Tag Archives: food

Holiday Fudge

Nationality: American
Age: 55
Occupation: Housewife
Residence: London, UK
Performance Date: March 19th, 2013
Primary Language: English

“My mother taught me how to make fudge, and we didn’t have a timer in the kitchen because it broke, so it was my job when I was little to watch the second hand on the clock and every time another minute passed, I would take a playing card and put it on the table so that we would be able to keep track of the minutes and we would know when we got to six it was time to stop boiling the sugar and milk. Then when I got older, I would either do the marshmallows and the butter or the sugar and the milk, we would each take one pot. And then I taught you, although you did not get the fun of putting the cards on the table. I don’t know why my mother was so cheap, year after year after year not buying a timer, but it’s true, for years we didn’t have a timer.”

This tradition occurred every year in December, in preparation for Christmas. Fudge is rather difficult to do alone (as both pots have to be stirred constantly and then combined when they are at the same temperature), and thus in my informant’s family it became a tradition in order to get children interested in making it, and then willing to help with the process as they aged. It has been passed on to the second child in the family for two generations, though quite possibly just by chance. It’s an activity that the mother and daughter to together, thus spending time with each other through the production of food to feed their family over the holidays.

The recipe:

12 large marshmallows

1/2 pound butter
1 small (5 oz) can pet evaporated milk
2 cups sugar
1 small (6 oz) package chocolate chips
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup chopped walnuts, optional
Melt butter and marshmallows.  Boil milk and sugar at a rolling boil for 6 minutes.  Mix butter and marshmallow with milk and sugar.  Add chocolate chips and beat immediately until creamy.  (We always cooled the pot in water while beating.)  Pour into 8″ or 9″ square pan and refrigerate.

Yusheng for Chinese New Year

Nationality: Chinese American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/16/2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin

Informant Bio: Informant is a friend and fellow business major.  She is a junior at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business.  Her family is from China but she has lived in Southern California for nearly all of her life.  Her dad spends lots of time working in Shenzhen.  She speaks fluent Mandarin and English.

 

Context: I was talking with the informant about traditions and rituals her family has.

 

Item: “For Chinese New Year my family usually gets together.  Traditionally, ever since I can remember, the adults have given kids red envelopes filled with money, and, we always have specific foods that translate to specific proverbs like good fortune and good health.  An example would be, having, um fish, because “Nian nian you yu” means abundance throughout the years, but the last word ‘yu’ means abundance but also means fish.  They are two completely different words but have the same pronunciation.  And, a couple of other things we would say is, “Gong Xi Fa Cai” which means ‘congratulations for your wealth’, “Wan Shu Ru Yi” which means ‘may all your wishes be fulfilled’.

 

Sometimes our family does follow this tradition but we don’t follow it too strictly, but there should be a placing order in how you bring the different foods to the tables.  You’re also supposed to say phrases with the addition of each ingredient such as pepper or lime or oil.  Uh, some of the themes touch upon wealth, luck, youth and business success or advancement.  That’s basically one specific dish but there are other flourless cakes that basically expands as you cook it.  It kind of symbolizes growth for kids especially.  Our family also hangs specific square red banners that has the word “Chūn” meaning ‘spring’.  We’d flip it upside down because when you flip it it means ‘dao’, or ‘it is here’ like ‘spring is here’.  We also do that with ‘fu’ which means prosperity, so prosperity it is here”.

Analysis: Chinese New Year really seems to revolve around luck, prosperity and happiness for the new year.  The props used – which vary from clothing to food eaten to the number of dishes served all are meant to be congruent with Chinese lore and beliefs.  The number 8 means good luck so things are done in eights, the color red is lucky so red is shown often and new, clean things are seen as ushering in good luck for the coming year.  There is a cyclical nature in Chinese/Eastern thought that we do not have here in the West.  The coming of the new year, though celebrated here, doesn’t truly entail the “reset” that it does in China.  This may be in part due to the fact that the Chinese civilization has been around for over four millenia (most of which they were relatively isolated), so they’ve seen a much longer time span of existence than most other cultures.  As such they’ve seen empires rise and fall, other warring worlds, and geographies change but still remain, which may contribute to their more cyclical way of thinking as opposed to the U.S.  There also seems to be very set things that are done in a precise process each new year celebration.  This is in contrast to many of the U.S. informants I interviewed who admitted a much more diverse and relaxed understanding of rituals and traditions.

“You only take with you what you have in your stomach.”

