This First Individual column is written by Agata Antonow, who lives in Hamilton. For extra details about First Individual tales, see the FAQ.
I set down my luggage, peeked into the kitchen and shivered. After spending a number of years within the Maritimes, I moved again to Hamilton to take care of my mother’s residence in April. The home was quiet and empty, nevertheless it was the kitchen that felt haunted by the previous. My mom has a distinct range and fridge however the bones of the room are all there. The identical wooden and white cabinets, the identical stainless-steel sink and burgundy tile.
In a flash, I am eight and watching my late father put together pickled herring in our kitchen. I turned away from the sourness again then, however at present, what I would not give to have a style. At 9, I used to be pleading for peanut butter sandwiches for my faculty lunch, turning my nostril up at beet soups and cabbage rolls.
Again then, my relationship with Polish meals was sophisticated. Form of like my relationship with my household. There was completely love there, however I additionally felt pulled in two instructions. I used to be born in Wroclaw, Poland, and moved to Canada with my household after I was 4. There was my mother and father’ want to carry onto conventional meals and the previous and my eagerness as a baby to be like everybody else — to adapt to being Canadian, to maneuver ahead.
The peeks I had into North American life got here by our TV display — Household Ties, Degrassi, TVO — and I needed that so badly. The household meals collectively, the straightforward arguments wrapped up in 30-minute segments, the bike rides with buddies. My mother and father could not perceive why I needed a life so totally different than what they and I had. For years of my childhood, my bewildered mother and father and I see-sawed between affection and arguments about how Canadian I used to be allowed to be.
As a baby, I could not perceive the pull my mother and father felt to the previous and the concern they felt over something new. As an grownup, I’m wondering if shifting again will begin to untie a few of these knots.
Hamilton has at all times been an immigrant city, and now that I’ve moved again I discover this within the grocery shops. On a scorching late summer season day, I wandered up and down the aisles and observed cheeses flown in from around the globe, Polish ham and cookies from Portugal amongst different worldwide meals.
Within the native library, I browsed cookbooks and considered my household’s kitchen. Might I rewrite my story? I believed in regards to the Polish meals I had handed up in my eagerness to be accepted by classmates who ate bologna for lunch and spoke English effortlessly.
One explicit recipe within the desk of contents of a Polish cookbook caught my eye: piernik — a standard gingerbread that takes six weeks to 6 months to treatment earlier than baking. This can be a kind of dessert that I’ve had in eating places and shops however that my father, the cook dinner within the household, by no means made. He most well-liked savoury dishes — sensible meals that might fill our stomachs quite than candy indulgences.
At that second, it felt like the appropriate recipe to attempt to make. A part of it was company — the power to make my very own selections. Earlier than, I needed to take heed to tales of our household historical past and now I may select to arrange my very own meals and the way I interacted with my heritage. It would not be spoon-fed. A part of it was grief, too. I can now not ask my father about his experiences or watch him cook dinner once more as a result of he has been gone for greater than 20 years.
Now, it was as much as me to create my traditions.
If it labored out, I’d get to create my very own custom at Christmas — one thing far-off from the silent and darkish Christmases I bear in mind my mother and father creating. That was their private custom.
Armed with a trusty can of cooking spray as a makeshift rolling pin, gingerbread maker Jon Lovitch pumps out hundreds of gingerbread creations each vacation season. The catch? It requires him to start out baking and constructing in the summertime.
This recipe for this sort of gingerbread dating back more than 600 years appears like the appropriate factor to make now. Time has stretched out for me. I am now not chasing the shiny lives I as soon as noticed on TV and I can reexamine the concern my mother and father will need to have felt when coming to this nation — of their 40s, in regards to the age I’m now.
As I stacked books on my shelf and unpacked brown bins, my piernik dough cured in my fridge, able to be rediscovered at Christmas. By then it would have modified and grown into one thing particular.
I do not understand how this story ends. My mom and I are well mannered to one another, however the area between us stays and we do not discuss my makes an attempt to reconnect with my heritage.
After I ask her in regards to the previous, she will get annoyed and dismisses me with an impatient wave of her hand: “I do not bear in mind. Why do you surprise about that?” It happens to me that our positions have modified. Whereas she as soon as seemed again and yearned for her former residence and I needed to blaze ahead in our new nation, now it’s she who desires to depart the previous behind and I am the one inquisitive about historical past. Is that this what getting older is?
As for my cake, I hope that my dough turns into one thing darkish and wealthy and stuffed with heat flavour — one thing I want I may share a chunk with the lady I as soon as was.
Recipe for Piernik
Soften 113 grams of darkish honey, 70 grams of candy butter and 57 grams of sugar in a pot. Add 2 teaspoons of cocoa, 300 grams of flour, one teaspoon floor allspice, one teaspoon floor cinnamon, one teaspoon floor ginger, one egg, ½ teaspoon of cloves, a pinch of pepper, ¾ teaspoon of baking soda and a ½ teaspoon of nutmeg.
Let the combination treatment for a minimum of just a few days within the fridge, however ideally let it relaxation for six weeks to 6 months.
Place the dough in a greased loaf pan and bake at 350 F for 45 minutes or till achieved. As soon as cooled, minimize the cake into layers. Unfold plum jam between every layer and frost on all sides with chocolate.
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