Category Archives: Foodways

Baking Challah and Learning New Bread Recipes During Quarantine

Nationality: Italian-Irish-American
Age: 20
Occupation: USC Student (Mechanical Engineering) and Technology Assistant at USC
Residence: 2715 Portland St Los Angeles CA 90007
Performance Date: 2/8/21
Primary Language: English
The speaker would bake bread and then leave it uncovered in the apartment’s shared kitchen area. Slowly, bits of Challah would disappear from the loaf.

My friend baked a lot of bread after the USC autumn semester ended, and the kitchen filled with bagels, pretzels, pizza, focaccia and Challah. I especially liked the Challah, which maintained a doughy taste after baking. I liked the bread because it was dense. My friend topped his Challah with salt, poppy seeds and sesame seeds. He has made Challah three times so far, and every time the braided bread recipe tastes different.

*

The speaker first started baking Challah because he liked how it looked, and he was high the first time he made the recipe. Challah is a Jewish bread, but the speaker does not come from a Jewish heritage. “I’m not Jewish at all. I went to… 15 years of Catholic school. People always mistake me for being Jewish. On the street in New York City.  Because, I don’t know. I’m kind of like a curly haired kid. I think that’s part of it. But also my high school is next door to like, a bunch of like, Jewish, like elementary and middle schools. There were a lot of like, you know, like practicing Jewish people around that area.”

The speaker went to a Jesuit high school and a Franciscan elementary school. He lived in a community with Dominican friars, but his father is Italian. His mother is half-Irish, He uses a scale to measure ingredients and called Challah a ‘crowd favorite.’ He enjoys learning about folklore and he researched Challah when he first made the bread.

“Turns out you’re supposed to take a little chunk of it and wrap it in tinfoil and just like scorch it. And be like, say ‘this is Challah.’ But in Hebrew culture you’re like, sacrificing a piece sort of. I feel like it’s a little bit like, kinda like pagan. Like, sacrifice. But like yeah, you don’t eat that piece. You burn it until it’s nothing.”

This speaker makes a lot of baked goods at the apartment, including edibles. He sometimes sells his edibles, but he never sold Challah. Over time, he learned to hide the Challah so that tenants did not eat the bread. One time he made the bread so that it was too dense, and fewer tenants ate that particular Challah.

*

I know that the speaker did not like that tenants took his Challah, but I really enjoyed eating this bread, even if I knew it wasn’t mine. When he made the third loaf, I began to leave fruit or other offerings in exchange for the bread I had taken. Even though other people baked food for the apartment, these dishes were usually made for a birthday or special occasion. Challah was made whenever. The speaker did not need an excuse to bake this braided Jewish bread.

I could tell that the speaker was proud of his work. He and others would sometimes ask me to watch over their bread so that no one else would steal it. I would tell them not to trust me- but I’m glad that they asked me to be their bread guardian in any case.

This is similar to the description of Ethnic Groups in chapter 2 of Folk Groups & Folklore Genres by Elliot Oring. In this chapter, the author mentions that some young adults of Jewish heritage make Cholent because it is convenient, not because they observe the Sabbath meal. While this speaker does not share Jewish heritage, he takes part in Jewish traditions via recipes found on the internet.

12 grapes

Nationality: United States
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Bronx, NY
Performance Date: 04/03/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

BACKGROUND: My informant, IC, was born in the US. His entire family is from Ecuador and is bilingual (English and Spanish). IC and I were having a conversation about our families and party customs among immigrants and he brought up this custom that his family uses for good luck.

CONTEXT: This piece is from a conversation with my friend. We originally started talking about our families and the different family parties we’ve been to and that eventually morphed into IC explaining a custom his family has on New Year’s.

IC: For new years, there’s 12 grapes that are meant to represent the 12 months in a year. Right before the new year, when it’s like 11:59, you eat all the grapes. Basically, after each grape you eat, you have to like, make a wish. Oh and — oo! Wait… (long pause) I’m literally stupid as sh-t, I just remembered um, during the new year too, like once it hits 12, you need to throw rice around your whole house. It’s supposed to be so that the next year you have food.

THOUGHTS: This custom is interesting to me because I feel like it is much more in line with the idea of the new year being a time of celebrating change and preparing for the future. In American culture, it is customary to give someone a kiss at midnight for good luck. The 12 grapes however are almost like 12 different resolutions, preparing the person for what they want in the coming year.

Æbleskivers (Danish Pancakes)

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: College Student
Residence: California, USA
Performance Date: 05/02/2021
Primary Language: English

Context:

Informant JA was a current undergraduate student at the University of Southern California at the time of this collection. Though JA was born in the San Francisco Bay Area, their mom’s maternal side of the family originates from Denmark. When speaking with JA, they mentioned that only one particular Danish food item seemed to have any familial importance growing up. Even though JA admits that their family simplifies the traditional Danish recipe, they said that the importance of this folk food tradition lies in the special pans that are used to cook it.

Text:

“Æbleskivers are like Danish pancakes.” JA described Æbleskivers as “pancake balls” and added that their family’s version is the same as regular pancakes compositionally—just in a different shape. They disclosed that their family’s batter recipe only involved generic pancake mix and water. To attain the ball shape of Æbleskivers, JA uses a pan with seven half-sphere indentations over a stove, and that pan is one from their late great-grandparents who have passed the pan down. Each indentation is buttered, filled with batter, and eventually flipped over once bubbles become visible after cooking for some time. A special fork with a handle resembling a banana is used to flip these pancake balls until they are spherical and golden brown. Upon serving, JA’s family only ever has strawberry jam and powdered sugar to dip the Æbleskivers in. JA learned from their maternal grandmother to dip the Æbleskiver in the jam first to coat it with stickiness and then the sugar to follow so it does not fall off.

