Category Archives: Material

A Family Snack

Informant Information — KL

  • Nationality: American
  • Age: 19
  • Occupation: Student
  • Residence: Los Angeles, California
  • Date of Performance/Collection: April 10, 2022
  • Primary Language: English

The informant is my roommate, who I have witnessed making and eating this snack several times. The recipe originates from her grandmother’s search for an inexpensive snack that she could give to her children (including my roommate’s father) after school. I collected this information in-person, in my apartment near USC.

Interviewer: 

Can you explain this family recipe and how it was developed?

Informant: 

Yep! My grandma– my dad’s mom– made this for my dad all the time when he was growing up. That was probably in the 1970s, but the recipe has never changed. You take Saltine crackers and top them with a little smidge of margarine and a quarter of a slice of Kraft American cheese. The margarine can be any brand, but they have to be real Saltines and Kraft slices or it isn’t the same. 

My grandma lived in the Chicago suburbs, and the cracker-butter-cheese combo is pretty on-brand for the Midwest, I think. 

Interviewer: 

Does this recipe have a name?

Informant: 

It didn’t at first. I started calling it The [Informant’s last name] Delight when I was 11 or 12, and that name has stuck ever since. 

Analysis:

I have had the great honor and delight of trying this snack– despite not liking margarine or Kraft slices, it’s pretty tasty! I would describe it as a bunch of cracker-sized, cold grilled cheese sandwiches. This could also be a pretty popular dorm-room meal– no cooking required! 

High School Tennis Traditions

Informant Information — SD

  • Nationality: American
  • Age: 16
  • Occupation: Student
  • Residence: San Pedro, California
  • Date of Performance/Collection: April 3, 2022
  • Primary Language: English

The informant is currently a junior in high school. In an in-person interview, I asked her about any school traditions that she had participated in before.

Interviewer: 

Does your high school have any traditions that you’ve participated in before?

Informant: 

Yeah, I’ve been on the tennis team every year of high school so I’ve done stuff for their traditions. One is that we all wear one yellow sock and one black sock for our important games. A couple girls refuse to even wash the socks that she wears, but I think that’s gross so I don’t do that part. 

Interviewer: 

Is there any significance to the colors and which color goes on which foot?

Informant: 

It doesn’t matter which color goes on which foot. We do yellow and black because our school colors are gold and black. My school doesn’t include socks with our uniforms so we just do yellow because it’s easier to find than gold. 

Interviewer: 

Do you know how long the tennis team has been doing this?

Informant: 

No, but it must have been started a really long time ago because our uniforms aren’t even black and gold anymore. They changed the colors to white and yellow a couple years before I joined the team. 

Analysis:

Wearing coordinated mismatching socks is a fun way to demonstrate membership in this high school folk group– the tennis team. This ritual is supposed to bring good luck to the team, an example of superstitions being popular when there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding an event. I can think of lots of examples of sports teams using lucky colors and accessories before important games. It’s also interesting that the traditional sock colors have outlived the matching uniforms. In this case, it seems like the colors are just as important as the practice of wearing two mismatched socks.

Simmer Pots

Informant Information – LM

  • Nationality: American
  • Age: 20
  • Occupation: Student
  • Residence: San Pedro, California
  • Date of Performance/Collection: April 24, 2022
  • Primary Language: English

The informant describes herself as a practicing Wiccan. She learned how to make simmer pots from her mother. She shared this information with me in an in-person interview. 

Informant: 

So simmer pots use the idea that lots of plants in the natural world have intrinsic magical properties that you can take advantage of if you use the ingredients intentionally. One way to do this is by making simmer pots, where you add your ingredients to a pot of water and let it simmer and release these properties into your home. 

The length of time that the pot simmers isn’t too important– I usually use whether or not I can smell the ingredients in the air as a way to tell if I’ve let it simmer for long enough. Usually, I like to make sure that the scent makes its way into every room of the house– about a couple hours– so that the properties of my ingredients are brought into every room. 

Some ingredients that I use often to bring positivity, good luck, friendship into my home are rosemary, bay leaves, slices of citrus fruits, cinnamon sticks, cloves, and lavender, just because these ingredients all have these properties and they’re easily accessible to me. 

Analysis:

This piece of folklore is very interesting! Like other Wiccan practices that the informant has shared with me, intention is very important in this ritual. Each ingredient must be carefully chosen to achieve the desired effect. This intention is so important that it actually doesn’t matter when or where simmer pots are created so long as the practitioner’s intentions are clear as the ritual is completed. 

