When I think of the word family, I feel disconnected. On TV, there are picture perfect families in sitcoms, intricated and messed up ones on dramas, and everything in-between. Even the dramatic families were still tied together through blood and love. Most of my family I don’t even know. If I did know them, we rarely talk. I get so jealous of my friends who seem to be so tight and close with their parents, siblings, even aunts. My boyfriend comes from two large Italian families, so you can tell there’s already a large difference between him and I.
In all the emptiness that is having that connection, there are still some very important things that do hold me to my mom and the mothers that came before her. For one, our family dish: túrós csusza.
I never got to meet my grandmother on my mom’s side. By the time I could remember things, everyone was either living on the west coast, no longer speaking to us, or had passed on. My mother’s side was always an empty part of me. It seemed like the only thing that passed on was our family’s version of túrós csusza.
The dish is simple, it’s known as a “poor man’s casserole” and comes from our Hungarian roots. When I took my AncestryDNA test, I learned that my ancestors were wine farmers in the country side of Hungary. Most likely eating a fresher version of this dish that didn’t use store bought bacon. At the heart of it, the recipe calls for four ingredients:
- Pasta- we use Pennsylvania Dutch Egg Noodles
- Bacon- any type of bacon is fine, we freeze them and cut the entire block into tiny bits and fry
- Cottage cheese- used to mix the pasta and bacon
- Butter- lines the bowl where the pasta is poured into after straining
There are four ingredients that hold so much power to me. It would be a special occasion when my mom would make this, mostly because between the three of us, we’d be eating it for the rest of the week. I’d hear stories about my grandmother, my mother living in different states as they traveled with her step-father. The times my grandmother’s chain smoking really caused some problems. And so much more.
Even without having a family, I feel like I know them. I feel like they wanted me to have this recipe to keep passing down (if I have kids) or pass around to friends and family. My ancestors live on with each bite.