Food can evoke memories of family and provide clues about your ancestors. This post is part of my Discovering Family History through Food series.

I have a collection of family recipes, some of which are from my southern grandma on my mom’s side and some from my Venezuelan grandmother on my dad’s side.  They are hand-written on recipe cards and sheets of paper by my mom, my aunts, my mom’s friends and my grandmothers.  You can tell which ones were the most popular by the spots and splatters on them.

I never really thought about how they give clues to the culture that my grandmothers grew up in until I met Naomi Andrade-Smith and became a regular reader of her Villa Victoria Blog. Naomi has actually taken the traditional foods of her family and used the clues to research her family’s genealogy.

I already have quite a bit of information about my family history thanks to my mom’s dedicated research.  My southern grandma grew up mostly in southeast Texas, moving to southern Arizona around age 12.  Her recipes are a mixture of southern style foods such as butter beans, cole slaw, corn bread and various Mexican influenced dishes.  When we spent Christmas Eve at her house we always knew there would be tamales and pinto beans.  I think she chose those foods because they were so readily available, simple and comforting, yet easy to prepare compared to the traditional Christmas dinner she would make the next day.  Some of the other recipes in her box include flour tortillas and squash pie.

As my mom explained, “chicken on Sunday” was a big deal to my Grandma when she was growing up since it was usually the only meat they would have during the week.  I imagine that the reason that she would go across the Mexican border to buy less expensive cuts of meat for her family of 8 during the Depression was to try to give them a better menu than she had grown up with.  She made amazing pulled pork barbecue sandwiches – a great way to use an inexpensive cut of meat since it gets tenderized by the slow cooking.  When I make this recipe for my family I like to use my programmable slow cooker for the pork. Here is her recipe for the sauce:

Barbecue Sauce by Inez Hagan Critchley

• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1/2 cup tomato catsup
• 2 cups tomato sauce
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 tbsp butter
• 1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tbsp. sugar
• 1/2 cup vinegar
• Red pepper
• Black pepper
• Salt
• Mustard

Mix tomato sauce with an equal amount of water.  Add onion, garlic, catsup, butter, sugar, vinegar and Worcestershire sauce.  Cover and simmer for 10 minutes.  Season to taste.  Simmer 5 minutes more.  Have your meat cooked and shredded and add to sauce and simmer 10 or 15 minutes.

This is her original recipe.  Like every other cook,  I modify the recipe a bit to fit my taste when I make it.  As my mother-in-law says, “You can never really make the same soup twice”.  What she means is that what you have on hand and what you are craving in that moment will always influence the results in cooking.  Still, it’s always satisfying  for me to think that my kids getting a little taste of their Great-Grandma ‘Nez’ home cooking, even though they never met her.