Tag Archives: food

If you eat raw meat, hair will grow on your chest. – Superstition

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Downey, California
Performance Date: December 2006
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

“If you eat raw meat, hair will grow on your chest.”

 

David first heard this urban legend from his grandmother who is originally from Mexico.  When he was seven, he was very impatient when it came to supper time that he would take a slab of meat before his grandmother was finished cooking it.  She warned him that if he ate raw meat, hair will grow on his chest like a werewolf.  After hearing that, he became afraid so he stopped picking at the uncooked meat.  Contrarily in high school, David had a friend who desired chest hair badly.  His friend had heard that urban legend, too, so he always ate raw meat as safely as possible.

I believe that this urban legend came about because devouring meat and chest hair are both signs of masculinity.  Hundreds of years ago, men were arduous game hunters.  Even now many of the restaurant ads that target men display huge platters of meat.  Hairiness is also a masculine quality, especially chest hair.  Many young teenage boys are zealous upon spotting their first chest hair because that would signify manliness.  Therefore I can see how some people may link eating raw meat to chest hair.

Kennywood Russian Festival

Nationality: Slovakian-American (1st Gen)
Age: 85
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Performance Date: April 2007
Primary Language: English

Every year at the local theme park in Kennywood, Pittsburgh, there would be a Carpathian-Russian festival to celebrate heritage and go to the theme park. My grandfather often took his family because of the celebration involved and because of the community they were a part of, which was largely Slovakian.

My grandfather cannot remember if it was the park that started these festivals or if it was his community that decided to have the festival. They would be held at the picnic tables at the park, and there would be polka music always played by a live band and traditional polka dancing. The food that was often cooked was kielbasa, perogies, which are similar to ravioli, but have potatoes and cheese inside of them and foods more traditional to the Slovakian population. My grandfather also mentioned that they had poliopkis, similar to pigs in a blanket.

Other groups that would have similar picnics at Kennywood were the Italians and the Polish. The Irish did not as much, as they had a separate festival during the fall that they gathered and celebrated their Irish culture, although it became more commercial and was held at an amphitheater just outside the city. Kennywood festivals were special in that many people usually didn’t even ride the rides, they just paid the general admission fee to get in, (you could purchase single tickets to ride the park rides), and eat the good and participate in the celebrating.

German New Year’s Dinner

Nationality: German/Irish-American
Age: 52
Residence: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Performance Date: April 2007
Primary Language: English

My informant, whose background actually features multiple nationalities, remembers her traditional dinner that they had every New Years day for good luck. It consisted of pork and sauerkraut. When she talked of this dinner she actually referred to it as a Pennsylvania Dutch tradition, the Pennsylvania Dutch actually referring to German Immigrants, a mispronunciation of the German word for Germans, Deutsch.

The sauerkraut is cooked in a crock-pot with the pork for the entire day, and my informant said that apples were sometimes included in the pot with the sauerkraut to make it sweeter. Considering the abundance of apples in the region, this is no surprise that they were used.

The Pennsylvania Dutch traditional dish from which my informant’s contemporary meal comes from is actually something known as hog maw, which was pork sausage and potatoes stuffed into in a cleaned pig’s stomach, boiled, and sliced.

My informant also mentioned that kielbasa, an Eastern European traditional sausage, was also included with the shredded pork and sauerkraut.  This influence comes from the Pittsburgh area, which features a large eastern European population that immigrated to the area for jobs in the steel mills around the turn of the century 1900s.

 

Pop Rocks Legend

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 2007
Primary Language: English

My informant told me of a myth he heard when he was young that involved a candy called Pop Rocks. Pop Rocks are little pieces of hard candy that pop and crack when one puts them inside his or her mouth. He explained to me that it has been believed that if one was to eat these Pop Rocks and drink a soda, or any carbonated beverage, at the same time, the combination would make his or her stomach explode.

This is very interesting, because I remember hearing this myth when I was a kid; about nine or ten. My informant is from Riverside, California, and I was living in Encino, California, when I first heard it so it seems that this version has diffused throughout multiple areas. Whether there is actually any evidence that such a result could occur from this combination remains to be seen. Neither one of us, my informant nor myself, has ever witnessed the result of ingesting the combination in person, therefore I can safely say that this myth remains nothing more.

Blason Populaire Joke

Nationality: Slovenian/Mexican
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: University of Southern California
Performance Date: April 4, 2011
Primary Language: English

The informant heard the following joke from one of her classmates in high school.

“Okay, so this one is horrible. I ask someone, ‘Do you know what Ethiopian food tastes like?’ Say, ‘No.’ And then I say, ‘Well, neither do Ethiopians.’ The joke is, because, Ethiopians don’t know what Ethiopian food tastes like because they are starved.”

The informant claims that she herself is not usually an active bearer of the joke: “You never tell it. Except right now [laughter].”

She finds the joke amusing precisely because it is so terrible: “Yeah, I think it’s a pretty bad joke . . . It’s one of those jokes where you think it’s really funny but you also know that it’s just an awful joke.”

Part of the humor value of this blason populaire joke is that it is taboo. You know that it’s awful that people are starving to death in Ethiopia, but at the same time it’s easier to laugh about it than to do anything about it. And it feels better to be amused than to be guilty for not helping.