Tag Archives: food

Tamales and Mashed Potatoes

Nationality: White
Age: 53
Occupation: Admissions for University of Southern California
Residence: Huntington Beach, CA
Performance Date: 4/28/14
Primary Language: English

Tamales and Mashed Potatoes

Personal Background:

My mom works in admissions for a university. She grew up in Palos Verdes, California where her father was a dentist known throughout her entire community. She now lives in Huntington Beach with her family.

Tradition:

Growing up, it seemed completely normal for me to have mashed potatoes and tamales every Christmas, until I realized other people did not do this. So I decided to ask my mom why we did this odd mix of food. What happened is that the mashed potatoes represent her family who is Caucasian, while the tamales represent my dad’s family who is Mexican.

My mom got her recipe for the mashed potatoes from her mother, and it is known in the family as one of the best dishes on Christmas. She makes it for both her side of the family, as well as for my dad’s side of the family. The tamales are also with both sides of the family, but those are from a local restaurant, not hand made. Nothing we make has much religious meaning to it, but has a connection to the past.

To my mom, this disjointed menu is a way to bring the families together. It is a change in tradition for both of my parents, but my mom loves that they were able to make new traditions by still keeping some of their old ones. It has made for a different Christmas for both sides of the family, but part of becoming a new family is creating new traditions.

Analysis:

What makes this a tradition is because it is something that is actually happening and being completed. Every year, this family is physically making and eating this food.

To me, it has become a ritual with when the potatoes are made, and how they are made. Before my mom even starts making the potatoes, my sister and I sit and peel around 20, or more, potatoes. We have been doing it this way since my sister and I have been old enough to be trusted with the potato peelers. It is how the Mexican side of my family is able to have a really nice Christmas with the Caucasian side.

Seven Fish Dinner

Nationality: Italian-American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles/Palo Alto
Performance Date: April 25, 2014
Primary Language: English

I gathered this piece from my friend who comes from a very Italian family. Her parents family’s are both from Naples, her mom’s side is from Mirabella and her dad’s side is from Benevento. Even though her parents weren’t born in Italy, Italian culture is still very important in their family, and keeping up traditions such as this Christmas Eve dinner are very important to her parents, especially her father.

“I come from a very Italian background. My paternal grandmother was born in Italy and then came here, so my father is first-generation. My mother’s grandparents were from Italy…so they come from a very traditional Italian background. And one tradition that we’ve always followed in my family is that on Christmas Eve you are supposed to have the “Seven Fish Dinner” which means that you should be having seven different types of fish for your Christmas Eve meal. Every year my family would invite all of our family and friends over and my dad would spend about two or three days slaving away in the kitchen to cook all these different things which included lobster, probably cooked multiple ways, clams, shrimp…scungilli salad, which is octopus salad, a type of fish which I am not remembering what it’s called…and other things that I can’t remember.”

Q: So is this something your parents got from their parents?

“Yeah, it’s an Italian tradition. My family is not the only one’s that ever done it or heard of it. I know my dad keeps a lot of his Italian heritage in memory of his grandparents who he spent a lot of time with….’This is what my grandparents did so this how we’re going to do’ kind of a thing”

Food folklore tends to revolve around family and family traditions, and this is no exception. The informant learned about this through participating in a family tradition, which was kept by her parents in order to honor their Italian grandparents. Participating in the tradition becomes a way to keep the tradition alive and maintain the culture.

Chinese food rap

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 55
Occupation: Pharmaceutical researcher
Residence: Maryland
Performance Date: 4/22/2014
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

ITEM:
香蕉苹果大鸭梨。
罐头波萝大川橘。
铁蚕豆,葵花子,要喝凉的有汽水。
想吃糖,巧克力,山东特产高梁怡。
萨其马, 鸡蛋糕,不够吃的有面包。
吃馄饨,炸元宵,山东芥末辣青茭。
尼子大衣皮大衣。制服皮包布拉吉。
Banana, apple, pear,
Canned pineapple, orange.
Lima beans, sunflower seeds, if you want a cool drink, there’s soda.
Want to eat candy, chocolate, Shandong special candy,
Sticky dough cakes, fluffy egg cakes, if you don’t have enough there’s also bread.
Eat dumplings, fried yuanxiao (sweet or savory soup balls), Shandong spicy mustard green wild rice.
[Untrans. — the rest of the rap is said at a steady pace, and then it speeds up dramatically during the final lines, which according to my father, are about different types of clothing]

BACKGROUND:
My father grew up in 西门外 (outside the West Gate of Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China). When he was 7 or 8 (he is currently 55), all of the neighborhood kids, a group of about 20-30 all close in age, passed around this “food rap” as a communal joke, something that they could chant together. It wasn’t popular in the larger district area, just within that group.