Since his grandmother’s passing, JA makes Æbleskivers and said that they remind them of her and their childhood meals together. JA also mentioned that Æbleskivers often accompany special meals like birthday breakfasts or other celebratory breakfasts. The tradition of making Æbleskivers extends beyond the family, JA says. They have shown their friends how to make Æbleskivers and have had many others taste them. 

Analysis:

After speaking with JA, they described how their family particularly cherishes breakfast since their family values quality time and beginning each day with one another. In the process of making this modern adaptation/variation of a Danish folk foodway, not only does it allow for the family to showcase their shared familial value of quality time, but it also demonstrates a reverence for their family’s history. Historically, foodways have allowed folk to distinguish and partake in their national identity. This contemporized foodway functions in that same way even though commercially bought goods are incorporated into its recipe. In utilizing pans that are passed down generationally, JA’s family is able to succeed in their efforts of maintaining familial values and remembering facets of their cultural identity

Annotation:

Æbleskivers are mentioned in another entry in the USC Digital Folklore archive. See here:

Egoian, Sonya, and Sonya Egoian. “University of Southern California.” USC Digital Folklore Archives, 14 May 2013, uscfolklorearc.wpenginepowered.com/danish-birthday-song/.

Potato to cure burns

Nationality: Italian
Age: 89
Occupation: --
Residence: Bologna
Performance Date: 04/07/2021
Primary Language: Italian

Main piece:

L.S.: I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this , but if you have some kind of burn you have to cut a potato and place one half on the injury and….with that the burning sensation goes away and you do not feel the pain anymore. My mother taught me this, and I myself taught it to my friends.

V.S.: Do you know what could be the origin of this practice?

L.S.: No I don’t. I don’t even know where my mother learnt this from. But I am pretty sure it’s something quite ancient. Also, my mother, after applying the potato on the burn used to draw on it with her hands the sign of the cross and recite a sort of prayer. And I remember saying to her “Mum teach me it, so that when I get burned or when my children will get burned, I will know how to do this myself”. And she used to tell me ”No, I cannot tell you it. There is only one day in which I can tell you this….this prayer is taught only one day a year”.

Once she finally told me it, but I do not remember it anymore [laughs].

Background:

My informant was born in the Tosco-Emilian Apennines (Italy) in 1931. While she spent the majority of her childhood there, she moved to Bologna, Italy, when she was about 13, and she has been living there ever since. She told me of practicing this folk-medical remedy still nowadays and she told me of having taught it to her children as well.

Context:

The informant recounted me this while having a tea in her living room.

Thoughts:

Countless are those practices that could be vernacularly defined in Italy as rimedio della nonna, grandmother’s remedy, which match the border genre of folk-medicine and, to a certain degree, folk-magic. 

As my informant points out, these are, in the majority of cases, procedures and costumes which are passed on from generation to generation, and which are difficulty attributable to a single and unique creator. In this way, they perfectly reflect folklore’s definition, them becoming part of what could be described as common knowledge, and distancing themselves from scientific knowledge, which is often characterized by the singularity concerting an individual genius -either of a research group or of a single scientist. 

The reason why this particular folk-medical practice can also be seen as overlapping with contagious magic is due to the fact that, as the informant recounts, the usage of a potato in order to cure a burn was often associated with a prayer and ‘religious touch’(cross sign), involving some sort of spiritual power acting on the wound. This tells a lot about the identity Italians used to share, particularly in the past, which saw a quite strong attachment to religion, and, especially, Catholicism. Furthermore, the emphasis my informant put on the secrecy of the prayer’s words, makes another aspect emerge, which is the one of generational division and shamanic authority adults were invested with in those sorts of small rituals. 

This practice is still, nowadays, performed, but, as many of the other grandmother’s remedies, is slowly losing adherence and utilization, leaving more space to ‘proved’ science. 

“Row” the Fish Over

Nationality: China
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Tsingtao, Shandong, China
Performance Date: 5/1/2021
Primary Language: Chinese

Backgrounds:

DerShann is currently a student at USC, majoring in Philoshophy. His family are from Tsingtao, Shandong, China. He likes to play the game League of Legends, and the following folklore is collected during some of the games we played together via the voice chat chanel.

The Mian Piece:

DerShann:”In Tsingtao, when you eat a fish, if you finished eating all the meat on one side and want to turn the fish over to eat the other side, you cannot say ‘翻过来 fan guo lai（turn it over）’, you must say ‘划过来 hua guo lai（row it）’. Tsingtao is a city that is built on the fishing industry, and a lot of people are fishermen, especially those who sell you the fish. Fishermen are afraid that their ship might sink and they might die, (in Chinese it is called 翻船了 chuan fan le（the ship is turned over）. So they really hate the word ‘翻， fan（turn over）’. So we say ‘划过来 hua guo lai（Row it）’. This is like encouraging the fishermen to row their ships back, to have a safe sail, kinda like, row it to the beach. This is something everyone knows in Tsingtao.


Analysis:

This way of saying things reveals that the city Tsingtao is heavily based on the fishing industry. It also shows how people there value their safety during theiir sea sails. This is a custom that’s specific to cities that are close to the sea and relies on fishing, or have rich histories in fishing.

People believe merely saying the word “翻 fan” might cause the ship to really be turned over by waves and wind, which shows how people draw connections between words and actual events.