Category Archives: Material

Pine Straw Necklaces

Age: 22

Context: My friend told me how her aunt taught her how to make necklaces out of pine straws.

Text:

“My aunt taught me how to make necklaces out of the pine straws from a pine tree. And then you just kind of loop it and then you make a loop kind of chain neecklace. It’s really cool.”

Analysis:

This was a very sweet interaction between family practices intertwined with nature. Although I’m not sure where her aunt learned to make the necklaces herself, I do find it interesting that she must have learned to make one as a child. Although this was a practice purely for aesthetic and fun, it’s sweet how sometimes even small things/gestures stick with us as children. Something as simple as tree straws being twisted into temporary jewelry stayed with my friend for years, showing its impact.

Grandma’s Knitting Hobby

Context: While my friend and I were having coffee, I asked her about something that had been passed down from her family. She mentioned that although she wasn’t taught directly taught from her grandmother, she did pick up the hobby on her own.

Text:

“All of my hobbies and interests have come from family members that I never met–that died before I met them. Like, when I was younger, probably six or seven or so. I got really into sewing. I adored it, and my mom cannot sew for her life ever. But she pulled out her mom’s old, like sewing kid.

And that’s what I used growing up, too. It was really funny. So I used all of her little, all of her patterns, all of her notebooks.”

Analysis:

Although this is not a quilt, it reminded me of Witzling’s claim that creations hold pieces of ourselves. My friend and her grandmother didn’t create anything together, but she was still able to find a hobby that was attached to her. The generational gap between them didn’t separate their taste and skill in art, which I can’t help but wonder is a genetic tie if they had never met. As an alternative, I wonder whether seeing her grandmother’s art and knitting patterns might have sparked her interest as a kid, before it became something more as she grew up.

Christmas struffoli (honey balls)

Age: 50s Hometown: Bronx, NY

Performance Context: I experienced this recipe and performance firsthand every December/ around Christmas time as the informant is my father. He comes from a large Puerto Rican and Italian-American family from the Bronx. His Italian family’s side are from Sicily and Naples.

Recipe/Description:

According to my father (the informant) – dough is hand mixed with orange zest and it cools a large gathering, usually the kids/cousins, roll the dough into strips called the ‘snakes’ of a certain thickness of a finger. The snakes are then chopped into squares which are then rolled by hand. They are then deep fried and left to cool in a pot of honey with a splash of sambuca as the secret ingredient. This is usually done in huge batches meant to be tinned and given to neighbors, friends, extended family, and people like doctors, teachers, dentists, etc.

The rolling technique along with the size of the balls are highly specified as the smaller the piece the crispy they end of getting fried. The informant states that nowadays their family (myself included) “does not create the proper sized dough pieces” and that back in the day the informants grandmother would make them “re-do entire batches of them if they weren’t up to standard” .

My father mentions there were a staple among his childhood and grew up sitting at a table rolling dough all day in the weeks leading up to Christmas. He remembers the act so vividly because his hands would start cramping and he would be so bored when the younger cousins would give up and leave the ‘rolling’ table.

Analysis:

This is a classic example of family/holiday foodways. The making of the Struffoli becomes a whole day and entire family affair. Once the day is decided to be dedicated to making honey balls, nobody can escape the kitchen. I think the fact that it’s such a labor intensive process, repetitive and boring, keeps the memory of this tradition so vivid. “It’s a very unique tradition”, even among other Italian-American traditions, according to my Father.

The specific snake rolling technique is a perfect piece of kinetic folklore, it’s a physical skill passed down through imitation, using the “thickness of a finger” as a marker. My father’s grandmother, and then his own, role in ensuring the quality shows how this specific tradition is policed and ensured to be passed down consistently generation to generation. The act of gifting the honey balls also serves as social currency, showing appreciation and love as well as signaling those in the community of their Italian heritage.

Tamales as an Annual Christmas Tradition – Foodways

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Age – 28

Text: CB – “Every Christmas, my family come together to make tamales in a very specific way. Precise amounts of masa, sauce with potato, cheese, meat, and a green olive. This blend is very important to the tradition as it’s what was grown in the garden when my grandmother was little. They grew up very poor and tamales can keep for a very long time so they would all go over to my big Nana‘s house to make hundreds of tamales for everyone to enjoy throughout the year.”

