Category Archives: Foodways

Mexican Tea Remedy for Menstrual Cramps

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Torrance, CA
Performance Date: April 12, 2018
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Leah Perez studies Latin American History at the University of Southern California. She was born in Gardena, California and moved to Torrance, California at a young age. Her parents are both Hispanic; her father is Puerto Rican and Mexican, and her mother is Mexican. Leah’s entire extended family speaks Spanish, and while Leah grew up speaking English, she has gained some fluency in Spanish by communicating with her relatives. Her immediate family observes Mexican traditions and has imparted many of these values to Leah and her siblings. In the excerpt below, Leah describes a tea remedy for menstrual cramps that is used in place of pain medication:

Leah: “My family in New Mexico boils the corn hairs… like, the corn silk. You make a tea out of it when you have menstrual cramps, and it’s supposed to be a remedy for that. It tastes like shit though. It’s solely for the functionality of it.”

Isabella: “Does anyone like the way it tastes?”

Leah: “I think it depends on the sweetest of the corn, so that the silk can taste better. The silk is the little hairs… you know, when you shuck corn, you have the little hairs… little fine fibers that are underneath the husks. They’re yellow, and that’s what you make the tea out of.”

Here, Leah describes a homeopathic remedy that is used to treat menstrual cramps. Though she admits to disliking the tea’s taste, Leah still drinks the remedy when she needs relief from menstrual pain. Both she and her family acknowledge the health benefits associated with the tea; moreover, its main ingredient (corn) is tremendously important amongst Latin American communities. It is a food staple throughout Central and South America so it is not surprising that it appears throughout homeopathic recipes.

Italian Wedding Soup

Nationality: Italian-American, Irish-American
Age: 60
Occupation: Special Needs Teacher
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 20, 2018
Primary Language: English

Joanna Estrada is a special needs teacher living in Los Angeles, California. She is 60 years old and has three daughters. Joanna has lived in Southern California since birth, moving from Redondo Beach to Torrance in her mid-twenties. Her father was Irish and her mother was Italian; as such, she grew up surrounded by multiple cultures and was brought up in the Catholic tradition. In the excerpt below, Joanna describes a type of soup that is prepared and served during Italian wedding receptions. The soup is served to everyone at the reception—including the newly married couple—and is a hallmark of Italian weddings.

Joanna: “Someone would make Italian wedding soup… It was usually the bride’s grandmother but anyone could make it… And they would make a huge amount of it to feed the entire wedding party and all of the guests.”

Isabella: “What was in the soup?”

Joanna: “It had tiny meatballs; those were always homemade, they had to be homemade. And the other main ingredient was egg pasta. It was a special type of pasta made from egg, just like it sounds. It was cut up into little pieces… never the full noodle, it was chopped up into small bits. Then there was a lot of Parmesan cheese. The more cheese, the better. And the base was chicken broth. It’s a traditional dish but I’ve seen it in the supermarket sold in cans. That’s obviously not authentic.”

Here, Joanna describes a traditional Italian soup that is prepared specifically for weddings. As Joanna notes above, the recipe has become so popular that soup companies (think Progresso or Campbells) have adopted it and started to mass-produce it. It is advertised in supermarkets as “Italian wedding soup,” which acknowledges the cultural origins of the soup and also attests to how popular it is amongst Italians.

The “Hodge Podge” Dinner

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 10, 2018
Primary Language: English

Owen Lord studies Anthropology at the University of Southern California. He is originally from Columbia, South Carolina but currently lives in Los Angeles, California while he attends university. Owen’s southern upbringing led him to adopt a number of southern customs. Once he moved to Los Angeles, he was immediately struck by the differences in the way people speak, how they behave, and the traditions they practice. Many of Owen’s favorite folkloric phrases were lost on his new peers in Los Angeles. Below, Owen describes a Lord family custom that involves dinner preparations:

Owen: “When we [my family and I] were younger, my mom didn’t really like to cook. No one in my family really liked to cook, and so a lot of days, my mom would just say, ‘we’re having a hodge podge!’ which I thought everyone did. It meant you would just go through the fridge and the pantry and wherever, looking for food. But I thought hodge podge was a pretty universal word for that kind of fare. And so I’d go to friends’ houses and suggest a hodge podge, and no one understood what I was talking about.”