CONTEXT:
Because my father lives on the East Coast, I called him to ask him about the rap. In addition to describing his feelings about the rap, he also actually did the rap — recording pending.

ANALYSIS:
At the time, Chinese living standards were very poor — in his words, “Beijing was a very backward city at the time.” The foods and clothing he and his friends rapped about were considered luxury items at the time; in the modern context, things like bananas and canned pineapples are generally considered accessible goods, but for him, any fresh food was considered a special treat. It’s no surprise that so many of the items in the rap are sweets and candies, since it was created by children.

I grew up listening to him rap this song and other silly, lewd street songs. My mother berated him for sharing them with me and my sister, but we always thought they were hilarious. Now that I know the background behind the rap, I think it’s touching and sweet that my father retains this connection to his childhood, and am humbled by the story of my father’s upbringing.

Filipino ensaymada (cheese bread roll)

Nationality: Half Filipino-American, half white
Age: 21
Occupation: Graduate student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 3/27/2014
Primary Language: English

ITEM:
Dough: flour, melted butter, whole eggs, yeast?, cream of tartar for texture
Form the dough
Let it rise once
Separate it into clumps
Roll it out so each clump is very flat
Brush it with semi-soft butter — very, very buttery
Flat piece of dough is rolled into a cylinder and then coiled into the roll, adding parmesan cheese and sugar to the inside of the coil
Afterward doing that with all the rolls, let them rise again
Left to bake — afterward, brush with more melted butter and roll with more cheese and sugar

BACKGROUND:
The informant ate it growing up whenever she went to her lola’s (grandmother’s) house, who would make it as snack food (symbol of hospitality). It was one of the many snacks she’d make whenever the informant and her sister would visit amongst the summer.

Ensaymada is definitely a Filipino dish, found in bakeries both big and small. Everywhere has a different take on it but obviously, “my grandmother’s is the best.” When the informant got older, her lola would try teaching it to them by making it in front of them and they’d help mix the ingredients and form the rolls, but she doesn’t exactly know what goes into the dough. Her lola would even mail these rolls to both the informant’s mother and her, because she said “You guys don’t do it right.”

CONTEXT:
The informant is one of my housemates. She isn’t really involved in Filipinio cultural practices, but does have deep connections to family who are. She told me the story of her lola in conversation.

ANALYSIS:
Filipino culture, like many Asian cultures, is very food-centric — additionally, it’s fun to collaborate and plan meals together, but these meals also symbolized hospitality and, in the informant’s case, grandmotherly love, a way to keep her there even when she wasn’t physically present. In the informant’s words: “It’s one thing to share your meal times with us, but it’s another thing to have a physical symbol of ‘your house is my house’.”

Polish galumpkis (stuffed cabbage rolls)

Nationality: Polish-American
Age: 24
Occupation: Graduate student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/20/2014
Primary Language: English

INFO:
Ground beef with some seasoning
Rice with garlic and onions
Cabbage

Wrap the ground beef and rice (season with pepper and salt) with the boiled cabbage. Bake them in tomato sauce for four hours at 325F.

BACKGROUND:
The informant’s grandmother would make them, maybe a dozen times total during the informant’s childhood. It’s a recipe that’s been passed down for a while that they would have it around holidays, Christmas mostly. The informant’s family is Polish, so though he didn’t connect with the food much, he still felt obligated to eat it, as it was a part of his family heritage.

CONTEXT:
The informant shared this with me in conversation.

ANALYSIS:
The fact that the informant ate the food despite not liking it shows how strong this particular tradition runs in his family. I always think that it’s so interesting when people participate in their “heritage” rites without acting engaging with them on an enjoyable level. I also think that the particular mix of ingredients in galumpkis is reminiscent of Polish cuisine, but the informant couldn’t answer as to the sentiment.