Tag Archives: food

Unwrapping Tamales For Christmas

Background: The informant is a 52 year old man. He was born in Tulare, California. He grew up with his four siblings and two parents, moving from location to location across California. He currently lives in Los Angeles, California. 

Context: The context as that when the informant was eating tamales, he was reminded of Christmas.

Text:

MD: “Well typically, uh, mexican families, they make, uh, tamales for Christmas, and, you know, it’s kind of like a seasonal food, and that’s considered traditional to make tamales for Christmas, and uh, the big joke about tamales and mexicans is that the reason why mexicans make tamales is so they can have something to unwrap for christmas. And so uh, I used to help my mom make ‘em, and we would kind of like interchange, like, you know, sometimes I would like, layout the leaves and spread the masa, which is like corn dough, on them, or other times she would do that, and she would allow me to put the meat inside of it. It’s like a meat sauce, and uh, she didn’t like me putting the meat with the sauce in the tamale because I would typically put too much and, uh, she’d kind of strive for balance between the masa and the meat, the problem though too is like when you steam them, if you, if you put too much meat inside them, they kind of overflow, and they, they break apart the tamale, you know? It is what it is.” 

Analysis:

Informant: He is very humorous and recalls both the joke and the tamales in good fun. He reminisces about his time with his mother and looks to it as a great bonding moment between the two of them each year.

Mine: First, the joke’s context is that Mexicans are considered poor in America and will not have the money to buy presents for their family. While on the surface, the joke seems like a laughable jab, it speaks to a much deeper social context, about how Mexican families are treated in the greater societal context of the US. Typically, they do not have higher paying jobs or may be supporting a larger family and much more. However, the joke is prevalent in Mexican communities in order to make light of their hardships. It shows how humor is consistently used to make a situation seem better and it’s a source of hope. Second, making tamales on Christmas is very widespread in Mexican culture. Given how the informant would always complete the task with his mother, it provided a way for the two of them to connect through their culture of making food. 

Easter Capirotada

Background: The informant is a 50 year old man. He was born in Tecate, Mexico, moving to California when he was young. He grew up with his four siblings and two parents, moving from location to location across California. He currently lives in Los Angeles, California. 

Context: The context was a few weeks before Easter, and the informant began sharing stories about what happens before Easter when walking in the mall past Easter decorations.


Text:

UI: “Around Easter, when I was a kid, we used to go to my grandmothers, in uh, Delano, which is a small town near Bakersfield, and, and what she used to do is that she would make this, hm, I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like a bread pudding and in Spanish it’s called capirotada. You know, I haven’t had it in so long because it takes like all day to make it. What you do is start off with about a week old bread, and then you put it in a tray with butter. And basically, it’s like traditional Mexican bread. It’s like a bread pudding type bread, and you typically make it before Easter and it’s like day old bread with raisins and butter and nuts, and it’s just like it all melts together with cinnamon and they sprinkle it with cheese on top and it all kind of like blends together into a weird pudding mixture, and that’s basically in preparation for Easter. I used to help my grandmother make it, because she would make trays and trays for everybody. The bread represents the body of Christ, the syrup is his blood, and the cloves are the nails of the cross, and the whole cinnamon sticks are the woods of the cross, and the melted cheese stands for the holy shroud. I guess it’s just like hidden meanings with the crucifixion of Jesus for Easter within the food.” 

Analysis:

Informant: He was very excited when sharing the story and appeared actually nostalgic for his childhood. Evidently, the time making food with his grandmother was a peaceful time of his life, and he loved the food.

Mine: Many of the foods around the holiday have hidden religious meanings behind them, having a dual cultural significance for both being a food to bring together family on holidays and for the religious context. The informant made the food with his grandmother, serving as time for the two of them to bond and for him to be taught the recipe of the Mexican dish. He was in the transition state from passively accepting the tradition when he began cooking with his grandmother. Then, the capirotada holds religious folklore, with each element not being randomly chosen, but rather chosen to represent an element of Christ. Given that the informantant still remembers the information after all these years, it is clear that the message imparted onto him by his grandmother held a deep value for him. It is our elders who are carrying on the traditions and they must be listened to in order to fully absorb it.

Tofu

1) After a Korean exits prison, a white block of tofu, nothing else, is the first thing that they are supposed to eat. By doing this, they have a better chance to live a life of purity from that point after. 

2) My Korean mother told me about the “folk item / food” that is tofu because she said she wants me to know that even if I make a grave mistake, I will always have a chance at redemption if I assume the right mentality. 

3) My Korean mother told me this when I was eating dinner with my family. I asked if there are any Korean foods that have a traditional / folk significance, and after a moment of thinking she came up with the above example.

4) This practice started in the prisons of the Joseon dynasty, but is now seen in modern-day Korean noir films. Perhaps tied to its longevity is the fact that tofu is already such a staple food for Koreans. Also, in prison they only give inmates bean rice for food (no tofu). Tofu is also made from beans, but it is an elevated form of bean to the one included in rice in prisons. 