Isabella: “Would you consider this family folklore?”

Owen: “Yeah, its an example of family folklore… you think everyone else has it until you realize that it’s a completely made-up word that your mom uses when she’s feeling lazy.”

Here, Owen reflects on a custom that was unique to his family. Though it is likely that other families practices this tradition, they did not call it a “hodge podge” like Owen’s family did. For this reason, the “hodge podge” is a unique Lord-family tradition. The phrase carries its own set of associations for Owen and the rest of his family—it is a uniting factor between them and represents a shared experience.

Italian Easter Bread

Nationality: Italian-American, Irish-American
Age: 60
Occupation: Special Needs Teacher
Residence: Torrance, California
Performance Date: April 21, 2018
Primary Language: English

Joanna Estrada is a special needs teacher living in Los Angeles, California. She is 60 years old and has three daughters. Joanna has lived in Southern California since birth, moving from Redondo Beach to Torrance in her mid-twenties. Her father was Irish and her mother was Italian; as such, she grew up surrounded by multiple cultures and was brought up in the Catholic tradition. In the excerpt below, Joanna describes an Italian Easter tradition, wherein her Italian grandmother would bake special bread adorned with hardboiled eggs:

Joanna: “My grandmother would bake a woven, like a braided loaf of bread for Easter. She would divide the dough into three separate pieces and braid them together to make a wreath. Then she would bake it… And in the center and all around it, she would put hardboiled eggs that she colored with dye. She would soak them in dye to make them fun looking before she put placed them into the baked dough.

Isabella: “Was the bread symbolic in any way?”

Joanna: “The dough represented life and rebirth and things like that… it was for Easter, so the bread symbolized the beginning of life…”

Isabella: “What would you do with the bread? Was it an offering or sorts or did your family eat it?”

Joanna: “No, we definitely ate it. I really liked it because it had sort of a sweet taste to it. All this would happen in one day—she would bake the bread in the morning and we would eat it in the evening.”

Here, Joanna describes a ritual that her grandmother performed on Easter Sundays. For practitioners of Christianity and Catholicism, Easter is an important holiday. It marks the resurrection of Jesus Christ and has given birth to a number of commemorative traditions. The tradition Joanna describes above is at once a folkloric recipe and ritual. The bread itself serves as a sort of celebratory symbol, and the act of baking it may be considered a ritual. Joanna associates the woven bread with Easter and no other holidays; to the members of her family, Easter Sunday and the woven bread were irrevocably fused.

Christmas Cinnamon Rolls

Nationality: American
Age: 89
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Tucson, Arizona
Performance Date: 4/20/18
Primary Language: English

BACKGROUND:

In Tucson, Arizona, a family passes down the tradition of making a very specific recipe on Christmas. This recipe has been passed down for so many generations, the actual author of the recipe is unknown. The source has said that it traces back to their Mennonite and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestors. The recipe was given to the daughters and daughters-in-law of each generation as a rite of passage for becoming the official “woman of the household”. Every Christmas morning, those with the recipe would cook these cinnamon rolls for the entire family and those celebrating the holiday with them.

RECIPE:

Unfortunately, when asked to record the recipe for documentation, my source refused to even let me see it. The secrecy behind this recipe is extremely important to the family and is viewed as a way of creating a bond between the women of the family and a true acceptance into the family. Me seeing this would be devaluing its importance.

MY THOUGHTS:

I think this is a really unique coming of age tradition. Not only is it a way of cementing blood relatives as officially women, but it’s also a creative way of welcoming those who have married into the family. Because of this, I completely understand my source’s hesitance in letting me see the actual recipe.