A Family Recipe Tells a Story

BY MARIAH HOGUE

During this Elder Connection, Mariah Hogue interviewed her grandmother, Darlene Seymour, about a special recipe from her childhood.

Growing up, Darlene’s mother, Rhoda Seymour, stressed the importance of making sure everything went to use without waste. She found a purpose for each part of meat, plant, or fish and often created her own recipe or dish, giving it a unique name.

Darlene Seymour recalls enjoying one recipe, in particular: head cheese. She mentions she would trade it at school among her peers since it was such a hit.

Head cheese is a mixture of pork hocks and moose meat. Her mom, late matriarch Rhoda Seymour made it many times throughout her childhood. Darlene observed from an early age that her mom knew recipes from memory and didn’t need a book to measure.

Although there is no record of an exact recipe, the ingredients for head cheese are as follows:

• Moose meat

• Pork hocks

• Salt

• Pepper

• Pickling seasoning

• Crushed fresh garlic

Head cheese was only made during the winter months and stored in a container in the fridge. Head cheese is described as similar to lunch meat (spam, bologna, etc.). They would eat it on bread as a sandwich. Rhoda would boil the meat, and that would help form the gelatin to give it a spam-like consistency.

The objective of this interview was to understand how food and culture intersect within the author’s family. The author wrote everything in this article based on their personal experiences and opinions.