Pineapple, Ungratefulness, and Pain

Main Piece: 

It’s this folklore or like this tale my mom used to tell me about how this poor family. The mom had like this child and she did like a lot of work to try to make sure her kid was happy. But the child was always like disrespectful, and like unappreciative of the mother’s hard work. And she kept asking for pineapples and like kept asking like I want pineapples. Like why don’t you ever feed me pineapples? All you feed me is like plain plain food. We never get like any good pineapples, the neighbors do. And so it was it like a fairy or like some celestial Spirit came down and was like, Hey, kid, do you want a pineapple? You keep fucking asking for like, goddamn pineapple. Maybe if you helped your mom out with like the work you got some pineapples. She’s like I shouldn’t have to and he’s like, You know what? I’ll give you pineapples. You can have all the pineapples you want. The only condition is you have to eat it all in one sitting. And so the kid ate a shit ton of pineapples. And because it’s a super acidic fruit, it burned through her tongue. And so it was just like, kind of like a scary little folk tale of like, how you should be appreciative of your, you know, elders and parents. 

Informant’s relationship to the piece: 

“This was like a common tale that like both my mom and dad used to tell me, and I was like, ‘Can I have McDonald’s’, and they’re like, ‘No’. And it’s yeah, a little manipulative. But, I mean, it is true. Like our parents do so much for us. And sometimes we forget how much they do for us. Um and they’re all a little cryptic in cursed ways. But they have sacrificed a lot for us and sometimes by not acknowledging that we end up harming ourselves. Like the little girl who didn’t help her mom and just wanted pineapples and burned her tongue. 

Context: 

The informant is one of my roommates, a 21-year-old Vietnamese American college student at the University of Southern California. This performance was collected in our living room with one of our other roommates as we were talking about our family and the stories we grew up with. 

Analysis:

Me and my informant are both Asian, and we both grew up with a lot of stories that were supposed to scare us into being good, but this story specifically focuses on appreciating what you’ve been given, and as my informant mentioned, she was told this story when she would ask for fast food, and in addition to being told no, she would also be told this story. This story also imparts the cultural values of respecting your elders and not asking for too much. I think these stories are an easier way to convey these values than just being told that by parents because there’s an element of fear and consequence of major physical harm, which most parents would never threaten their children with. Although, I will say when I was looking into this story to annotate it, I couldn’t find any version of it, but I did find one about a girl who was turned into a pineapple that follows the first half of the story my roommate told me. So who knows, maybe this story was a way for my informants parents specifically to scare her.

For the closely related pineapple story that’s found both in Vietnam and the Philippines see: https://saigoneer.com/saigon-food-culture/11645-a-food-folktale-the-savage-clapback-that-turned-a-girl-into-a-pineapple

Pomegranate for New Years

Main Piece:

Informant: We crack a pomegranate on New Year’s Eve, or like as soon as it like midnight again, I don’t know why, like if I asked my mom she’d be like like this just something we have to do. I’m like, okay, cool. Yeah, like I’d guess pomegranates are a symbol of life and like a new beginning kind of which is why you crack it like, you know, at midnight for the new year. But no, she takes it very seriously too. So like, for example, this past New-New Years. It was just me my mom, my sister. My dad was at work and yeah, so we watched the ball drop in Times Square. And then my mom had a pomegranate ready, like a full one, like you don’t touch it at all. And what you do is you go to your front porch or like the entrance to your house or like, wherever you want something that’s like, again, like an entry. I feel like in Turkey that that’s a lot of important like entrances of like, you know, you start something new, so you want to do it at an entrance of your life or something like symbolizes, you know, like when you walk into your home, it’s not something new. It’s a new year. So anyways, we go to our front porch and you’ve just like hold the, the pomegranate the full thing in your hand and you just drop it and you have to have a crack if it doesn’t crack, you know, you just keep going. And then and then it’s like okay, yay. Like now the new year has officially begun. So for her it didn’t it doesn’t start till then and then you you know, clean up the shells. And as many of the seeds that didn’t touch that like the seeds that are still in the pomegranate. Obviously, you throw the ones that touch the ground out and then you eat the seeds.

Relationship to the piece:

“If we don’t do it, then it doesn’t feel like the start of a new year. It doesn’t feel like the past is behind us. Like something it just kind of like commemorates a new beginning and if we don’t do it, it’s like we’re still in the old year. Kind of thing.”

Context: 

The informant is one of my friends, a 20 year old Turkish American theatre major at the University of Southern California. I was told this as we were hanging out in her room after I asked her about some of the traditions she grew up with. 

Analysis:

I’d never heard of this tradition, but I feel like a lot of traditions surrounding the new year have to do with inviting in what you want for the New Year, but for my informant, this tradition is about welcoming in the New Year. Breaking the pomegranate is like breaking open the new year and then you have to ingest what’s been broken, you’re literally taking in the New Year. I also think it’s interesting how, for many children of immigrants we follow traditions because our parents tell us to, rather than doing it because we know exactly what it means. We just know that certain holidays don’t feel right if we don’t follow these traditions.