Category Archives: Foodways

Family Gorditas

Nationality: Mexican American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Culver City, California
Performance Date: 4/20
Primary Language: English

Interviewer: Is there any food or dishes that have been passed down through your family and that you share with others?

 

Informant: Well we do this thing every year for the past twelve years where we make Gorditas and my whole extended family is invited as a way for us to get together and celebrate being a family.

 

Interviewer: And when did the tradition start?

 

Informant: One of my uncles died and my family was more spread out so it was sort of a way to reconnect.

 

Interviewer: And who started it?

 

Informant: My mom started doing it because the uncle that died taught her how to make the dough for the gorditas and no one else knew how to do it.  So from then on each year we have a night at my house.

 

Interviewer: Has your mom passed down the skills to you?

 

Informant:  I know how to make them now after helping her for so many years but I don’t know the ingredients off the tops of my head just because she is always there to help me.  So I guess f my mom was older and she wanted was worried about the recipe getting forgotten, then she would right it is down but for now it’s more of something we do together.

 

Interviewer: And do other members of your family help?

 

Informant: Usually everyone does something to help.  My aunts, or my mom’s sisters, usually help assemble the gorditas or help with other food that they want to bring.  And my uncles usually take the time that the food is cooking to gossip and catch up. My youngers cousins and siblings usually all stay in the living room or something to just eat and play.  And then the middle kids or like the older kids around my age with help to do dishes and clean up.  So everyone pitches in in some way or another.

 

Interviewer: And does this happen the same time every year, like is it a set holiday?

 

Informant: No, it’s more of a healing thing.  Like the food and the coming together helps people feel better and we usually plan it around something happening in the family and the food helps us come to terms with how we heal and move on.

 

Interviewer: That’s interesting because a lot of people have specific dishes to help them celebrate good things or like birthday and things like that but it makes sense that it could also be to comprehend and deal with more serious things as well.

 

Informant:  Yeah like it would seem off for me to eat the gorditas or prepare them other than in that context and with those people.  It’s kind of sacred now.

 

Background: The informant is a Junior at USC studying Non-Governmental Organizations and Social Change.  She is Mexican American and comes from a large family and extended family based in the greater Los Angeles area.  The informant is also the roommate of the interviewer and a close friend who shares many cultural traditions. This piece to her was very special and personal but also something she enjoys sharing with her friends because it provides a glimpse into her own family history.

 

Context: This interview occurred during a lunch meal with friends where we discussed similar cultural practices. However, the informant and interviewer happened to also be roommates earlier in the year and were able to experience the family tradition together.  The informant invited the interviewer to participate and engage in the gathering at her home and was able to witness first-hand the power of the food.

 

Analysis: For this piece, I was lucky enough to experience it in person and then interview the informant after the fact just to gain a better understanding of why and how the tradition came to be.  It was great to see similarities in the family gatherings that I have in my own home and them compare it to what I was witnessing.  Also to understand the meaning behind it after having already experienced it made it more special that she had invited me in the first place.  And it was important to see that food has many different aspects for those who create it, it is often wholly different to have something from a restaurant and then to have something homemade and the effect it has on the person consuming it.

 

Thanksgiving Celebrations

Nationality: Mexican American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: San Francisco, California
Performance Date: 4/6/18
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Interviewer: Do you have any holiday celebrations or traditions that have been passed down to you or throughout your family?

 

Informant: Thanksgiving has always been a culturally confusing holiday for my family.

 

Interviewer: Why is that?

 

Informant: The majority of my family is Mexican and in Mexico and culturally, Thanksgiving is not something that we really celebrate.  It is often seen as an American holiday rather than a global holiday.

 

Interviewer: So how do you celebrate Thanksgiving?

 

Informant: Growing up, my family always made pozole and tamales for Thanksgiving. I loved it, so good. But us, cousins, the younger generation in our family, were confused when we were younger because at school, kids always talked about turkey and mashed potatoes. Eventually the adults in our family found out about our little culture confusion and there was a point where we started having pozole and tamales but also turkey and mash potatoes. The recipes have been passed down to us cousin as were older, and though we don’t cook them alone (it takes village, trust me), we’ve learned how to help cook all these dishes.

 

Interviewer: So your holiday traditions adapted as you started to mix one culture with another?

 

Informant: Yeah, it was also like a generational difference that caused others in my family to think about how the celebrating of a holiday in a specific way, affected the younger generation.  Now we do both and in a way it acknowledges the new and the old and works together.

 

Interviewer: I didn’t know that other families have pozole on Thanksgiving, in my family we have on Christmas as well as tamales.

 

Informant: Yeah the tradition definitely varies.

 

Background: The informant is a student in college studying Political Science.  She is half Mexican and often shares holidays like these with her family on her Mother’s side who still use traditional recipes to cook holiday meals.

