Tag Archives: food

SOUPY VS. STICKY FOODS BEFORE AN EXAM

Nationality: Korean-American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 21, 2021
Primary Language: English

MAIN PIECE: 

Informant: So in Korean culture… Before like a test or an exam you’re recommended not to drink or eat something that’s like soupy or runny. So, like, don’t have soup on the day of. And you should rather have something sticky like sticky rice or taffy or something like that, that has that like “oomph” to it… ‘Cause the correlation there is like, you drink something runny or you eat something that moves, then that information will leave with it. But if you have something sticky, that’ll help your brain stick that information into your head. 

INFORMANT’S RELATIONSHIP TO THE PIECE: 

Interviewer: Do you practice this?

Informant: No, I don’t. It’s just something my mom told me about… I haven’t really thought about it before like now. 

Interviewer: But have you ever tried or tested it?

Informant: No, I haven’t.

REFLECTION:

According to James George Frazer, homeopathic magic is magic in which like produces like. We see that manifested here, as soupy foods are believed to wash away information, whereas sticky foods encourage information to stick. The idea that what you consume can directly impact your performance in daily life is not unique to Korean culture; it is widely accepted that food is tied to health. Science shows that eating certain foods leads to different physical outcomes (ex. eating carbohydrates versus eating protein before working out). What is unique about this Korean belief is that it is not based on the nutritional value of a food, but on how soupy or how sticky it is––on texture or consistency. This is why it is more likely to be considered a form of magic, than a science-based belief.

ITALIAN CHRISTMAS DINNER

Nationality: Italian-American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 20, 2021
Primary Language: English

MAIN PIECE: 

Informant: For Christmas, ever since I was a kid, my mom would make, uh… Rigatoni… It was two dishes. One was Rigatoni alla Norma which is like, uh, an eggplant dish. It’s Sicilian and her dad like passed down the recipe. Um… And then she would also cook sausage and peppers? Which is kind of like a stew, almost… I don’t know if it originated anywhere or if it was like Sicilian or Italian at all. It was just something that like, at Christmas we knew we were gonna have that.

INFORMANT’S RELATIONSHIP TO THE PIECE:

Informant: I think it’s nostalgic. Um… I think especially those dishes, I remember my mom talking about the Rigatoni alla Norma, her mom and dad would make that for holidays when she was a kid. She never, like, ate it on her own. It was only when she had kids and a family that she wanted a tradition. My mom’s really big on traditions, like having certain things that we as a family do for the holiday. And food is a big part of that… I think it’s definitely nostalgic. I don’t think it’s just because of the holiday ‘cause my family’s not religious… It’s just like we know that on this day we will all have this meal together. It’s really about togetherness. 

Interviewer: Do you think when you have kids you’ll do the same thing?

Informant: I don’t know if I’ll stick to those dishes. Because, like, even though I’m Italian… I don’t like pasta… Um… But even if I didn’t like the pasta, those meals still have a special place in my heart. Just because my mom would slave in the kitchen all day just so we could all sit down and have time together, and it was always really like… Sweet. And I want that for my family. The appreciation. The coming together gratefully with food on the table. 

REFLECTION:

In Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: an Introduction, Elliott Oring writes, “Eating is one of the earliest interactive behaviors of a newborn, persisting as a situation for intimate human interaction throughout life… [W]e are likely to bring a great fund of emotion to the behavior of eating” (34). There is an emotional quality surrounding food, and eating is a highly social activity. The informant does not enjoy the taste of Rigatoni alla Norma, yet she has an emotional attachment to the dish because it is part of her family tradition. However, she does not plan to make this dish a staple of Christmas dinner with her future family. Instead, her focus will be continuing the tradition of coming together to share a meal. The informant does not seem to feel that the tradition is diminished if the dish changes. To her family, the Christmas dinner tradition is primarily about “coming together gratefully with food on the table.” If her children do not like the dish the informant prepares, perhaps they will change the dish too. And so the tradition would continue to vary, and yet, the heart of it––the togetherness––would remain intact. This demonstrates how traditions can change overtime (adhering to Alan Dundes’ definition of folklore as demonstrating multiplicity and variation), and also that foodways are concerned, not only with specific ingredients, dishes, and food preparation, but with why and how people eat.

ANNOTATION:

Source cited above:

Oring, Elliott. Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: an Introduction. Utah State University Press, 1986. 

Joke: Asexuality and Garlic Bread

Nationality: American
Age: 17
Occupation: Student
Residence: Staunton, VA
Performance Date: April 21st, 2021
Primary Language: English

Main Piece: 

Collector: “I remember a while ago you were talking about the link between garlic bread and ace people, right? Can you explain that?”

Informant: “Well, essentially, the consensus is that garlic bread is better than sex. And thus, slowly, over time, through memes and such, it became part of ace- asexual culture to just be like ‘Sex? Phhht. Garlic bread. That’s pretty good.’ It’s like that with various other foods. Like cake. Lemon bars are one thing- no, wait, lemon bars are bisexual. I don’t know why they’re bisexual, but they are.”

Collector: “What’s like a formula of one of these memes? Like if you had to cite a stock meme to me.”

Informant: “Like here’s the basic thing of how they kind of go. Sex. Then reaction pic of somebody going no, or nuh-uh, or whatever—”

Collector: “Like the Drake meme along the side.”

Informant: “Yeah. Like that and then the good one.”

Collector: “The approving side of the picture. 

Background:

My informant is a member of several online asexual communities designed as spaces of solidarity and safety. The common practices of these communities include sharing struggles unique or semi-unique to ace people, figuring out or helping others figure out whether the sexual identity applies to them, and sharing memes about asexuality. 

Collector: Why do you think this developed?”

