Tag Archives: drink

Mystery Mixture: A Folk Drink

Nationality: Indian American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 3/27/18
Primary Language: English
Language: Telugu, Hindi, Spanish (kinda)

Okay so -um- for the yew year in like -um- in Indian cultu- so this is actually like a regional thing for -um- like South India and -um- they- the New Year and y’know how there’s like Persian New Year and like Chinese New Year like it’s not exactly like January 1st it’s like the Spring equinox-ish? So, -um- what they do is like you have like it’s mo- it’s more of a cultural thing than like actual religious, but like you do like- you do like a prayer and then -um- you drink this -um- this juice and like- ugh it’s so gross oh my God I haaaate it.

 It’s -um- my Mom makes it every year and like I was at someone else’s house this year and like they fed it to me and I had to drink it -um- and like so there’s like the five tastes in it.

 Basically, it’s like supposed to represent how your- your year won’t totally be like sweet or sour so like it’s just like -um- so you drink that and like it’s supposed to represent that your year will be like have like good, bad and like happy, sad. Yeah.

When I asked the Informant if she had any special foods or recipes she could share with me, she through her head back and scrunched up her face. She immediately told me that “there’s this terrible drink!” She began to tell me about Ugadi pachadi, a holiday drink invaluable to Telugu culture. The drink combines the flavors of sweet, sour, bitter, salty, spicy and umami. When she showed me photos, she quipped that it looked like something that comes up from your stomach rather than goes down. I agreed.

As the Informant said, he Mom makes it for their family every year and every year she suffers down a gulp. The flavorful concoction, called pachadi, is a mixture of mango, neem flowers, jaggery, tamarind, chili powder, and salt and is part of the celebration of Ugadi, the Indian New Year. These ingredients provide a mixture of all five tastes and the drink is believed to have predictive powers. The first taste to meet your tongue is said to be a metaphor for the upcoming year. Hope for a sweet taste. Because of this, it’s common for mothers to tweak the recipe or pour the drink to make sure the mango is the first to touch the tongue.

For all the awful things the Informant had to say about the flavor and appearance of pachadi, a smile never left her face as she told me about the drink. It was clear that the good memories of the experience with her family outweighed the sour taste left in her mouth. Distance makes the heart grow fonder, as they say. I wish my own culture had a ritual such as this. Instead of a fun fortune-telling drink to maintain a love-hate relationship with, the New Year in my culture is celebrated mainly with alcohol – which I would guess most people also have a love-hate relationship with. That being said, drinking Ugadi pachadi seems like a wholesome family-oriented tradition akin to the way my family spent the night before Easter dying eggs.

Carrulim

Nationality: Paraguayan
Age: 23
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 20, 2017
Primary Language: Spanish

My friend from Paraguay told me about this special drink which wards off illness.

Me: What is it?

Friend:”Carrulim is a drink that’s made from sugar cane alcohol, lemon, and some other herbs and spices. It started with the medicine men in the Guarani tribe, which is the tribe of people native to Paraguay before the Spanish arrived.”

Me: When do you drink it?

Friend:”Well I don’t drink it, I think it’s mostly old people and people who live in the country. But it’s only for the first day of August, because August is the month where the weather is worst and a lot of people get sick. There’s a saying that goes: August is the month when skinny cows die.” So yeah if you drink it, it’s only in August.”

Me: Have you ever tried it?

Friend: “Yeah. It’s a disgusting drink. I thought it sounded good but it tasted so bad. I probably will like it when I’m an old man- then again, I’ll “need” it when I’m an old man so I make it through August!”

Analysis: This custom harkens back to a time when people were worried about the harsh weather and how it would effect them. Today, we can control our living conditions with a button (at least in more modern countries) but back before this, people had to ward off illness any way they could. Today this custom serves more as a protection or good luck charm for older people. Perhaps it is psychosomatic– if you drink this, you will believe you won’t get sick, and if you don’t drink it, you will worry about being sick.

Pouring a Drink in South Korea

Nationality: American
Age: 51
Occupation: Businessperson
Residence: Danville, CA
Performance Date: March 19, 2016
Primary Language: English

The informant is a 51-year-old international businessman who has frequently traveled across Europe and Asia to meet with clients for the past 20 years.

Over a relaxed nine holes of golf, I asked the informant if there were any dining customs or etiquette that have stood out to him throughout his travels. He mentioned that after having been to South Korea many times, he has learned that you must pour a drink in an extremely particular way when out to lunch or dinner.

“When you’re pouring someone’s drink in South Korea, you have to hold your forearm tightly. So if your right hand is being used to pour the drink, you place your left hand on the underside of your right forearm and wrap your fingers around it. It’s just polite. I guess that it comes from the old days when extremely wide-cuffed sleeves were the custom.”

While contemporary fashion trends and the accepted style of dress in South Korea may not encompass wearing sleeves that are so wide-cuffed they have the potential to droop into food and drink, this form of dining etiquette provides a glimpse into the types of formalities that arose as a result of the traditional style of South Korean dress. I asked the informant what a South Korean would do if you failed to hold your forearm when pouring a drink, and he replied, “Probably nothing. It’s kind of like chewing with your mouth open. Nobody will say it but everyone is thinking you’re rude.” Hearing of this subtle dining tradition that I would have otherwise never thought to perform leads me to wonder how often I and other Americans give ourselves away as foreigners when eating in other countries. Assuming that this is a practice unique to South Korea, knowing to engage in this tradition provides South Koreans a silent act of solidarity with one another. If an individual from South Korea is out at a restaurant anywhere across the world and sees another holding their forearm when pouring a drink, they will know that they share a common nationality, or at least that both are knowledgeable and respectful of what they see as proper dining etiquette.

“Iced”

Nationality: Indian
Age: 19
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 25, 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Hindi

In order to “ice” someone, you have to hide a Smirnoff Ice somewhere that they would find it, and then once they do they have to chug it right then and there. Then they’ve been iced. It is said to be used to get back at someone.