors, it occurred to me that instead of feeling frustrated that women dont always appear in traditional genealogical resources, we should be looking at activities women participated in and how those activities left records of womens lives. In addition, we should be enhancing our research with social history. Social history tells us what life was like for everyday people during certain time periods. Just as many of us remember what we were doing when President John F. Kennedy was shot, the activities of our ancestors days influenced their lives.

Now, dont get me wrong, this is not a book solely about researching female ancestors. Everyone eats, and children and husbands help prepare family meals. But the tools found in this book can help you round out the research on your foremothers.

Along with genealogy, Ive always been interested in food. Not just in the eating of food but in what other people eat, how they prepare it, and the history behind it. Ever since I received TheNancy Drew Cookbook when I was a young girl, Ive been fascinated with how food tells a story.

My love of food crops up even now. One of my favorite types of Facebook posts is when people add photographs on their Facebook walls of what they had to eat. My family and friends have been known to send me photos of what they just ordered at a restaurant or their latest creation. This hunger, excuse the pun, probably stems back to my parents, who would go out to eat when I was a child and bring me back the empty shells and crab claws from their dinners. This was truly exciting to me, imagining all of the different types of food people enjoyed. Eating is such a seemingly mundane, ordinary experience, but it really isnt. Anyone who travels gets a sense of how food is different depending on where you live. And thats not taking into account other factors like ethnicity, religion, taste, and family influence. Thats what this book is about. The seemingly everyday act of eating provides us with information to preserve our present-day family history and the food traditions established before we were born.

This book is different from most genealogy books. In it, we explore the lives of our ancestors through the food they ate. This information is meant to complement the genealogy research that you are already conducting. This approach is an attempt to get past just names and dates and learn more about our ancestors and the lives they led. My hope is that this books will encourage you to do two things: First, learn more about what your families ate and the food traditions they carried with them; second, record your own food history, a history that will interest generations of your family to come.