Informant: “Primarily firstly because garlic bread is just good. It’s just fantastic. And then garlic bread being better than sex was kind of a meme outside of asexual culture. Just around, I used to occasionally find one just out in the wild.”

To my informant, garlic bread being better than sex was the adopting of a pre-existing, potentially ironic meme by a community that agreed whole-heartedly with the sentiment. Oher potential benefits include bonding over a meme.

Thoughts:

It seems telling that this is a joke told within communities specifically labelled as asexual safe spaces and not frequently elsewhere. It’s likely there’s an element of safety and community to this meme. The meme is proliferated within a safe asexual space to prove that the space is safe- saying that sex is bad is fine here and we’ll do it in a funny way. It’s also likely that catharsis is another element at play. In a culture dominated by people who value sex, it’s likely that the community has latched onto garlic bread as just one example to hold up of the many things they see as more appealing. By participating in the meme, consuming and posting, they reaffirm their feelings and get a release from the tension of being misaligned with a sex-dominated culture.

Practical Joke: Eating an Orange Like a Monkey

Nationality: American
Age: 52
Occupation: Medical Writer
Residence: Staunton, VA
Performance Date: April 18, 2021
Primary Language: English

Main Piece: 

Informant: “It comes from my dad. I remember distinctly, I was probably four and he said ‘I’m going to show you how to eat and orange like a monkey.’ And this is how you do it. You take an orange and you orient the stem perpendicular, and you cut it in half so that you see, you know, the typical cross-section if an orange with all the sections in a radiant circle like a sun. So, then you pick up- you do this to each side of the orange -you pick up the half of the orange and you take your little four-year-old teeth which grow into sixteen-year-old teeth and you go around the orange, you dig the flesh of each section out with your front teeth. Particularly good when you still have your front teeth but you don’t have your side teeth because you’ve lost them. So, you scoop the orange meat- pulp -out, going around the perimeter of the orange. Then, what you do is you take the orange and you squish it in half. So, you know, it’s a straight line on the top and you’ve got a semi-circle underneath it. Does that make sense?”

Collector: “Yeah.”

Informant: “So, you squish it in half and you hold it up to your mouth and you drain the orange juice that you can get into your mouth. So, then you take it down and then you fold it the other way so you still got a straight line, but now you’re taking the rest of the pulp- you understand what I’m saying? Like you fold it the other way and you do the same thing; you squish and you get all the orange juice out of the other half. And then what you do- now it’s all pliable, so you take your orange half, which is mostly peel now and some pith, and you turn it inside out and you eat each of the like sectional pith pieces one by one. And that- and then you do it to the other side of the orange -and that is how you eat an orange like a monkey. And I always did this my entire childhood.” 

Background:

My informant considered this something almost unique to her family, though she said that she thinks her father learned it from a kid he went to high school with. She described this as something of a practical joke with practical benefits for her father: 

“And then, about two years ago- I’m fifty-two, so when I was about fifty I said to my dad ‘You know, Dad, I’ve now fifty years old and I have never in my entire life seen someone eat an orange like a monkey except your children.’ And he said ‘Well, I learned it somewhere and as soon as I realized I had five children and as soon as the first one- as soon as I stopped peeling an orange for one through five then the first one would be hungry again. I knew I had to teach them how to eat an orange by themselves. Fortunately, I recalled how to eat an orange like a monkey, and I taught you all, and that’s how I escaped a life of peeling oranges.”

My informant says she did not proliferate this practice because she only had two kids- she didn’t mind cutting up two oranges.

Thoughts:

This practice is difficult to interpret. Its marketing seems geared towards kids- eating like a monkey is fun for kids -so I wouldn’t be surprised if this was originally intended as a trick to get kids cutting their own oranges. However, the informant’s father learned it from a peer, not as a parenting trick, and applied it that way himself. I would tentatively suggest that this is folklore originating from children, given Jay Mechling’s analysis of how children’s rituals are often highly complex and absurd but treated with enough solemnity to follow the exact labyrinthine instructions. This also strikes me as a possible practical joke. Presumably, the goal would be to keep a straight face as you forced someone else through an intricate and increasingly ridiculous process. This seems likely as something taught by one high schooler to another.

Yusheng

Nationality: Malaysian and Taiwanese/Singaporean
Age: 22 and 21
Occupation: Student

Description: It is the tossing of fish salad done during the New Years. People would circle around with chopsticks in hand. Then they would throw the salad as high as they are able, the higher meaning better fortune for the next year and having your wishes come true. The fish is the most important part due to the pun of the Chinese word for fish sounding like the word for abundance.

Background: It is something commonly done within her household. I was able to observe this ritual when we did it with a group of friends.

Procedure:

The salad is prepared with sauces, assorted vegetables and most importantly fish. The dish will then be presented on a table where people would gather. Each participant will be equipped with a pair of chopsticks. When the ritual begins, each participant will toss the contents as high as they can while saying their wishes. The duration of the ritual varies. At the end, the salad is consumed like a normal meal.

My thoughts:

In terms of cuisine, the salad is delicious. While the tossing does tend to make a mess, the sense of community and energy it brings is well worth it. There are many elements of this tradition that I believe are very neat. One thing is the origin of the tradition. It is mainly practiced by people who are ethnically Chinese living in Singapore or Malaysian. Most of the wordplay originated from the Chinese language, the fish signifying abundance is well known to any one who is Chinese. This tradition creates a branching and unique identity that separates itself from the traditions of the mainland and Taiwan. Food is commonly seen as something that brings people together; sharing food is often a bonding experience especially with home made cuisine. The community aspect is especially true for those in Malaysia, where ethnically Chinese people are part of the minority.