Saturday, February 25, 2006

Comfort Food



My brother and I were grocery shopping with mom the other day and as she reached for a box of my brother’s favorite pop tarts she mentioned that my generation of Latinos takes for granted the stuff we commonly eat today. When my grandparents were kids they longed for the likes of TV dinners, boxed macaroni and cheese, and canned foods. To them it was the food of a different culture; it was “gringo food”.

The women of our family fed their children as if they were going to be spending the day cutting sugar cane in the fields. A typical lunch consisted of the following; vianda (boiled root vegetables) and boiled codfish topped with slivers of onion drizzled with olive oil, a salad on the side, washed down with an ice cold Malta or if it was really hot a glass of mabi or jugo de jonjoli (sesame seed juice). If it was winter then you got sancocho or an asopao the contents of it varied from huge shrimp to chicken it depended on the day of the week. No meat or poultry was ever eaten on Fridays. Asopao is similar to gumbo and sancocho is a thick stew like soup.

One day while watching TV my mom became intrigued by something called a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich. She made a mental note to herself to try it when she grew up. She had a list of things she wanted to try when she grew up and they all had to do with things she saw on television. Number one on her then list was to drop a pearl earring into a bottle of Prell Shampoo and see how long it took to reach the bottom. It had something to do with a commercial that just fascinated her. My mom finally got to taste peanut butter and jelly in 1970 after moving away from Brooklyn and her grandmother’s watchful eye. Her parents enrolled her in St. Paul’s Parochial school and somehow Sister Grace the principal of the school had convinced her mother La Negra to allow my mother to eat cafeteria food. Peanut Butter and Jelly had just been added to the lunch menu by the penguins, my mother was too thrilled. After my mother’s experience with peanut butter and jelly there was no stopping her; she was ready to get out there and experiment with the forbidden fruit, gringo cuisine. By allowing her to experiment with food of the gringo culture my grandparents unknowingly opened a door for my mother. As a Nuyorican kid (children born in NYC to Puerto Rican parents) growing up in the late 60’s my mother and her kind were walking a thin line between both cultures. They were Americanized enough to appreciate the humor of The Munsters and the music of The Rolling Stones but were still Latino enough to be fans of Iris Chacon, and La Lupe.

The funny thing is that the more my mother experienced American culture and food the more she appreciated her own culture and food, especially the love it was prepared with and the history behind it. She treasured the time spent in the kitchen with her grand mother. It was there while shelling gandules or watching as Rosa prepared pescasdo en escabechi that her grandmother taught her about their history. She learned of the Bedouin, Gypsy, Moor, and Taino ancestors that shared her bloodline. It was during those moments when she learned to grate the verdura for pasteles and grind garlic with the maseta and pilon (mortar and pestle) that she felt the most loved, the moments she felt closest to Rosa. Rosa would shower her with hugs and kisses while she attempted to master the recipes that had been in their family for countless generations.

My mother was the youngest of the female grandchildren at the time, her cousins now in their teens had gradually been Americanized and showed no interest in learning how to prepare the food of their culture. Unlike many of her cousins she never longed to be one of “them” she was happy with who she was, where she came from, she was proud of her history. With each dish she learned to prepare she learned more and more of her family’s history. As they would wait for the food to cook Rosa would place my mother on her lap in front of a Spanish newspaper and read to her. It was in this manner that my mother learned how to read and write in Spanish something her cousins had never shown interest in learning.


To this day even though she holds a soft spot in her heart for P& J sandwiches her all time favorite comfort food remains her Grandmother Rosa’s garlic & scallion soup which was made especially for her by my great-grandmother whenever was sick just as it had been made for Rosa by her great grandmother when she’d get sick. The soup was a chicken broth with minced garlic, scallions and toasted sesame seeds. It was served with a thick slice of my great grandmother’s well toasted garlic bread floating in the middle of the bowl.

I did an informal survey in the house as to what everyone’s favorite comfort foods were; we all included peanut butter on our list of comfort foods. However at the top of everyone’s list was one dish of comida criolla (Latino cooking) or another, all of them from recipes that had been passed down from my great grandmother to my mother. Somehow I think my great grandmother Rosa would be pleased if she knew this.

Labels: about me

Posted by @ 5:26 PM
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