Nationality: Declined to State
Age: 21
Occupation: Student (Fine Arts Major)
Residence: Winnetka, CA
Performance Date: April 23, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

“You only take with you what you have in your stomach.”

 

This proverb was shared with the informant by her mother, who told her that you have to enjoy what you eat because when you die, the only thing you take with you to the next life (or death) is the food in your stomach. She says that she lives by the saying because the most important thing to her is what she’s eating next. She says food is important to her because it’s a sense of nourishment and it comforts a primal need while still remaining very personal. The informant said it was one of the few things she doesn’t mind splurging on. She feels food is different from material objects because it makes you happy in a different way because it represents comfort, family, and home (“it’s like being loved”). She feels especially happy when eating Mexican food (her mother, the family’s primary cook, is Mexican).

The informant finds this useful and important because it has maintained her good relationship with food. The proverb serves a dual purpose of championing eating healthily as well as well (food that “nourishes the soul;” things that taste good), because the body is important, but also transient, and the pleasures that come with it are impermanent.

Care taken with food is a commonality in all cultures, and this saying is representative of a positive outlook on food that is often absent in certain circles of developed worlds (because food is sometimes at odds with body image). The positivity of this proverb is important and emphasizes the relationship between the feelings shared between people (as here between a mother and daughter) and links that with a healthy relationship toward food (i.e. food is love itself).

Enchilada Sauce

Nationality: Declined to State
Age: 21
Occupation: Student (Fine Arts Major)
Residence: Winnetka, CA
Performance Date: April 23, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

“So, the enchilada recipe started with my grandma. She concocted this, beautiful enchilada sauce, and then she passed it down to my mom, and she made some alterations… and in my opinion, it’s the best. And then now, it’s my term to make the sauce, and I guess I add my own twist to it. But, um… what’s in the sauce: you have your… um, red peppers. The dried ones, they’re long, I don’t even know what they are, I just know how they look. They’re long and dried up and they have tons of seeds and you take the seeds out and you boil them… so they get plump, you know? And then you boil them with garlic… you take most of [the seeds] out so it’s not too spicy. So you throw that in there with garlic, and tomatoes, and onions… that’s all cooked. Together. And then you throw that all in there [a blender], and then you add sugar, and water, and… the secret, is the chocolate. It’s a special kind of chocolate, it’s the Abuelita chocolate, and you cut a chunk off and you throw it in there. And that’s the sauce and it’s the most amazing thing I have tasted in my life.”

She described how her mom tweaks the recipe.

“She, um, she… no, my grandma makes it way more savory, mom makes it sweeter and spicier. So, like, you get those extremes, the sweet and the spicy. My grandma is just more a less like… I feel like that one’s more like… like, smooth? You know what I mean? Like, it’s mellow. But it’s savory, you can taste the garlic, she puts a little more garlic in it. But, umm… and she makes it a little runnier. My mom makes it real thick. That’s the difference between the two of them. My mom adds more chocolate too because I like chocolate [laughs]. But you don’t taste chocolate at all.”

 

The informant felt that the recipe is very important to her because it was her culture (the recipe itself  as well as Mexican food generally was her culture and her family). She explained that everything is regional in Mexico, so no one used the exact recipe that her mother and grandmother used. She said that her mother’s sisters and great-aunt all used similar recipes that were derived from the same ingredients, but that they were all completely different, and that she hoped, with experimentation, her version of the recipe would please her future family.

The sauce recipe, as well as all other foods prepared by her family, are made with ingredients that are measured by eye. The performance of this recipe, is thus, always subject to change (more change than the written recipe) because it is made for specific reasons and specific people (for example, the informant’s mother adds extra chocolate for her daughter because she prefers it). The sharing and modification of recipes present in the performance of this recipe is central to most cultures now, and is indicative of the fusion of different cultural foods because it is a representation of changes made to older forms.

No meat on Christmas Eve

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 7, 2013
Primary Language: English

“We didn’t eat meat on Christmas Eve. Christmas Day is fine, but not on Christmas Eve. So we’d eat, like, baccala, which is salted cod. And calamari and other fish and seafood.”

 

My informant is an Italian Catholic. Refraining from meat on Christmas Eve is one of many cultural traditions practiced by this group. There are certain traditional fish dishes prepared, including baccala. My informant told me that she doesn’t particularly like baccala, and neither does the rest of her family. However, they make and eat it every year because it is traditional to do so.