Butter Tart Recipe

Nationality: Canada/USA
Age: 49
Occupation: Barre Instructor
Residence: Seattle
Performance Date: 4/4/22
Primary Language: English

Context:

This recipe for butter tarts was passed down to the informant, AS, by her mother and is directly transcribed. Butter tarts are common in the area of Ontario where she grew up (Blenheim), though she says that every family has their own variation on the recipe. Other varieties often include nuts along with the raisins. To AS’s knowledge, they are not particularly associated with any holiday or specific tradition.

Main Piece:

Butter Tarts
 Pastry  1 1/2 C sifted all purpose flour  1 1/2 C sifted cake and pastry flour
 1 tsp. salt
 1C shortening  About 8 Tbsp. cold water.
 Filling
 1/2 C butter
 1/2 C corn syrup
 1 C washed and dried raisins
 2 eggs
 1 tsp lemon juice
  1 tsp. vanilla
 To make pastry, sift the sifted flours with the salt and cut in the shortening with pastry blender until size of peas. Drizzle in water 1 Tbsp. at a time, tossing with a fork, until you can gather it up into a dampish ball between your palms. Roll out very thinly on floured board. Cut out rounds and line medium sized tart tins with them.  Note I would buy tart shells !!!!
 To make filling, mix all filling ingredients. Spoon into prepared tart shells, filling 2/3 full. Bake at 425 13 to 15 min. WATCH CAREFULLY.
 Enjoy.

Analysis:

Family recipes are a very tangible way to pass tradition down through generations. For one thing, parents generally cook for their children, so the recipes have already been integrated into the children’s lives, and once the children learn to cook, they often learn from their parents. If the children later move far away from their parents, as AS did, family recipes can be a great way to bring back a taste of home. I find it very interesting that the informant mentioned that many families in this area of Ontario have their own recipes for Butter Tarts, some with nuts in the filling. The multiplicity and variation establishes Ontario Butter Tart recipes firmly within the category of folklore.

The format of the recipe also speaks to the proliferation of folklore on the internet and its transmission through digital means. During our conversation where I collected this piece of folklore, AS told me she would send me her mother’s recipe so that I could have that exact recipe that had been passed down through the generations, since she did not remember all the details. When she did send it to me, it was in the form of the email that her mother used to send her the recipe in April of 2020, then forwarded on to me. The original subject line is “Butter Tart Recipe,” and reads: “Hi [AS first name] and [AS’s son’s name]:” and then the above copy/pasted recipe. Also attached to the forwarded email I received was the reply that AS sent back, reading, “Thanks Mom! We’ll let you know how it goes.” This illustrates how the internet allows folklore to spread down family lines even when different generations of the family are separated by thousands of miles of distance. The intended recipients of the emailed recipe being AS and her son also informs the idea that AS asked for this family recipe in order to make it with the next generation of her family, to pass on the practice just like her mother did to her.

Songpyeon

Background:

Informant is a half-white, half-Korean student studying at USC who has lived in America their whole life.

“I feel like it’s not a tradition, just a holiday, on 추석 (Chuseok), which is like the Korean Thanksgiving, you eat like, rice cake also. You eat this like little, there’s like little colorful ones, I think they’re called 송편 (songpyeon, lit. “pine cake”), and they have little things in it, they go bad really fast.”

Context:

This conversation was recorded in-person. We were discussing holidays that we celebrated that had traditional foods usually eaten on said holiday.

Analysis:

Food is a major component of ethnic identity. As Elliot Oring notes in his book, Folk Groups and Folklore Genres, “it is unlikely that anyone who feels some stirrings of identification with an ethnic group cannot think of some dish recipe, or kind of meal that they particularly associate with their group” (35). Songpyeon is seen as quintessential to Chuseok, as it also carries symbolic belief, to show gratitude to the year’s harvest. Songpyeon is a type of dish made from rice, which is a staple crop in Korean food (there are also many other dishes that involve rice—tteok is a whole classification of various rice cakes). Making songpyeon invariably leads to a large quantity made, it is reasonable for it to be served on a holiday like Chuseok, traditionally celebrated with the entire family. As folklore, food serves as a symbol of in-group identification, creating a sense of community. Especially with members of a diaspora, food is also a way to stay connected with their culture that they otherwise would not be exposed to.