Food, tradition and culture: what we keep around the table

Two neighbouring families make borscht differently. One adds beans; the other argues about sweet peppers. Someone remembers their mother’s sautéed vegetables, someone else their grandmother’s stove. The disagreement seems to concern a recipe, although often much more lies behind it: memories of home, a familiar Sunday routine, the wish to pass on to children something precious to you.

Food brings together the practical and the personal. We need to eat, yet we also want to recognise a taste, experience hospitality and share time with someone. That is why changing how we eat sometimes affects relationships more than we expected.

A child may not remember every conversation at their grandmother’s home, yet recognise the smell of baked apples years later. For someone else, celebration still means the varenyky everyone made together, even if half of the dumplings fell apart in the pot. What matters is taste combined with people, place and repetition.

Your own associations will not necessarily match someone else’s. For one person, kutia, the traditional sweet grain dish, brings family warmth; for another, a difficult evening and demands to behave properly. One favourite dish cannot define a person’s character, and childhood cannot explain all their eating habits. You can ask about a particular experience while leaving room for an unexpected answer.

Region, season, available ingredients and family agreements change a recipe. The same dish name may mean a different thickness, way of serving or selection of fillings. Paying attention to these differences, recording stories and cooking together are ways of preserving tradition.

In 2022, the culture of Ukrainian borscht cooking was inscribed on UNESCO’s List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding. Passing on knowledge, shared practices and connections between people matter here too. This does not require every family to cook it in the same way. UNESCO’s article on Ukrainian borscht.

The host has spent several hours cooking and wants to see that the work is appreciated. A guest is already full but accepts another helping to avoid causing offence. When this happens repeatedly, gratitude and obligation become hard to distinguish at the table.

An answer that includes both parts can help: “It’s delicious, thank you. I’m full now; could I take a little home?” The option to decline needs to remain real. Care can also mean hearing “enough,” offering water or simply sitting together without another portion.

Conversations about nutrition often begin too sharply: either everything homemade is unquestionably healthy, or old recipes must be replaced completely. Real menus allow more nuance. Frequency, quantity, preparation, other meals during the day and individual needs all matter.

You can keep the varenyky and add vegetables to lunch, add less salt to cooked food, prepare pulses more often or change your drinks. A festive dish need not become an everyday breakfast. Nor does every family celebration need to turn into a lesson about calories or a public discussion of someone’s body.

Avoiding a food may involve an allergy, religion, ethical beliefs, how you feel or personal taste. Hosts can prepare more easily if you explain beforehand and specifically: “I don’t eat meat; I could bring a bean dish.” With a confirmed allergy, ingredients and possible contact with the allergen need a separate discussion; offering to remove a piece of food from a plate may not be enough.

Guests do not have to prove their choices are better than anyone else’s. Hosts do not have to test whether a person “really can’t” eat something. With an agreement before the visit, there is more room at the table for spending time together.

After moving, you may lack the familiar grain, cookware or person who knew the proportions by eye. You find substitutes, call relatives and write down for the first time things you had never noticed before. Changing an ingredient does not necessarily take away a dish’s meaning.

You can preserve the way you gather, peel vegetables together and tell the recipe’s story. Tradition often takes a different form in new circumstances. Someone without the energy to recreate a festive table today need not prove their cultural belonging through the amount they cook.

Choose one dish and ask the person who makes it who taught them, what used to be added differently, when it was served and what feels most personal in the recipe. Record details as well as grams: “the dough should stop sticking,” “Grandad always asked for more herbs.”

Then cook together, if possible. A record like this leaves the next person more than instructions. And permission to add a detail of their own helps the tradition continue in ordinary life, as addresses, ingredients and the people around the table change.

Ask two people close to you about the same family dish. When was it made? Who was usually in the kitchen? What does each remember most? One might recall the smell of a pie, the other how tired everyone was before the celebration. Keep both answers without correcting one to make a prettier story. Beside them, you could write what you would like to continue in your own family and which part of the custom you would change.

The MriyaRun EQ Emotional Intelligence Journal can be a place to examine a specific conversation: what you were offered, what you said, what feelings arose and what you actually wanted. Irritation at yet another helping, for instance, may sometimes reflect a wish for your refusal to be heard. Writing about it can help you find your own words before the next visit.