As an introductory\n\u201clab\u201d this recipe introduces many of the ideas we\u2019ll be working with, as far as\nreflection and transformation of tradition, and what authenticity means. This\nrecipe is from a Greek immigrant grandmother, yet does not use traditional\ningredients. Does WHO is making it grant\nauthenticity? Or is WHAT it\u2019s made of do so? Both? Neither?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nWeek\n1: When a Jew Isolates<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For my eating memoir this week I\nwas particularly interested in the second prompt offered (excerpted above)\nabout who I am as an eater and the ways my travel, family, and history have\ninfluenced this. In general my origins and family have been two of the biggest\ninfluences on how I behave in regards to food and eating (the only other huge\none being my health). I\u2019m personally a very simple eater. My last roommate once\ncriticized me coming back from the grocery store saying that I had only gotten,\n\u201c40 different kinds of bread and cheese.\u201d I come from an interfaith household\nin Tennessee which my rabbi always said was some sort of testament to the power\nof love and community, but really just meant we couldn\u2019t put up our Christmas\ndecorations up until after the family Hanukkah party had already happened,\nwhich I found inherently very frustrating. The Christian side of my family, my\nfather\u2019s side, is a very traditionally Southern ranching family, conservative\nand very close knit loud, and passionate about biscuits. My mother\u2019s side, the\nJewish side, is a bit wilder, scrappier maybe, huge, and welcoming, but not\nwithout judgements to pass on whoever they happen to be welcoming. My\ngrandmothers are the leaders of all the food in my family. My paternal\ngrandmother, I would help in the kitchen always making casseroles or one time\nsalmon croquettes, but most often bacon and eggs for my grandfather before he\nleft to move the cows. She taught me to fish using our leftover bacon fat. A\nlot of my actual taste in food aligns more with the flavors of my granny\u2019s\ncooking. My maternal grandmother on the other hand is strikingly Jewish. She\nmakes brisket and kugel and we have challah for Shabbat dinners. She stops in\nthe middle of cooking (burning the brisket) because another woman from her\nsynagogue is calling with some really good gossip about Marsha\u2019s son\u2019s Larry\u2019s\nnew wife (you can\u2019t miss that call). From my grandmother, I learned a lot about\nwhat Jewish eating means. And though my grandmother\u2019s latkes or matzah balls\necho in my mind with every meal I make or eat, more than that is the philosophy\nsurrounding them. When she cooks she cooks to feed her family and anyone else\nwho could possibly come. Food is meant for sharing and consuming and filling\nourselves up, hopefully creating communities as we do. My philosophies around\nfood line up more with hers passed down to her from her mother and her mother\u2019s\nmother, who came over on a ship from Poland around 1914.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Through my own travels out of\nTennessee and living in Portland and now Olympia and living with people who\nhave had such different experiences with food has changed the way I eat quite a\nbit, to include a lot more things I truly have no idea how to make, foods my\nmother at some point during her health kick deemed unhealthy, and dishes that\nare not in Southern Living or the local newspaper and thus my grandmother does\nnot make them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I like to give myself time to bake\nwhen I know I\u2019ll eat it or a special time. I remember I baked constantly as a\nkid, and no one would eat it, so I would eat as much as possible, but\neventually watch my beautiful creations get stale and gross with time. I was\nconstantly baking cakes and pies and sweets when I was younger, but as I got a\nlittle older, I got into making bagels and more bread-y things (pizza) which\nwas so fun. My grandfather always used to bake bread as well, which was always\nfun and strange. I looked through all of Heirloom Kitchen<\/em> looking for a\nfun bread-like food to make for this week and was struck by what an even mix of\nbread-y things there are throughout the book. Everyone has this thing in their\nculture. We all have the grain that becomes a staple to the food we eat.<\/p>\n\n\n\nI chose to make Emily\u2019s Apple\nBlinchiki from Heirloom Kitchen<\/em>. The decision ended up being pretty\neasy, because I just went through every bread-y recipe and found the ones that\ndidn\u2019t have anything I couldn\u2019t eat in them. I\u2019m pretty sure it ended up just\nbeing 2 or 3, so I went with this one, because I love pancakes and I love\napples and it had\neverything in my house!!<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt wasn\u2019t really until I started\ncooking that I realized that it probably would have been helpful to have a\ngrater, because it says to, so I ended up chopping two apples up so so tiny\nwhich took a long time. But worth it I would say!