 

Context: This interview took place when at home for a weekend.  The holiday celebrations discussed here were first celebrated when the informant was little and then changed around the age of 6 or 7.  From then on her family has adapted the tradition to include both kinds of food as a mixing of cultures and histories.

 

Analysis:  I really related to this piece because I have similar traditions with my own family.  It was also important for me to understand the reason why the celebration was adapted and to realize that outside forces and experiences have a lot of influence over our cultural productions and folklore.  When I was younger, I would not have shared that my family made tamales or other traditional meals because it was different from what everyone around me was doing.  But as I have gotten older and through interviews like these, it is important to note that through sharing we often build a much larger community than we started out with and produces more of a widespread network.

Lighting the Christmas Pudding

Nationality: American and British
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Santa Monica
Performance Date: 4/3/18
Primary Language: English

Main Piece: KC: Every christmas we have a Christmas pudding, which is, y’know, made from fruit… it’s like a gross fruit cake! And for some reason in my family it’s tradition– and I didn’t think it was weird… here i have a video! And basically you pour brandy in a ladle and light it on fire and put it over the cake, and it makes these beautiful flames, and then we sing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and then we eat it!

 

Context: KC’s family regularly performs this Christmas tradition on Christmas Eve after dinner.

 

Background: KC is very tied to her British roots, as her parents moved from England while her mother was pregnant with her, and so she has grown up with this and countless other British traditions being passed onto her through her direct and extended family.

 

Analysis: Hearing this part of KC’s Christmas traditions was particularly interesting, as she told it as if it were a completely normal thing– as you can see by her saying “I didn’t think it was weird”. In telling this story, and seeing reactions to her story, it seemed to be her first inkling that this tradition was not something that every family practices. This Christmas pudding is a very regular practice in England, learned upon more research, and it is particularly interesting due to its heavy requirements in the types of fruit involved, the necessary custard, and the quintessential lighting of the brandy on top.

 

For another version of this Christmas tradition, see The Telegraph, a British news-source.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/christmas-recipes/stir-up-sunday-guide/

 

Easter Eggs– only eggs!

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/7/18
Primary Language: English

Main Piece: KK: Every Easter, we eat this thing called “Eggs a la Goldenrod”… and it’s a made up name haha. And it’s basically… biscuits with, okay sorry, first, it’s a process, so first you boil the eggs and color them and hide them because its Easter, and once you find the eggs you crack them, take the shells off, and separate the yolks from the whites in two separate bowls and you make an egg gravy out of the whites, and then you mash up the… it’s a hard-boiled egg so you mash up the hard yolk so it’s kinda sprinkly kinda egg yolk. Then you have to put it together a certain way so you open a biscuit in half, on the bottom, you put in the egg gravy and then you put the yolks on top, and then you can either have sausage on it or on the side, and then hot sauce on it, and this is how we always use eggs in Easter. And it’s because my mom’s family was really really big, they had like five kids, so they had to do something with all the eggs! I don’t know where my grandma learned it, but my mom learned it from her that you basically make a brunch that is ONLY EGGS!

 

Context: This dish is made every single Easter with KK’s family.

 

Background: KK and her family love to cook, and have a whole slew of recipes they tend to cook with each  other, but this was the very first thing to come to her mind for something that was a traditional meal in their household.


Analysis: Upon further research, KK and I discovered that Eggs a la Goldenrod is a fairly common dish, and other people have made it too! KK thought it was just because her mom’s family was huge, and they had to use all the eggs that were made for Easter, but lots of people make this dish! Because KK’s version of this dish involves her family’s size, and using their colored Easter eggs for it, it is still a piece of folklore.

Corned Beef & Cabbage, oh my!

Nationality: American
Age: 51
Occupation: Restaurant Manager
Residence: Temecula
Performance Date: 4/8/18
Primary Language: English

Main Piece: My mom is part Irish and learned from her family to eat corned beef and cabbage on every St. Patrick’s Day. I eat it now every year because I like it, but I guess there’s some tradition to it. My wife isn’t Irish, but she adopted the tradition and kept it in our family, and so every year she cooks us corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day.

 

Context: This tradition was done every year on St. Patrick’s Day while SR was growing up, and still continues now with SR’s family.

 

Background: SR’s mother is Irish, and grew up in a household that practiced many Irish traditions, and so she passed a lot of these onto her children. SR doesn’t feel particular ties to this tradition, but he likes the was the meal tastes, so he continues to practice it.

 

Analysis: This is particularly interesting because SR doesn’t practice this due to the Irish tradition: he eats corned beef and cabbage because he loves corned beef and cabbage! It is interesting to see how folklore and traditions can manifest, even when someone doesn’t think about carrying it on, or doesn’t have a reason for carrying it on. SR has passed this tradition to his wife, who never ate the meal before and who now cooks and eats it every year; even without meaning to, or without caring about the tradition, SR managed to keep it going.