Fantastic Foreign Food For Me

Walking out of the doctors’ office right after getting a shot, it’s about 6 pm and the sun is starting to come down. I remember my arm hurting and feeling as if I had been in there for days, this thought made me hungry. I reminded my mom to get me the tamales de elote, what I always got after going to the doctors’ office; it was my portal back to El Salvador.

My grandparents live in El Salvador, a place where the culture is great and the food is even better. Sweet corn tamales are a must whenever my family and I go visit, but when I couldn’t go there I brought the memories back with these corn tamales. When I eat a tamal my memories race back to the days that I went to the doctors’ office for a checkup, back then the tamales would carry me to El Salvador. It’s like a memory within a memory. I love the sweet taste that is combined with the saltiness of the crema agria, these can be eaten fried or boiled. The sweetness reminds me of my grandmother and her cooking while the saltiness brings back the humid/hot feeling of the country. The strange thing about this food is that the taste of those sweet tamales from the shop next to the clinic isn’t the same; it’s a memory that I can’t fulfill again a craving that can’t be satisfied. Yet I always find myself looking for that specific sweetness and unconsciously comparing it back to the little shop. It makes me wonder whether when I use to eat them after a doctor visit if I was looking for a taste I had when I ate them at grandmas’ house.

The best part of the tamales now is making them with my mom, homemade tamales. Once I get older and I make a tamal I will probably try to reconstruct the taste of the tamales from my childhood. It is like a cycle, where the daughter tries to recreate that special taste she found in her mother’s tamales. We are always chasing after a memory that brought us happiness, whether it is a snack or a dinner. Taking time and money to make, these tamales aren’t around very often. Here it is considered a special food, while in El Salvador it can be considered a more accessible plate. This food carries many memories for me and it’s a part of my culture, I’ll always cherish my fantastic foreign food.

My Dad’s Oatmeal: “You could hang paper with that stuff.”

On the first morning of college, I headed for the McComb’s center for breakfast with my FYS. Breakfast is buffet style so we grabbed plates and got in line. After filling my plate with bacon, scrambled eggs, and hash browns, I just happened to look down and see that oatmeal was also an option for breakfast. I walked away, remembering that I am not very fond of oatmeal. For me, oatmeal always brings up bittersweet memories of my high school soccer days at Sandia High School.

When I was a freshman in high school, I badly wanted to make the c-team. In order to ensure that the coaches knew your name and that you were in shape for tryouts, attending the conditioning was a must. These practices were intense and often times girls would vomit because they ate too heavy of a breakfast or they got very light-headed because they did not eat breakfast at all.

To avoid having this problem my dad suggested that I eat oatmeal every morning before practice. He further suggested his special recipe for “700 year-old oatmeal.” He claimed his recipe was handed down through generations of Scots on his mother’s side. (Yes, the Kincaid’s have their own tartan). The recipe was simple: half and half, water, and steel cut oats cooked in a crock-pot for 3 hours. At the end of the cooking time, my father would stir the oatmeal with his spurtle and gleefully announce, “You could hang paper with that stuff.” I ate a bowl each morning, Monday through Friday, for 5 weeks of preseason soccer, every August, every summer for 4 years. I never liked my dad’s oatmeal, but I never got sick or lightheaded during practice. I have asked my grandmother and she says she knows nothing about a “Kincaid family oatmeal recipe.”

Dad

How many children's birthdays pass before a mother runs out of clever birthday cake ideas? Looking back at my family's photo albums, a picture of a special birthday cake marks each passing year. Teddy bears, baseball caps, ladybugs, a deck of cards, all transformed by my mother into a delicious dessert topped with homemade icing.

As my siblings and I grew older, the cakes became less personalized and spectacular as our lives became more hectic. My mother spent so much time driving us around town for all our activities, therefore we could not blame her for this shift. My birthday had proven to be an especially busy time of year for my family, occurring in the middle of October with my younger brother's birthday the following day, and I remember one year in particular when my father decided to help out by making my cake. He chose to make his famous marble cheesecake, never to be forgotten by myself.

I should add that my father is extremely proud of his cheesecake; he loves the shower of compliments he receives from all who try it. He deserves this pride, though, as it won him first place in a cheesecake- baking contest at our neighborhood park when we were young. And what man would not be excited to have his cheesecake chosen over those cheesecakes of many mothers from the area?

When I grew old enough to be trusted alone in the kitchen, I surprised him by making a cheesecake for his birthday. By using his popular recipe, I wanted to impress him and return the favor of making my birthday cakes for the past couple years. Just as I had hoped, as I pulled the cheesecake out of the oven, my father wandered into the kitchen, drawn by that smell he loved so much.

I will never forget my father's reaction to cheesecake; the child-like grin, big eyes, and instant reach for a fork will always remain in my memory. His reaction reveals true happiness and excitement, brought to mind every time I eat cheesecake. If anyone should decide to eat a slice of cheesecake in his presence, I should warn him/her to protect their slice from the sudden attack of his fork. I speak from experience; many times my own cheesecake has been unwillingly shared with him!

It's Not What You Think

It has almost become a family tradition over the years that my family ventures to Whataburger when mom is stressed. However, money has been made scarce as her stress levels rise; the opposite of what anyone would hope for. Before I left for college, my brother and I have helped my mom out by cooking at home and making meals that contained love rather than processed gunk. We'd throw a mess of ingredients together and try to make it pretty afterward, making new flavors and family dinner meals. It was quite a success for a while. One night, my brother and I were tired, stressed, and unwilling to be productive, so our dinner consisted of cooked macaroni noodles with butter topped with shredded Colby-Jack cheese. It was a simple yet surprisingly delicious dish which has become a regular meal for my family. When I describe this meal to others, they try to correct me by claiming that what I had described was mac-n-cheese. And I tell them that I'm not that poor.
Noodles and cheese is my "Madeleine". It brings memories of a stressed family convening to share a simple home-cooked tradition. It is a family tradition and an original recipe. This meal is not mac-n-cheese. It is a Walters family symbol.

