It’s kind of comforting the way nearly every holiday, both
religious and secular, has traditional food or drink associated
with it.
It’s kind of comforting the way nearly every holiday, both religious and secular, has traditional food or drink associated with it.
The New Year’s champagne; the Easter lamb and chocolate bunnies; the Passover matzo; the Memorial Day, Fourth of July and Labor Day barbecues; Halloween caramel apples and candy; Thanksgiving turkey and pumpkin pie; and Christmas ham or Hanukkah latkes – the calendar is marked with foods that represent a time of year, even a feeling.
Family events such as weddings and births also have Epicurean traditions: Jordan almonds and wedding cake; cigars and brandy for celebrating births.
Somehow, though, when it comes to special dishes or food rituals, graduation day got left out.
This seems surprising because graduation, whether from high school or college, marks an important step in life for a young person. And it has many other traditions linked to it.
For example, ceremonial gowns and the baccalaureate ceremony, in various forms, go back to roughly the 1300s, and the flat hat – the mortarboard – dates back to the 1600s.
The yearbook as we know it started about 1845, although students kept scrapbooks of memorabilia long before this.
Class rings, the march to “Pomp and Circumstance,” and throwing the mortarboard in the air all go back at least a century.
So where is the traditional commencement bun? The festive graduation pudding? Maybe it’s because families have a limited number of graduations to celebrate that no special foods have evolved. The graduates themselves celebrate with a keg of beer and pizza.
And all the Web had to offer by way of special graduation foods were cupcakes topped with graham cracker mortarboards or cookies rolled to look like scrolled diplomas.
So herewith I offer a menu and recipes for a family-friendly casual meal, which can be cooked inside or on a grill. You can use it to celebrate your graduate, or save it a couple of weeks and use to celebrate Father’s Day.
