Category Archives: Foodways

The Best Banana Bread

Nationality: Indian American

Residence: United States

Performance Date: 04/23/2018

Primary Language: English

Language: Telugu, Urdu, Hindi

The main piece: The Best Banana Bread Recipe

Background information about the performance from the informant: why do they know or like this piece? Where/who did they learn it from? What does it mean to them? Etc.

“Basically, I have a sweet tooth, and, uh, my wife really loves me, and she knows I love banana bread. She meets a lot of people in her office, because she’s a physician. Even though she doesn’t like me to be eating desserts, one of her patients is a good cook, especially in baking, and when she found out she had a banana bread recipe from her mother, my sweet wife asked her for a copy.

“The patient gave my wife a printed banana bread recipe, and we never made a copy of that. Now, we’ve had it for 20 years, and it has all kinds of flour and oil stained on it. Whenever there’s a special event, like Father’s Day, we pull it out. In every bite, I smell my love for her!

Finally, your thoughts about the piece

This piece of folklore is interesting because it combines a recipe with a physical artifact, used over and over and passed from person to person. The oil and flour stains on the photographed recipe show the great use it has been put to. The recipe has almost become a folk object, because instead of ever looking at a photo or copy of the recipe, the informant’s family must pull out this exact object when baking banana bread.

Informant Details

The informant is a middle-aged Indian-American male, who grew up in an urban setting in India with three siblings. While he moved to the United States over 30 years ago from India, many of his family members still live there, and he enjoys maintaining his links with them through his heritage and Hindu religion.

Remedy for a Cough

Nationality: Half Irish, Half American,

Age: 78

Occupation: Hospice volunteer

Residence: MA, USA

Performance Date: 04/03/18

Primary Language: English

Note: I have been sick all semester long and I usually call my Grandmother who lives across the country for some magical remedy that might alleviate some of my symptoms.

Recipe: Place two teaspoon of honey in a cup with one teaspoon of butter and boil it. Drink it when it is warm, and drink it three times a day.

This recipe was told to me by my Grandmother who had it passed down from her Mother and Grandmother. She always has some kind of remedy to fix a cough or cold. There is not a specific “cure” for a cough, but this certainly has been used to alleviate the symptoms of a cough and soothe the throat. There are other variations of this recipe that involve water, lemon, salt, pepper, ginger, but this is the only one I have heard of that includes butter. My Grandmother is half Irish, but this recipe has no correspondence as to the origins of the recipe.

Norwegian Christmas

Nationality: Norwegian

Age: 19

Performance Date: 04/24/18

Well…all of my mom’s side of the family is Norwegian. Norway and Scandinavian traditions are actually quite dark. SO for example, one of the traditions we always do, is my mom always like to say the tradition of Santa Claus in the Norwegian manner. It’s very different… I don’t really remember it. But Santa looks very different in like his look and his style. I think he wears elk boots. My mom has a pair of elk boots she likes to put on display. We also have a Norwegian accordion. So that’s always fun to play around Christmas time. I’ve attempted to play it but I’m not really that good. But every year we play it and dance to polka.

Do you ever play the accordion for any other occasions?

Not really, it’s just a Christmas thing.

Are the boots for human feet, made of elk fur, or are they for elk hooves?

I think they’re human boots. They kind of look like elf boots in that they’re pointed at the toe.

My Thoughts

Every culture has different traditions for Christmas. American traditions really idealize Santa Claus in the red suit and the white beard. But the reason for that is actually the Coca Cola Company. They were the ones who dressed Santa as that. Many other cultures might dress him very differently. Also, elk v. reindeer, is there really a massive difference there? I’m intrigued that polka is the type of music they listen to and dance to around Christmas time

The Significance of Pomegranate

Nationality: Armenian

Age: 56

Performance Date: 04/08/18

There’s a story about a woman during the genocide, that she kept her family alive by feeding them pomegranates. I think it was that every day she gave each one of them a seed. They were able to survive off that. Pomegranates have a significant meaning in Armenian culture. Armenians say that a pomegranate, each one, has 365 seeds and that if you eat one seed a day you will be filled with health and good fortune. If you do not eat one a day you don’t receive those gifts. Famed author, William Saroyan uses the pomegranate as symbolism as the pomegranate is what sustained his mother during the death march of the genocide.

Do you eat a pomegranate seed every day as suggested above?

No I don’t… I don’t… I really don’t eat pomegranates? I like them a little bit but not that much… They also aren’t really available all year long anyways.

My Thoughts:

Symbolism is very important in literature. And it’s almost like the pomegranate was a good luck charm for those during the genocide. Authors like Saroyan may see that as a beacon of light to write about. In Armenia, you can find many touristy items that are related to pomegranates including key chains, household knick knacks and even jewelry.

Easter Culinary Tradition

Nationality: Armenian

Age: 56

Performance Date: 04/08/18

During Easter time in the Armenian community, there are a number of pastry recipes that have been passed down from generation to generation. I lived in an extended family… I lived with them, two aunts, grandparents and parents, my sister wasn’t born yet. I was only six years old, living in Aleppo (Syria). It was a tradition to make special cookies every Easter. They’re called ma’amoul and karabij. Choereg is Armenian Easter bread. They also made that. Karabij is a crushed pistachio filled cookie, and ma’amoul is a date filled cookie. Both the karabij and the ma’amoul are served with natef.

All the ladies in the house would prepare the cookies getting them ready for Easter Sunday.

In the Armenian community, family and friends would visit each other after church and during the week between Palm Sunday and Good Friday. It was tradition to serve guests these holiday pastries. My aunt was especially good at making choereg whereas my grandma did much better with Easter cookies. The ladies would purchase the ingredients to make the cookies, however they would have to take it to an outside place to make them. We didn’t have an oven at home so they had to go to an outside bakery. It was a local bakery, many of the people would come to the bakery to have things baked. Not only on Easter, there would be many different types of food being baked there at all times. There’s this Middle Eastern version of what today we call marshmallow fluff, and we would dip the Easter cookies in it. It’s called natef. It’s literally Arabic marshmallow fluff.

Of all the pastries, which one was your favorite?

There were all so good, but I think my favorites were Karabij and Ma’amoul

Did you ever go to anyone else’s house who made a better Karabij or Ma’amoul?

We didn’t really go to anyone else’s house we always had them over at out house?

Were there a lot of people who came to visit?

I mean not that that many but on Easter especially we had a good amount of people come

Why was your house the gathering place?

Most of the family was already there so it seemed easier to meet where we were.