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the process of actually making\nthis recipe, I came to realize how similar it is to latkes (which also stood\nout to me when they called them \u201cApple Pancakes\u201d). I have been making hundreds\nof latkes every year with my grandmother since I was maybe 10, for our big\nfamily Hanukkah party. It takes an entire day to make them all and you spend\nmost of it grating potatoes and onions and you leave like drenched in the smell\nof latke. You can smell it for miles I swear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was so so nice to make this\nrecipe and have this reminder of home and family. I even stumbled into some\ntrouble with them not sticking together and when making latkes, you squeeze\nthem in a paper towel to get all of the extra juice out, so I realized that\nmight help with this recipe as well, and I had a lot of luck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is all to go next to the fact\nthat they were absolutely delicious. Sweet and savory and enough of home while\nalso being something exciting and different!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This week reflecting on the prompt,\nI chose to make a meal that came from my grandmother\u2019s Shabbat dinner arsenal.\nI originally was looking for something more traditionally Jewish that reflected\nthe immigrant experience of my family the way I had been conceiving of it. I\nrealized that the immigrant experience we\u2019re studying is the interaction\nbetween cultures and the way movement changes food. With this thought, I\nrealized that the most regular of my grandmother\u2019s Shabbat dinners was perfect.\nOur Jewish roots are highly represented in it, but there are also the clear\ninfluences of Southern food and the sort of American-Jewish way of life my\nwhole family lives in. Of the four recipes I made, only one is a very Jewish\ndish, and even the method of making kugel is simplified and Americanized. My\ngrandmother has made this kugel exactly like this my whole life. She has always\nbeen very busy, active in several communities, an executive at a company, with\na PhD and three kids. I could write essays about the inspiration I draw from my\ngrandmother and how meaningful it is to cook the food she has cooked for me. The\nfoods are a combination of Jewish recipes and then recipes that have gotten\npassed around from her clique of Jewish grandmothers making Shabbos dinner\nevery Friday for their own families. They clip recipes from the newspapers and\ncans and Southern Living and old family cookbooks, and send them to each other\nto keep Shabbat dinner fresh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The experience of actually eating\nthis meal was a bit tough for me. I made the whole thing and felt very\nconnected to my family and the Friday nights we have together. When I finally\ngot all the food on the table, I lit the candles and started crying. I could\nbarely get through the prayers before eating, because it was just such a real\nexperience of being alone and being apart from not just my family but everyone\nI know. I sent pictures to my grandmother and my mother and then ended up\nwatching some tv while I ate, to keep me a bit of company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Afterwards when my grandma realized\nI had carved an old potato to hold Hanukah candles, because I own neither Shabbos candles nor\ncandlesticks, she started packing a box to send me with both. But, the meal pushed me over the\nedge a bit, and I\u2019ve decided to go back to Memphis and be with my family for a\nwhile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Sullivan Jordan ( A.N.) The following are excerpts from Sullivan’s Foodways During COVID-19 WordPress website. If you’d like to see the rest of their work, check out their site! Week 1 Assignment for Foodways During COVID-19 Collaborative WordPress Website Project Choice Cut from Fuchsia Dunlop\u2019s Shark\u2019s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"geo":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/cefie-portfolio-s20-arn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/cefie-portfolio-s20-arn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/cefie-portfolio-s20-arn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/cefie-portfolio-s20-arn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/cefie-portfolio-s20-arn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/cefie-portfolio-s20-arn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":216,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/cefie-portfolio-s20-arn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions\/216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/cefie-portfolio-s20-arn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/cefie-portfolio-s20-arn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/cefie-portfolio-s20-arn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}