Interviewer – “That’s really cool, is there a specific method to making them? Is it a whole team effort or is it just a few people?”

CB – “It’s that, a team effort. The whole family turns up and we divide into stations. Team one is unfolding the cornhusks. Team two is putting in the Masa and then every other team puts in a separate ingredient! It’s an assembly line to make that much, taking a whole day. This whole train is actively coordinated by my Nana. It’s a family effort, but her operation.”

Context: This annual holiday ritual around Chistmas food ways was shared by the informant, CB, during a discussion about their family, the holidays, and if any kinds of special events took place every year like clockwork. CB and their family are of Latino origin, with them and their family partaking in this massive production line for tamales each year on Christmas, though the tradition originally came from CB’s Nana and has since been passed down throughout their family.

Analysis: The act of making tamales is a food-based annually calendrical ritual during Christmas, marking its importance in the symbolism of the holiday itself, while also allowing the entire family tree to reflect back on their humble upbringings. CB’s Nana grew up where this ritual was out of necessity to ensure enough food was put on the table, and has since transformed into a craft to commune with their own family members and large extended family, recollecting the history they actively draw from, and as an immense gesture of care, love, and familial belonging as feasts are ritualistic in their own right. Being a force to bring people together, for discussion and intimacy, the art of constructing tamales en masse acts as the foundation or precursor, establishing the connection between each family member, their lineage, and the love they all share for one another, the holiday, and the food they make.

Breakfast Casserole – A Christmas Tradition

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Text: Interviewer – “What kind of meals do you make around the holidays?”

JL – “Every year we make the Jimmy Dean sausage casserole for Christmas breakfast.
We’ve done this for as long as I can remember.”

Interviewer – “What is the ritual for making this dish? Is it a full-team effort, are the same ingredients used each year? When do you prep or bake it?

JL – “We prepare the casserole after our Christmas Eve dinner. The entire family is involved, everyone helping with the preparation. Chopping tomatoes, cutting bread into cubes, browning the sausage, beating the eggs. Everyone’s roles have changed over the years, now that kids are older and can be comfortable using the stove and knives. We all chip in, and come together as a family. The same ingredients are used every year. We’ve occasionally make minor variations (original or maple sausage), but have found the original is still the best. We prepare it the night before Christmas, and put it in the refrigerator overnight, allowing everything to soak into the bread and “come together”. On Christmas morning I’ll wake up and take it out of the fridge and allow it to come to room temperature a bit (over the years we’ve found putting it from the fridge directly into the oven overcooks the bottom in order for the rest of it to be cooked through). We go to church on Christmas morning, and we’ll put the casserole in the oven when we leave for church. When we get home from church, the casserole is perfectly baked. Then we eat our delicious casserole as a family and watch football.”

Interviewer – “What does this Christmas tradition mean to you and your family?”

JL – “I can’t speak for the rest of the family, but I really value this tradition. When the kids were young I kept trying to force traditions I grew up with, and most just didn’t stick. I love that something as simple as our Christmas casserole has become a family tradition. We’ve created something that’s uniquely ours. Do I hope everyone will keep making this casserole every year, even if we’re not together? Of course. But I’m happy knowing that we do it now. No matter what good times, bad times, stressful times we’ve had, the world stops when we’re making it and eating it, and it brings us together.

Context: Talking to JL specifically about family traditions around the holidays. And alongside a typical Christmas Day or Eve dinner, them and their family makes a casserole, prepping it on the Eve of Christmas and then baking it day-of. Holiday based meals, especially those that have become traditions for family are common, and this example is no different.

Analysis: This example being both an instance of utilizing foodways to express a folk group, or in this case the family of JL, but also a representation of ritual around the holidays where each member of the family chips in their own ways, some more, some less to make something together to then eat together the next day. While there is no narrative or underlying story beneath this tradition, it’s something that has managed to stick around for years and years, becoming synonymous with Christmas and Christmas Eve itself at this point in the views of JL and their family.