Category Archives: Foodways

Upset Stomach Remedies

Nationality: American
Age: 53
Occupation: N/A
Residence: Chicago, IL
Performance Date: 05/03/2021
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

“My grandma would tell me to drink prune juice if you are constipated. Or if your dog has stomach issues feed them rice and real chicken instead of dog kibble.”

Background:

“The informant is a 53-year-old woman living in Chicago, IL. She has never tried the prune juice in her adult years so cannot speak to its effectiveness, but does use the dog remedy, which does in fact work. Her grandmother was Italian and either born there and immigrated to the US at a young age or was born in the US soon after her parents immigrated. She remembers any time she had an upset stomach, her grandmother would make her and her sister drink prune juice.

Context:

The informant is my mother. I acquired this information during a Facetime call with her, on which I asked if she had any folk knowledge or beliefs.

My Thoughts:

I think that these folk recipes are classic examples of people using un-official knowledge to cure illnesses. Upon some research of my own on google, it appears that prune juice is now advertised for alleviating constipation. I doubt the knowledge would’ve been as easily accessible in the 1970s. I think that is also is interesting to think about the transition where people might’ve been more inclined to use prune juice as a remedy before now most people might just use a laxative.

Almond and Luck

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Oregon
Performance Date: 04/18/2021
Primary Language: English

Context

The interviewee is one of my housemates and we often engage in conversation about his Danish heritage. This folklore is a food ritual that he practices as part of a family tradition.

———————————————————————————————————

Performance

The following is transcribed from the story told by the interviewee.

“Every Christmas eve we would eat pickled herring and rice pudding. The tradition is that we would have a bowl of rice pudding and at the bottom of one of the bowls there would be an almond. And whoever would get the almond would have good luck the next year. And in order to celebrate this good luck, the person who got the almond would get a marzipan pig. Sometimes if we got too lazy to go to the store to buy the pig, we would just make a different animal out of marzipan. Last year we made a penguin out of marzipan and I remember once we made a spider. It’s just a fun thing that we would do every Christmas eve.”

———————————————————————————————————

Analysis

This is a Danish tradition that serves to celebrate a festival. The ritual happens near the end of the dinner and is meant to bookend the festival by giving a person luck for the coming year. For the interviewee, this custom is very much about having a shared experience with the family, and one that is fun and wholesome. The tradition has clearly developed over the year, the family not just using a marzipan pig but allowing the children in the family to create new and interesting animals such as the spider or penguin. But ultimately, the spirit of the custom remains the same. On a cultural level, this custom helps enforce the end of a year and celebrate new beginnings.

Minced Pork Stew Ng Family Style

Nationality: Singaporean
Age: 56
Occupation: Homemaker
Residence: Singapore
Performance Date: 04/12/2021
Primary Language: English

Context

This is a recipe passed down to my mother from my grandmother. I reached out to my mother for the receipt of Pork Stew. It is a very traditional Chinese dish, specifically within Hokkein families. Hokkein is a dialect spoken by Southeastern parts of China, and in Singapore, it is one of the most common dialects spoken.

———————————————————————————————

Performance

Ingredients

Dried Chinese Mushroom – 6 medium pieces

(wash ns oak in hot water for ½ hour. Thinly sliced)
Tau Pok – 1 packet

Minced garlic – 2 tablespoon

Chopped onion – 3 tablespoon

Chinese wine (Hua Tiao Qiu) – 1 bottle

(around 375ml)

Chicken stock – 800ml

Rock sugar – 5 small cubes

Dark soy sauce – 4 tablespoon

Light soy sauce – 1 tablespoon

White Pepper Powder

Cooking Instructions

Add a bit of oil, stir fry the garlic lightly, followed by onion

Stir fry until both is translucent (don’t brown it)
Add mince pork and make sure all of the pieces break up nicely, when the pork is cooked, add the mushroom

Add dark and light soy sauce, stir fry a little longer until fragant

Add the rice wine, rock sugar, add chicken stock until it covers above the pork. Around 1 inch. Let is simmer for ½ hour or longer.

Add the tau pork and cooked hard boil egg (optional)
Simmer another ½ hour. If the water evaporates, add more chicken stock.

