Peter Vega, Executive Director, Chicago Cultural Alliance

Taste from Home is collection of recipes and stories inspired by the food that defines who we are and where we come from. As we are all home exploring new recipes and cuisines, we encourage you to share a recipe and story with us that connects you to your family and cultural heritage.

Please consider making a tax-deductible donation today, if you are able. If you are unable to donate, you can still participate by sharing a recipe by using hashtags #tastefromhome, #tastefromhomerecipe, & #chicagocultural on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

 
I am humbled and honored to have the opportunity to lead the Chicago Cultural Alliance as its Executive Director and to advance its mission to support, promote, and connect museums and cultural heritage institutions.

The Members of the Alliance have taught me that museums and cultural heritage institutions are more than hosts for cultural events and performances. These institutions are pillars of their communities, neighborhoods, and the city overall. They are critical to the development of cross-cultural understanding by preserving and protecting the identity and characteristics of all the diverse cultures that make up the mosaic that is Chicago.

This is why it is imperative that we all participate in today’s historic Black Lives Matter movement. We must collectively support our Black communities and share the burden they’ve carried alone for hundreds of years. They need support from all of us. We must embrace, share, and amplify one another’s cultures, histories, and traditions.

Taste From Home was created to remind us of what makes us similar. Food and stories within each of our cultures help us to learn more about one another and celebrate our diversity, similarities, and differences. I hope you can join us in this celebration by participating in Taste From Home.

Tell us a story about your family and friends and how you all come together to celebrate your culture with food! The Chicago Cultural Alliance wants to elevate more diverse voices in our city. We do this by supporting cultural heritage museums and centers that promote and support cross-cultural understanding, diversity, and inclusion. We hope you will consider making a donation to help us continue this vital work.

Andrew Leith, Conservation and Collection Program Manager, Chicago Cultural Alliance

Taste from Home is collection of recipes and stories inspired by the food that defines who we are and where we come from. As we are all home exploring new recipes and cuisines, we encourage you to share a recipe and story with us that connects you to your family and cultural heritage.

Please consider making a tax-deductible donation today, if you are able. If you are unable to donate, you can still participate by sharing a recipe by using hashtags #tastefromhome, #tastefromhomerecipe, & #chicagocultural on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

My name is Andrew Leith. I am the Conservation and Collections Program Manager at the Chicago Cultural Alliance. I have been at the Alliance since the beginning to 2017 but my relationship with this incredible organization dates back considerably further than that. You could say the Alliance and I came of age together over the past 16 years. When I was a young anthropologist in undergrad at Loyola University Chicago, I began volunteering as a facilitator for a recently minted program known as Cultural Connections through the Field Museum’s Center for Cultural Understanding and Change (CCUC).  It was through that formative experience with community collaboration that I came to visit several of the city’s treasured cultural centers and became friends with amazing community stakeholders such as Soo Lon Moy, Dorothie Shah, and the late Stanley Balzekas Jr. As it so happens, that program evolved into the Chicago Cultural Alliance.

I love my work. I am honored to be invited into the museum collections spaces our Core Members call home. It is a privilege to work hand in hand with these visionaries I now call friends to help to care for their collections.

Though it has many iterations, my Grandmother’s particular recipe for haluski derives from an old Slovak mountain dish comprised of potato dumplings and fried cabbage. My great-grandparents brought it with them from the village of Klenovec, Slovakia to the United States when they immigrated in 1912. Simple, hearty, and cost-effective, it fed five children on the family farm in northern Wisconsin during the Great Depression. I grew up loving Grandma’s haluski and spent many happy moments helping her to prepare it—consequently learning how to replicate the recipe myself. As with many old recipes, it is the product of experience, taste, touch, and smell rather than any proper written instructions. A dash of this and a scoop of that—this recipe is very forgiving and can be easily adjusted. Today, I continue to use my great-grandmother’s heirloom cutting board whenever I prepare haluksi, and the smell of frying cabbage evokes memories of my grandmother’s kitchen and her stories of a Slovak-American upbringing.  This is a tradition I look forward to share with my own son.

The recipe is in the link. A donation is not required to view the recipe. Any donations made will support the Chicago Cultural Alliance’s mission to promote, support, and connect museums and centers of cultural heritage for a more inclusive and equitable Chicago.

Vanessa Vergara, Board President, Chicago Cultural Alliance

Taste from Home is a collection of recipes and stories inspired by the food that defines who we are and where we come from. As we are all home exploring new recipes and cuisines, we encourage you to share a recipe and story with us that connects you to your family and cultural heritage.

Please consider making a tax-deductible donation today, if you are able. If you are unable to donate, you can still participate by sharing a recipe by using hashtags #tastefromhome, #tastefromhomerecipe, & #chicagocultural on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

Why I serve as Board President of the Chicago Cultural Alliance:

I believe that cultural heritage matters and should be valued, shared, celebrated, and preserved.  If you do not know where you come from, you will never know where you are headed.  My cultural heritage is my personal compass.  My parents and grandparents emigrated from the Philippines so our family could pursue the American dream. 

I am proud to serve as the Board President of the Chicago Cultural Alliance because our work connecting, promoting, and supporting centers of heritage is so critical.  Being in the middle of a global pandemic reminds us all to get back to the basics.  What do we need to survive and thrive?  Working on this essay about my Lola’s punch transported me out of this pandemic and back into my childhood.  My childhood was greatly influenced by my heritage as a Filipino American raised in a family of recent immigrants.  I also learned something new about my own understanding of my personal history as you will soon learn! 

Who taught you this recipe & how did you learn it?         

I learned this recipe by watching my Lola (grandmother in Tagalog) and Mom make it ever since I was a kid.  I experienced this recipe by taste, enjoying many wonderful servings of Lola’s birthday punch. 

What culture/country is this dish from?

This recipe is a product of the Filipino-American culture.  My Lola invented it!

In the process of working on my Taste From Home essay, I learned that this punch is not actually a recipe from the Philippines as I had originally thought.  I found out from my Mom that my Lola had invented this recipe for me!  My Lola wanted to come up with something special for my first birthday and created this masterful birthday refreshment.  Her punch was such a hit that our punch bowl had to be refilled twice during my first birthday party.

When do you normally eat this dish? Is it for a holiday or a celebration?

You would typically serve this punch at a birthday party.  This recipe is also associated with any large family celebration, such as Christmas or New Year’s.  Anytime we have a large family gathering, you can guarantee, Lola’s punch will be served.

Why is it important to you?

This recipe is important to me because it symbolizes joy, family, and love.  It will forever be the iconic taste of my childhood.  It transports me back to simpler times when the world seemed less complicated and more innocent.

Growing up in a large, boisterous Filipino American family, some of my fondest childhood memories revolved around birthday celebrations.  Now I find myself at a time when my family and I cannot gather for large celebrations (or any celebrations for that matter).  Instead, we are setting up hazy, family Zoom calls and FaceTime sessions which are a poor substitute for being together, in person, with those you love. 

I now realize how easily I took for granted the memories of being able to gather for large family celebrations around a huge bowl of Lola’s heavenly punch.  Those memories are my plane ticket out of this pandemic.  That is why heritage and personal history matters. Memory is a transformative gift that can take you anywhere, anytime.

Even during a global health crisis, you can leave it all behind, even if for just a short time, and learn something new about yourself and carry those memories with pride and share them with others.  I encourage you to take a journey, without hesitation, and find your own plane ticket out of the pandemic to a destination in your personal heritage and share it with others with joy and pride!