So, what dish makes you feel connected to your culture or family history? I think I would say cabbage rolls. I mean, I can remember my mom making them when I was a kid. And — but the, the big — the reason I think it comes to the front of mind is not the frequency with which my mom made them, but the fact that in third grade, we had a class project where everybody brought in family recipes, and then it was turned into a cookbook. And actually, in my book, mine’s the first and the recipe says this is a popular main dish in our family.
Uh, so the entry that my dad — this is — my mom wrote this, I did not write this as a third grader — is this is a popular main dish in our family and traditionally is always served on holidays along with the turkey, ham, or whatever. So that may be true. I don’t really have memory of that. But I guess it’s not hard for me to imagine that my Cze- — uh, I was gonna say my Checkoslovakian step-grandmother, but in fact she was Belgian, but whatever. I’m not surprised to hear that in my Czech family, because my fa- — my grandfather was Czech, that they would have served cabbage rolls, and that this was going to be a holiday accompaniment or whatever because it was a lot of work. My mom didn’t love to cook. She didn’t make it that often. Anyway, but because of that being the family lore, which I am reminded of every time I open up this ratty little cookbook from third grade which has mimeographed pages, um, I know that that’s — if ever I were to have a cabbage roll, I definitely feel like it’s a family dish.