———————————————————————————————

Analysis

This was my absolute favorite dish growing up and the first dish I asked my mother for the recipe when I left for college and had to start cooking for myself. It is a comfort dish that reminds me of home. On a personal level, it is a recipe that everyone in my family knows how to make and something that I had eaten growing up, thus it feels incredibly nostalgic. On a cultural level, this dish comes from China but has a Singaporean take on it. Pork stew is often made using large pieces of Pork Belly. However, this recipe using minced pork instead. In Singapore, most of the Chinese population were immigrants that were working to send money back to their families. Thus, they did not have a lot of money. The pork belly was a much more expensive cut of meat and minced pork was much more readily available. This pork stew, while having the taste of the dishes in China, the cut of meat is different and that is what makes it uniquely Singaporean. On a cultural and historical level, it reminds me of what makes Singapore, Singapore. And it reminds me of the hardship that was faced by my grandparents as they worked hard to make Singapore go from a fishing village to one of the busiest and most cosmopolitan cities in the world.

Oxtail Stew – Bejing Recipe

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Beijing, China
Performance Date: 04/27/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

Context

The interviewee in this collection and I are both Chinese though we have very different backgrounds. I’m Singaporean-Chinese and she is Beijing-Chinese. We found common ground in many of the foods that our mothers made for us growing up, however always noticed that there were little differences in the recipe. The following is a recipe that she gave me that was a favorite dish for both of us growing up, but the recipe is the Beijing version of Oxtail Stew.

————————————————————————————————————

Performance

The following is a receipt given to me by the interviewee.

1.Blanch the chopped oxtail over boiling water for 1-2 minutes.

2.Add in 2 spoons of yellow wine and 3 spoons of soy sauce.

3.Season the beef with rock sugar, chicken powder, aniseed, cinnamon, and dried chili

4.Add in water and keep braising the beef until the beef is well cooked

————————————————————————————————————

Analysis

Food can be a very tricky thing. You can make two dishes of oxtail stew with practically the same ingredients, but once one of them has dried chili and aniseed, it becomes distinctly a Beijing recipe instead of one from Guangzhou or Singapore or Malaysia. Because the Chinese population is huge and many Chinese people have branched away from China to various parts of the world, recipes get changed and adapted to whichever country the chef resides in. It is always fun to see a classic Chinese recipe that is just slightly different.

Iranian Flu Medicine

Nationality: Iranian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Glendale, California
Performance Date: February 18, 2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Farsi

Main Piece

Heat up one whole lemon and 3 garlic cloves until soft and mash with a fork. Strain the mixture and take one spoonful every morning to prevent sickness. 

Background

My informant was born and raised in Iran. She remembers the flu, and how it ravaged through her elementary school. Her mother, to protect her, made a blended concoction consisting of one whole lemon, including the peel and pulp, and three or four cloves of garlic. Because she did not have any kitchen equipment that could properly blend the ingredients together, she resorted to heating up the lemon and garlic until it was soft enough to mash with a fork. After mashing, she would strain the mixture to get rid of any extra-large pieces, and fed one teaspoon-full to my informant every morning before school. My informant adds that she hated the taste but took this “medicine” every morning nonetheless because her mother insisted it would keep her safe. My informant concludes that the medicine must have worked, as she was the only child in her class that did not fall sick with the flu. 

Context

This medicine is made when someone is sick or in danger of falling sick. The purpose is to prevent or cure illnesses. 

My Thoughts

Being born and raised in America and going through the American school system, I never paid much attention to medicinal practices that were not Westernized. When my informant told me about this medicine, I was skeptical and doubted that it would actually be effective. But further upon further research, I discovered that the ingredients used in this recipe contain many natural antibiotics and vitamin C. Therefore, the workings of this folk medicine are completely logical and valid. In America, Western medicine is the widely accepted practice, and most ethnic home remedies are frowned upon. But there is logic to these home remedies, or they would not be so widely used in other countries. Using ingredients such as garlic in folk medicine is an ancient practice. For further information about garlic’s role in folk medicine, see the cited article under the subheading titled “Medicinal History.”

Sources:

Kilham, Chris. “Garlic.” MEDICINE HUNTER | Medicine Hunter, www.medicinehunter.com/Garlic#:~:text=As%20a%20folk%20remedy%2C%20garlic,gastroenteritis%2C%20and%20to%20expel%20worms.&text=The%20father%20of%20medicine%2C%20Hippocrates,and%20for%20healing%20abdominal%20growths. Accessed 18 Feb. 2021.