Christmas
Eve is one of the few traditional celebrations in my family. All of my siblings come over and my dad
makes polenta for dinner. Polenta
is a dish made from corn meal, water, cheese and butter. It takes some time, since you need to
heat and stir the ingredients until the mixture becomes mostly solid. When my dad was growing up, his
grandmother would make polenta in a huge copper pot whenever he and his parents came over for
dinner. To serve it, she would
flip the pot upside down on a towel in the middle of the dining table. Everyone would cut a piece from
there. In order to celebrate our
French heritage – my grandparents emigrated from Europe in the early part of
the twentieth century – my dad makes polenta on the holiday we always spend
together. It’s the one part of my
French heritage that has survived through the years. Unlike my grandmother, though, my dad serves the polenta on
a plate.
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| Vive la France! |
