Trail Mix Tradition - Defining “Traditional Foodways”
Last week I had the privilege of going on a camping trip to Algonquin Park’s Rosebary Lake with my daughters, sister, nieces, and father. This three-generation camping trip has become a yearly tradition. At least “tradition” is how my kids talk about this trip. They talk about the traditional people who go, the tradition of making flavoured hot chocolates in the morning, and the traditional games they play. Yet 2024 was only the second year we’ve gone on a camping trip together. Is two years enough to make something a tradition?
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When I think back on my childhood, I remember going camping in Algonquin Park EVERY summer. I was shocked, SHOCKED, last year to learn that we’d only been twice. In my mind, we were an adventurous and outdoorsy family and those two camping trips have been keystone pieces in defining this part of who I am. They’ve also informed the type of mother I want to be and the type of experiences I want my children to have. Could those two trips really have been enough to have had the impact I believe they’ve had?
There are a lot of different elements that inform what a “tradition” is and how “traditional food” might function as a means of shaping identity, social norms, and family dynamics. Before we get to the specific examples of traditional food that relate to camping, let’s define the term “traditional food.”
When I started working on my Master’s paper, “Eating Up Tradition: An Autoethnographic Study of Evolving Traditional Food,” I had anticipated that my participants would see the word “tradition” as referring to a specific food or grouping of foods that had come be expected at certain times of the year or during certain celebrations. I had assumed that since the definition of the word “tradition” refers to something that has been “handed down... from generation to generation,” they would talk about foods that had a long history in our family. I had expected stories about the turkey at Christmas or about seasonal foods like pies (see last week’s post “Peach Pie and Pie Crusts – How Food Creates Identity”) or that included seasonal produce like raspberries (see “Raspberry Memories”).
Yet it quickly became clear that the term “traditional foods” was more complicated than the simple definition I had proposed. People talked about all sorts of foods, including some that were relatively new to their families. During my PhD, I dug harder to find an established definition of “traditional food” which led me to the Directorate-General for Research’s publication on traditional foods for the European Commission “European Research on Traditional Foods.” In it, they define traditional foods as “foods that have been consumed locally or regionally for many generations. The methods of preparation of these local specialties have been passed down from generation to generation and have become part of the fabric of life... In some cases, they are not formally documented recipes, but are… always [associated] with local history” (6). Importantly, the European Commission’s definition came with the following caution: “[t]raditional food can mean a million different things to a million individuals. Obtaining agreement on a definition that fully encompasses the variety of products is not an easy task” (6).
Inherent in the concept of tradition and traditional food is an element of continuity. Tradition, “according to current theoretical discourse, requires a choice, requires willful participation, no matter how automatic and inviolable the ‘same as last year’ makes continuance appear. Traditions are self-maintaining only as long as the group values age and interprets survival as positive, as worthy of respect: perpetuation has to be recognized, allowed, and encouraged” (Kathy Neustadt, Clambake: A History and Celebration of an American Tradition, 162).
Thus tradition necessitates memory. Scholars who study food and foodways see in food a place where personal and group memories are stored. This is because the brain connects the smells and tastes of specific foods to particular places, people, and emotions (For more, see Beagan et al.’s Acquired Taste: Why Families Eat the Way They Do; Vincent Agro’s In Grace’s Kitchen: Memoires and Recipes from an Italian-Canadian Childhood; Diane Tye’s Baking as Biography: A Life Story in Receipes; David Sutton’s Remembrance of Repasts: An Anthropology of Food and Memory and Janice Wong’s Chow: From China to Canada: Memories of Food + Family). Nostalgic memories of certain foods, a longing for food of an earlier time, may motivate individuals to make those foods themselves – to continue a tradition they believe to be important and meaningful. These foods are associated with stories that have been repeated “over time and by theme, communicating deep emotions about a past perceived to be rich and rewarding” (Neustadt, Clambake: A History and Celebration of an American Tradition, 178).
In my MA paper, “Eating Up Tradition: An Autoethnographic Study of Evolving Traditional Food,” I advanced a definition of traditional foods that has three tenets:
1) foods that are remembered from childhood but that cannot be, or are not easily, replicated today;
2) foods that we still make and look forward to though they may not be mainstream; and
3) foods that are culturally significant.
I’d like to add a fourth tenet:
4) foods that have a nostalgic component associated with a positive longing for an earlier time.
