In my family, there are a few celebrations every year, and each one includes special food. Thanksgiving, of course, has the requisite turkey, cornbread, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, and cranberries, along with a few family favorites, such as cranberry applesauce. We also celebrate Chanukkah, Passover, and family birthdays, each one with its particular food traditions.
The celebration of Passover and the food preparations that go into it remind me in some ways of the long process of tamale making described in Williams' article. For days, family will work together to prepare the bullets (hard shells of matzot meal stuffed with chicken and spices), matzot balls, the soup stock, desserts, charoset (diced apples, sweet red wine, walnuts, cinnamon, and honey), the Seder plates arranged very specifically, and any other food we will be having at the Seder. At no other time of the year do we spend so much time making a meal, except, perhaps, at Thanksgiving. Unlike the tamale making, however, these cooking duties are shared across gender lines to some extent. My grandfather and a male family friend always assist in making the matzot ball soup and the bullets, as well as the dessert. My mother always makes the charoset, something that I have come to help with in recent years. My grandmother usually helps with the vegetables. And, for the only time in the year, we hire someone to help in the kitchen. Though she never assists with the cooking, she helps serve the meal so that we can all relax and enjoy the holiday, and she helps clean up the kitchen when all of the cooking is done.
Passover is an interesting food holiday because there are very specific foods that must be eaten for religious purposes. There is a specific order to their eating as we move through the story of Passover, eating the bitter herbs, the salt water, the egg, the glasses of wine (or grape juice if preferred). We sit at the table for more than an hour, telling the story of Passover, before we actually get to the meal. These little bits of food - the charoset and matzot, the parsley and saltwater, the horseradish - serve as a sort of first course in a way, even though they are very spread out. These foods sit on our plates from the beginning of the Seder. These are secondary foods, foods that we rarely eat but that signify our place in the Jewish faith and our connection to the Jews who were enslaved in Egypt.
When the actual meal comes, we always start with soup. In it, we have the choice of matzot balls or bullets or, for the courageous appetite, both. At no other time of year do we have this sort of choice with a first course. Normally, we don't even have a first course, and if we do, we certainly don't get to choose what to put in it. But Passover is special, so we have both matzot balls and bullets in excess. I inevitably get full on the soup before we even get to the main course, which is usually a chicken dish that I personally find to be repugnant, but we have it anyway. Along with the chicken are always a few side dishes, including vegetables. I usually abstain. Instead, I get full on charoset and matzot, possibly my favorite food in the world. As it's the only time of year when I get to eat it, I find it foolish to eat anything else.
Then we have dessert, a rarity in my family. Again, like the first course, we always have more than one option. We always have a dessert that we call "mazel toffee," matzot with chocolate, nuts, and toffee covering it completely. And, because we are not allowed to have flour or yeast on Passover, we often have a flourless cake, a very strange choice to me (why not make an inherently flourless dessert, like chocolate mousse or creme brulee?). Yet we have it, perhaps because we like to prove to ourselves that we can still have "normal" desserts during Passover.
This meal, then, can be classified into four courses: the bitter herbs, charoset, and matzot that go along with the Seder, the matzot ball soup, the chicken and vegetables, and the dessert. Usually, our family only has one course, so this meal is certainly special. And the content of the meal is different too, with most of these foods only being eat once a year. The meal is "good" because of the family that I get to share it with, the huge quantity and choice involved so that I have the luxury of skipping the bits I don't like, and the magnificent quality. It's also good because many of these foods only get to be consumed once a year - the matzot ball soup, sparkling grape juice, and the charoset being particular favorites - so I make sure to absolutely gorge myself while I can, paying no attention to the usual restraints that I place on myself and my eating.
Another celebratory time in my family is the birthday, something that comes up in the Menzel and D'Aluisio book. Unlike the British family, I always eat at home on my birthday, celebrating with my parents and my grandparents. Because this is a celebration of my life, I get to choose whatever meal I want. When I was younger, I often asked for homemade macaroni and cheese, but in recent years, I have asked for barbecue chicken. This is one of the two or three times in the year that I will break my vegetarianism. I absolutely love barbecue chicken, and for this special occasion, my mom will find a local, free range, organic, grassfed chicken for me. This is definitely a prestige food, as meat like this can get pretty pricey. Like the Hondurans in the Menzel and D'Aluisio book, meat comes into my life almost exclusively for celebrations, and the meat that I choose is special, not just something I can pick up at the grocery store, but a bird that we order months in advance so that it can be raised by a local farmer specifically for me. This is definitely a departure, then, from the normal content of my meal. I also always choose to have fruit salad, full of blueberries, strawberries, and bananas. These conjure up the freshness of summer days, and it only seems appropriate for my early July birthday. Strawberries are just trickling out of season, and blueberries are coming in strong, so they're always fresh. The bananas, of course, are imported, but I love them too much to skip out. Then, for dessert, I have my absolute favorite: peach pie. Peaches are just barely coming into season at my birthday, but there are enough around to make my pie. And it's delicious. This year, we upgraded to a peach-blueberry cobbler. In addition, we had chocolate milk from the Meadville Market House, possibly the best drink every created.
My birthday meal is "good" because it consists of my absolute favorite foods, which all happen to be in season for my birthday. The fruits that I adore are fresh and local (for the most part), and the chicken is usually raised and slaughtered just for this occasion. It's also good because it's a relaxing time with my family, and we often don't take the time to get together and sit down for a good dinner. We eat this meal in the dining room when usually we would eat in the kitchen, each making our own meals simultaneous and standing or sitting around eating while the others finish preparing their own food. And, even when we do sit down for dinner, we never have more than one course. Dessert doesn't exist in my house.
So, while the particular foods of my celebrations may be different than in other cultures, we have the similarity of having foods that we usually would not - the Hondurans eating meat, the Chinese grandson getting cake and butter. Additionally, it is a time when we have greater choice in our foods, huge quantities of food, and a lot of preparation going into the meal, much more than would usually go into it. The food that we eat and how we eat it (the Passover meal being stretched out over hours), show the kind of importance that we place on these events and the things or people being celebrated.
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