Tag Archives: family cooking

Thanksgiving Pumpkin Pie

Nationality: American
Age: 50
Occupation: Teacher / Admissions Director
Residence: San Diego, CA
Performance Date: 3/15/19
Primary Language: English

Piece:

Interviewer: “What about the Thanksgiving tradition with pumpkin pie?”

Informant: “So the ingredients in pumpkin pie are largely consistent. Um, most pumpkin pies contain eggs and cinnamon and nutmeg and ginger and salt and pie crust. What you generally do is whisk it all together and bake it. Our family does not bake it at all, we instead use egg whites and all the same ingredients as well as the most important ingredient which is gelatin, which is used to make jello in many recipes. Also, we do not heat it up and it is served cold.”

Background:

The recipe for this pumpkin pie has been handed down for generations for use during Thanksgiving. It is important because it is the family’s signature Thanksgiving dish and pays homage to the ancestors who originated the tradition.

Context:

The informant (my mother) and I discussed this tradition at our home kitchen table, but the recipe itself is only used during Thanksgiving.

Thoughts:

Although normal pumpkin pie is a very common Thanksgiving tradition, this cold gelatinous variant introduces the family’s personal twist on the traditional recipe. Because of this unique identifier, participation in the tradition brings one closer to the heritage of the family and also provides a family bonding activity in the form of cooking the pies the day before Thanksgiving.

Swedish Christmas Meal

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: student
Residence: San Francisco
Performance Date: 3/28/18
Primary Language: English

My roommate Erik has ties to Sweden through his mother, who grew up there and still spends a lot of time out of the year there. While on the topic of holiday traditions, one that he found worthy of elaborating on was the meal that his mom makes every year at their family’s Christmas.

 

He told me that “Every year on Christmas my Mom, who’s from Stockholm Sweden, makes us her traditional meal which consists of smoked salmon, meatballs, potatoes, and we drink Julmust which is a traditional soft drink from Sweden— its normally only sold and bought around Christmas in Sweden. Something that my mom does specifically is make her homemade saffron buns that she learned from her mother, they are probably my favorite part of the meal.”

 

Background Info: This is something that Erik has learned and grown to love from his mother. Erik also sometimes spends Christmas in Sweden and gets a more traditional atmosphere for this meal. Other than that he gets to enjoy this family recipe in San Francisco where he resides.

 

Context: Me and Erik were talking at lunch when I asked him about any holiday traditions.

 

Analysis: I do not celebrate Christmas so it was interesting for me to hear more about traditions during meals that this holiday brings in Sweden. The closest comparison I can make again is my traditional meal experience that I have during Hanukkah.

Gnocchi on the 29th of Each Month

Nationality: Argentine-American
Age: 44
Occupation: Director of Residential Services at local health center
Residence: Claremont, CA
Performance Date: April 22, 2018
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

“As kids, my mom would make gnocchi once a month. It was always on the 29th of the month. They were always homemade and extremely labor intensive, so it would take her all day to make them. She had this custom that everyone would sit down that the table, and she would put a dollar under each plate. It was supposed to bring good luck with money, and it could only be done on the 29th of the month, but I have no idea why.”

Background Information and Context:

Unable to explain why the tradition exists, she called her mom to ask. While the phone was ringing, she theorized that it could be a family tradition from their Italian roots. The informant came to America when she was young, but generations of her originally Italian family lived in Argentina. When her mother picked up, she received the simple explanation that it was just something that her mom did, her grandmother did, and in Argentina they still do it. A cursory Google search revealed that the tradition of making Gnocchi on the 29th occurred because people were paid on the 1st of each month and potatoes and flour were all they had to cook with by the end of the month.

Collector’s Notes:

Some of our most valued traditions are ones whose origins are unknown to us. Especially when the tradition is introduced as a child, it can become ingrained into our lives for the simple fact that it is fun and brings fond memories. Food is especially good at doing this. As shown by the informant’s mother’s simple explanation, it is not necessary to have or to be able to share a full explanation of a tradition in order to engage in it and share it with others. This tradition is interesting because it shows the multiculturalism of Argentina by incorporating a traditionally Italian food into a monthly Argentine ritual.

For another example of Argentine gnocchi, see “The Story Behind Gnocchi Day in Argentina” on Food Republic.

Family First- Meal Customs

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 45
Occupation: Construction
Residence: Tijuana
Performance Date: 4/14/17
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

It is common for the “man of the family” to always let everybody else start eating first, and then he gets served. This shows that the man is putting his family first instead of eating all the fruits of the labor. With this, comes to common tendency that people think about that the Male of the house is the only one working, and the Mom of the children is the one who keeps the house clean and always has meals ready after the Man comes back from work.

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Juan is a Mexican-American from Mexico city. He works demolition, but is super into his religion of being a Jehovah Witness. He has been passing down his traditions to his kids, just how they were passed down to him by his dad and grandpa

Family customs during Lunar New Year

Nationality: Taiwanese
Age: 79
Occupation: Retired professor
Residence: Taiwan
Performance Date: 4/21/17
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: Japanese

The informant is my grandmother from Taiwan, her hobbies are going to church and cooking. She says because Chinese tradition is very custom and done in certain ways it is weird to “stray” off on doing certain traditions. However, our family has done many of the same traditions, except starting from my great-grandparents time (4 generations), we had done some of these Lunar New Year traditions differently.

Informant:

Our house has specific dishes that we make:

蛤蠣 (Ha Li)- These are small clams. After eating the clams, we put the clam shells under the table. this is to signify having money, as olden times clams were a symbol of money and wealth with pearls and such.

年糕 (Nian Gao)- This is rice cakes. This is a homophone to 年高 (Nian Gao) which implies promotions or prosperity year after year.

鯧魚 (Chang Yu) – A type of butterfish. we are supposed to eat fish because it is also a homophone in an idiom 年年有餘 (Nian Nian You Yu). This means to wish abundance year after year, so every lunar new year we eat fish. In my family, we eat this specific type of fish.

I personally do not know why we eat that specific fish, I do not think it was because it was anyone’s favorite or anything. I think it was just a really cheap fish back in my grandparent’s time so it kind of became custom to eat that specific fish. We still practice all of these traditions today, including putting the clams underneath the table. This was interesting to hear because I had never asked or understood what doing all these actions implied, because I was rarely in Taiwan to celebrate lunar new year, I had no idea what or why my family would do such specific things.