How does camping relate to traditional food? Well, there are two important food elements connected to the four backpacking canoe trips I’ve gone on in my lifetime.
1. The “Traditional” Menu
When we planned our first trip last year, my father pulled out his trusty, two-man (now two-person) camping checklist. He had a set menu he’d relied on for years that included hamburgers for supper, bacon and eggs for breakfast, bagels for lunch… So he, my sister, and I, of course, planned a similar menu and repeated that same menu this year. Trail mix was one of the tried, tested, and true menu items.
2. Making My Own Trail Mix
Those who know me know that I’m a picky eater. I’m small degrees better than I was as a kid, but I still dislike several of the things that usually end up in trail mix: pumpkin and sunflower seeds, dried raisins, and M&Ms to name but a few. I remember that, when I was a kid, my mother let us make our own trail mix before our trip. She had all the options out, and we filled our own bags with our choices. Allowing us to make our own trail mix was monumental! I can still remember being so grateful that I wouldn’t have to be forced to eat stuff I didn’t like and thrilled that I would always be able to eat at snack time. (I was that kid who just didn’t eat if it was something I didn’t like. I’m that kind of picky.) Mixing my own trail mix was special because I, the child, got to make a decision. Where I, not the adult, determined what constituted “good” food.
The camping trips we took in 2023 and 2024 allow me to highlight tenet four of my definition of traditional foods: that they are foods with a nostalgic element related to a positive past events we sought to relive and reinforce. Our recent menus were informed by past, long-standing experiences that depended on my father’s idea of what the menu in the park should be. In this way, we continued a traditional menu with few deviations that allowed him to relive past memories and that, consequently, imprinted those foods on us and our children’s understanding of good food in the park. Having good food is part of what makes for a good time. We wanted them to have a good time, so we made them good food.
The positive trail mix making of my past is also something we recreated. Like my mother before me, I offered us all the chance to make our own trail mix because I wanted daughters and nieces to experience the agency and autonomy I had been given as a child. I wanted them to know that this trip was about them too, and I hoped that having a snack they could count as being “just right” would bring them the same comfort and reassurance it had given me as a child.
Traditional foods need to respond to people’s needs and desires if they are to survive. If trail mix is to survive as a staple on our trips, then everyone needs to something they can put in their bags. There are some who might say that children should eat what they’re served. Or that giving children choice makes life complicated. (It does! Bringing the kids with me to buy the ingredients meant that I bought three different kinds of candy covered chocolate.) But I also bought the adults the type of nuts and fruit they wanted - - including the pumpkin seeds I don’t like. We expected the children, who are not really children but teens or preteens, to contribute to the trip in the form of paddling, portaging, packing, and participating in camp life. One way to show them their work mattered was to include them in preparing the food they’d eat.
During our trip, the trail mix came up more often than any other foods we ate mostly because it was always there. We talked about the items we’d included and what we had left. We sometimes traded items with one another. We even started a whole picture series with purple Smarties (more on that another day). If we go camping together again next year, trail mix must be on the menu and so does the predeparture event of making it.
Defining what is and is not a traditional food is not easy. Traditions are complex. They have origins we may or may not know and they are part of stories that evolve over time. It is up to the teller to show how the food shaped who they have become and, in continuing food practices, show others who they are at a given point in their lives. My mother doesn’t remember that we made our own trail mix. I do. I remember the comfort it gave me. I remember the excitement of choice. Not that we didn’t have comfort or choice in our regular lives, but going into the park was an unknown. It scared me. The fact that I could control this part of the experience meant a lot.
Even if I go into the park with my dad and sister and our kids and though I have many fond memories of them in that space, I will always remember my mother when I eat trail mix. One might not often stop to think about how one’s traditional foods went from being disparate ingredients to something special, but you can be sure that the story is an important element of what is being digested when one eats it. Whether you realize it or not, the person who started the tradition is always lingering in the roots of the narrative.
Side note, did you know that August 31st is National Trail Mix Day? Check out more information about the day at National Day Calendar. Not sure where to get started with trail mix or looking to try different recipes, Laura Sommers’ Hiking Trail Mix Recipes: A Camping Snack Mix Cookbook has fun ideas to try!
Trail Mix Recipe
My favourite trail mix is a mix of:
Dried apricots
Dried cranberries
Roasted, salted cashews
Roasted, salted peanuts
Whole or slivered almonds
I don’t usually add many fruit, just enough to add a bit of sweetness.
I’d love to hear your favourite combination!