Kvasnak Home Cooking

Our family has it roots in Bergnersreuth, Franconia (Germany), Eastern Slovakia (Čirč)
& Hungary (Keczkemet). Many of the dishes that we enjoyed as kids came from there. But our cooking was also strongly influenced by the invention of home frozen food storage (Birdseye), canned soups (Campbells), TV dinners, Americana, and Betty Crocker.
No purist would feel at home in a Kvasnak kitchen. Influences from many places are blended in a Kvasnak kitchen. Grandpa Kvasnak’s mushroom hunting skills, Grandma Kvasnak’s swifter than Yan-Can-Cook slicing when making homemade noodles, Grandma Pine’s belief that you should have at least two vegetables of a different color on every lunch and dinner plate challenge Emerald’s Kick-it-up attitudes of the Cooking Channel.
Dad’s Boiled Pig’s Feet, Mom’s Frozen Fruit Salad – as ethnically different as they are, they weave the web of our eating habits. If you have forgotten them, go back. Go back and try them out. Memories will flood your mind. Memories of your childhood will return to you and pull you into their magical spell of childhood.
Do not be afraid of where we came from. Do not be afraid of who you are. But put aside differences, put aside bias, and let us recognize what we have in common rather than what makes us different.
Sit down to some Stuffed Cabbage, some Mushroom Soup, some Spaetzle and think about the other members of our family. Do you remember harvesting cranberries on the shores of Lake Okachobee? Do you remember letting those cranberries ripen in the sun on the dock? Do you remember gathering blueberries in New Hampshire and making a Blueberry Pie? Do you remember buying lobsters in Gloucester from the boats and cooking them live at home? Do you remember Mom’s first oven-baked chicken and scraping up the drippings from the oven pan? Do you remember Bishop’s Lebanese Restaurant in Lawrence MA? And Mom’s hors d’oeuvres at Christmas: white bread cut out with Christmas cookie cutters smeared with the tamale and the row of lobsters? Do you remember Grandma Pine’s chocolate Christmas turtles, her butter cookies and her spice bars? Do you remember Christmas caroling on Smithshire Estates with top hats?
Those are my memories. I am sure that you have more and others. Please share them with us all. These memories will keep Mom and Dad and all of us alive.