Category Archives: Foodways

Leg of Lamb

Nationality: American
Age: 63
Occupation: General Manager
Residence: San Diego
Performance Date: 4/26/20
Primary Language: English

Context: The informant is my uncle and he is identified as J.I. He was raised in the Bay Area by my grandparents alongside my mother. He is of Basque descent and takes great pride in Basque culture and his heritage.

Main Text: “One of our traditions was pretty much every other Sunday we would go visit our Basque grandparents Marie and Ernest in Livermore, but our grandmother originally immigrated from the Pyrenees. She would cook Leg of Lamb for us and stick cloves of garlic in the lamb for flavor and roast potatoes in the bottom of the pan. The skin on the potatoes would soak up the juice and taste so good. On my first trip to Europe, my friend and I found our way to my Basque relatives’ home. The cooking reminded me of my Grandmother’s”.

Analysis: The connection between my great grandmother’s cooking and the cooking of the relatives my uncle visited in Europe demonstrates the strong-rooted Basque culture in food. One of the main occupations of the Basque from ancient times was that they sheepherders, and thus lamb has always been a traditional main course.

Reindeer food at Christmas

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: student
Residence: Kansas City
Performance Date: April 26
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

We sprinkle reindeer food on Christmas Eve. Like out in the yard on the grass. It was a big big deal when I was little, and we still do it for my brother. It’s oats with glitter in it, and I used to think I was feeding them. It’s cute, and I was always so excited.

Background: My informant is from Kansas City, Kansas. She has a loving relationship with her family, and she was raised Catholic. Her family is traditional.

Context: She is a good friend of mine I made at USC. We FaceTimed (quarantine prevents live conversations), and I asked her if she had any sort of folklore after explaining the concept, and she told me this.

Thoughts/annotation:

I think this is a super common idea of leaving out food for Christmas. My own family used to stick carrots and chocolate chip cookies out for Santa, and my mom would take a bite out of each so that it looked half-eaten in the morning. https://fountainavenuekitchen.com/magical-reindeer-food/ is a recipe for this reindeer food, and this variation includes a note. I have heard of leaving a note, but I never did and neither did my friend.

Dayenu, a Passover song

Nationality: American but Persian
Age: 19
Occupation: student
Residence: Beverly Hills
Performance Date: April 26, 2020
Primary Language: English

The following is transcribed from text exchanges between my informant, A, and myself, M.

Main piece:

A: On passover, there’s this tradition that Persian Jews have, and somehow only us. There’s this song called Dayenu that you sing as part of the Passover seder, which is like what we call the food and tradition we do.

A: Passover is about Jews being slaves in Egypt and Passover is specifically about when the Jews were freed, and that’s basically the whole thing. But this song is part of it, and its about thanking God for each specific thing He did in the story. And for Persian Jews, while we sing the song we hit each other with green onions because they symbolize the whips from slavemasters. We get pretty agressive, and it looks really stupid.

M: Why just Persians?

A: I don’t know how it started or why it never made it to any other ethnic Jewish group. I didn’t even know it was a Persian thing until like late into my life, so when I talked about it with my white friends, they thought I was insane.

She later texted me that her parents told her Italian Jews do it as well.

Background: My friend is Persian Jewish from Beverly Hills. Judaism has played a large role in her life, having gone to Jewish high school and been an active participant in the community since birth.

Context: She and I were texting casually, and I asked if I could collect from her.

Thoughts:

Food is a way of communicating, and from what I have learned about the Passover ritual is that it is a very active one, almost like a play. Also that food is heavily involved. I am left curious as to why Persians specifically do this part.

The Feast of the Seven Fishes (Italian)

Nationality: Italian-American
Age: 54
Occupation: entrepreneur
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 27 2020
Primary Language: English

The following was told to me by my informant.

Main piece:

“It’s called the feast of the seven fishes, it is an Italian tradition. A lot of my friends do it too, but there’s a lot of variations depending on what region you are from. Every Christmas Eve, we did this and it was led by my grandparents at their house in Pittsburgh. Basically, it’s a big fish feast, and you had to have 7 kinds of fishes. Usually there were mainstays, like calamari, bakala…it could switch around a bit, but there were always seven fish. We always made a special fried bread with mashed potatoes in it that we called rispelli. Then, the tradition came to our house, and I was more involved then, going to the fish market and helping cook starting in the morning. The entire family helped out, and we would have fun, and drink wine, then enjoy the dinner feast. Nobody’s sure what it symbolizes– Seven sacraments maybe? It’s an important number in the Bible. My dad’s family did it when he was little too. It felt special because we only ate that food at Christmas Eve, and when we were kids, we didn’t really like it. But by the time you grow up, you really like it and enjoy the food.”

Context: This was told to me when my informant came over to my house.

Background: My informant is Italian-American from the East Coast. She is from a big, close extended family who enjoys their Italian heritage. Her grandparents were immigrants from Calabria.

Thoughts:
I participate in this every year, too. I love this tradition, and I find it very true that the food really does not taste good but because you associate it with happy memories you learn to love it.

Ebleskivers

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Performance Date: April 2
Primary Language: English

Ebleskivers are a folk object and food that originates from Denmark. They are very similar to pancakes and are a breakfast item. They are spherical and cooked with another folk object, an ebleskiver pan. This is a cast iron pan with round holes in it to cook the batter. This pan is used exclusively for this food, so it is a very important folk object to food culture in Denmark. They are typically served with jam or other breakfast condiments, but the informant eats them with butter and powdered sugar. There is yet another folk object used, which is a porcelain bowl filled with butter placed in a rack over a candle. It is similar to an object used to melt butter for shellfish like crab and lobster.

            The informant learned this practice from her mother. The initial recipe goes back to the informant’s great, great grandparents and she still uses the same pan passed down by the family members. The great great grandmother is from Aabenraa, Denmark. The informant only has it with family members and the combination of butter and powdered sugar seems to be a family-specific thing.

            Upon further research, it seems that this food is rarely prepared by restaurants. Instead, it is typically only made in family gatherings and by street vendors in Denmark. Because of this, it seems to me that the food is more authentic and less likely to have a standardized recipe and in doing so, is not found in much-authored literature. The folk objects only add to the culture and lore around it as these are food-specific, something not often found in many cuisines.