Grandma's bread.

We have it on holidays, birthdays, and plenty of perfectly normal days when someone says, "Grandma, can you PLEASE make some bread today?" She doesn't mind, and we'd probably all be quite content eating it every day. See, this is not normal bread. It's a loaf (or two, or three) of soft white bread that tastes about ninety thousand times better than any bread you can buy, or that you can make. It's unique, somehow, and even when my mom and I attempt to duplicate it, we can never get it just right.

But what Grandma's bread really reminds me of, every time I eat it, is working cattle; a concept foreign to most of you, I imagine. My mom's side of the family has run a cattle ranch in New Mexico for over seventy-five years. I've been spending nearly every holiday of my life there since I was born, and I've been riding horses since I was two. Horseback riding at the ranch isn't a leisurely sport - it's work, and serious work at that. Most days involve my mom (when she's there, which is often) and/or her hired hand gathering cattle and moving them from pasture to pasture. It can take anywhere between an hour and all day, depending on how many pastures we need to gather and how difficult the cows are to control. Gathering is necessary so the cows can be in a greener pasture with more water. It grows continuously difficult, however, as we have been thrust into one of the worst droughts in the ranch's history.

In the spring we brand - one of the most important events of the year. For both branding and fall work, which I won't elaborate on just now, my mom hires a much larger number of cowboys and girls to help with the workload. There are usually around thirty people - people are needed to ride, gather, drive, rope, and flank. Gathering a few hundred cattle is definitely easier with thirty people than with three. But anyway, back to the bread! On days like these, Grandma and my younger sister always have "the cowboy meal" waiting for us when we arrive after working. This meal may include a variety of meats, vegetables, and desserts, but the staple is always the bread. It's the "glue" of the entire meal, which changes daily. The bread always remains, and tends to disappear before you can even consider picking up a second slice. Some butter it, some put Ketchup on it, some use it for sandwiches. Personally, I love the bread just the way it is. Fluffy, warm, and neither too sweet nor too salty. Since becoming active in theatre during the last few years, I haven't been able to visit the ranch as much as I used to. But I still see Grandma plenty, and she has an uncanny ability to sense when the family wants her bread. Eating it reminds me of all the hours I've put into helping at the ranch, but most of all it makes me appreciate all that both my mom and grandma do to keep it the wonderful place that it is.

Ferris Wheels and Sticky Fingers

There is nothing nutritionally redeeming about cotton candy. To be perfectly honest, there are few redeeming qualities about cotton candy at all, except for the memories of sweetness and summer that are summoned by nothing more than the exquisite melting of colored sugar on the expectant tongue.

I have only to breathe in the cloud of baby pink cotton to be swept back to childhood summers spent at boardwalks, on carousels and Ferris wheels. The moment the woven sugar begins to crystalize I can almost see the vendors, crying their wares of contrived concoctions; I can almost hear the cacophony of gulls and shouting children, the music of arcade games and street performers.

I also remember sticky hands and unhappy stomachs. The time of day when fun becomes too much, feet begin to hurt, and the rides are no longer worth the wait. I am ushered back to the times of throwing up in parking lots, as Mom and Dad arguing over where they left the car, and big sister rolls her eyes.

The ride home is long and quiet. Dad huffs as he drives the car, mumbling obscenities at the endless row of cars moving at a snail’s pace. The carnival is a distant memory; my only reminder the spider web of pink confection clinging stubbornly to my finger tips.

Chili for the chilly

Beef, beans, and spices. These simple ingredients slow cooked together bring about a certain nostalgia to me. It brings me back to my childhood days. When my mom would bring my cousins and me to Tim Horton's after swim practice. Our ears and noses would be red from the biting wind outside and our boots wet from the slush of dirty snow. The smell of coffee, chicken noodle soup, donuts, freshly baked bread, butter, and chili welcoming us into the restaurant. These all come rushing back, memories I have of the now familiar restaurant where I had my first experience of my favorite chili in a bread bowl.

My first taste of this particular chili was not through my mouth, but rather by inhaling the aroma of it and allowing the warmth to spread throughout my body. Then I would take several small spoonfuls of the bean and eat them off the top first. Once the inside of the bread bowl was visible, I would take tear off some of the crisp crust with some sauce infused into the white fluffy part of the bread. Taking some cold butter I would chop them into little blocks and smash one onto my scoopy piece of bread. The textures, temperatures, tastes, all of these are painted vividly in my mind. The flaky crust, the chewiness of the inside, the savory sauce, the cold and creamy butter can seem to contrast one another but this does not compare to the bitter taste of fear that I am reminded of whenever I eat this simple meal with my sister.

Essentially eating chili reminds me of the good moments I've had with my cousins in Canada when I was younger, however one incident can change entirely how one views the experience. Whenever I have hot chili and buttered bread with my sister I am reminded of the day when we rushed to the emergency room with her hands full of glass shards. It's conflicting to me as we had chili before and after these series of events. I don't know whether it reminds me more of my fear or relief, however chili will always be a comfort food for me as it reminds me what it's like to be young, and what it's like to be an older sister.