Waste Not Want Not: Lessons from My Grandparents

 A typical Mexican Jewish meal with my family

This Thanksgiving I reflected on the hundreds of times I have gathered around my grandparents’ dining room table.  I thought of the all the meals we had prepared and eaten together, the homework assignments tackled, and the hot cups of coffee enjoyed while sharing stories of the past.  Their early experiences with food have shaped the way I view food and waste, and the lessons they gave me as a child are still the most valuable I have ever received.

My grandfather was born to an upper-middle class Jewish family in New York City a few years before the stock market crash of 1929. When he was still a toddler his father died unexpectedly, and his mother was left to care for four children. The stress, compounded by the failing economy, was too much for her and she descended into madness. My grandfather and his siblings were left to fend for themselves. He would tell stories of growing up on the streets of Brooklyn, but mostly he spoke about being hungry. These childhood experiences with hunger would shape him. He was an excellent cook, spoke of his favorite foods with religious zeal, would eat crumbs off the table, and became very upset if food was thrown away. He was also the most thorough chewer I have ever met. He chewed everything at least forty times (including Jell-o!), believing it was both good for digestion and that it made the eating experience more enjoyable. He died last year at the age of 85 and I am sure his appreciation for good food was responsible for his longevity.

My grandmother was born to poor farmers in Northern Mexico. Their knowledge of the land combined with thriftiness meant she never experienced hunger. She taught me how to cook and the only time she scolded me was when I wasted food. “You cook like you’ve never been hungry,” she would say if I cut too much off the end of a chili or tomato. One time I cleaned a knife that still had some chopped onion on it and she said, “Chefs waste so much food…better to be a cook.” Her inability to say anything directly has always frustrated and fascinated me, but the message was clear: Food is sacred and cooking is an act of love.

Food and Life in Brazil

This year I had the pleasure to live in three different States in Brazil, starting in the lovely Northeastern State of Bahia, then working my way down to the traditional Minas Gerais, and finally finished my adventure abroad in the famous Rio de Janeiro. I lived with three different family with three very different financial situations and life styles. I enjoyed seeing their different foodways and there were a couple of important things that I would like to share about food and life that I learned with them. Language and Money.

Language and Food

Studying Portuguese, or what I like to call Brazilian, certain words caught my attention and made me think about my host families food situation. Especially with my family in Belo Horizonte when they would constantly talk about foods that would enche (fill yourself up). Like when our host father would always say, “Põe mais arroz meu filho.” (Put more rice on your plate my son). Then I got a lesson in Brazilian indirect communication when I once mentioned that I “like” vegetables… to him that meant I “would like” to eat more vegetables. Next thing you know my father brought home the harvest from the Sacolão (literally meaning “the big sack” it is a veg and fruit shop). It was good though since they start incorporating veg in their diet as well.

Then, there was my host mother who always warned her filhos (kids) about different food myths such as we couldn’t eat mamão (papaya) with milk, no hot cake since it would give us a stomach ache, and she did not like when we would take a bath after eating dinner. My host brother helped me understand the history of those common myths, explaining that most were invented during Portuguese colonization of Brazil. The slave owners used these myths to try to control and prevent slaves from enjoying or partaking of certain foods.

Without Money, No Food for You

From simple beans and rice to a full Churrasco buffet, I was fed a lot of food living with my different Brazilian families this year. I got a reality check about the costs of eating and feeding a family as well. Without money, you can not eat. Without enough money, you can’t eat well. Ex. my host father uses almost all of his money to feed his family since he is the only source of income. Watching him I learned many of his techniques to preserve and extend the life of foodstuffs. He didn’t let anything go to waste; he would beat air in eggs to use less, save and plant seeds, divide up all the food up equally, cut up single tomato and call it salad, and on and on. He would some how bring home food from work that he was able to get for free, including a Cesta Básica. But the best lesson that I learned was with luxury items such as small portions of chocolate, cheese, or meat. It doesn’t matter how much that he would bring home, an his economically poor family will eat it all mindlessly quick. So I bought a kilo of sliced ham and was surprising upset initially that it disappeared in the same rate as when my host father brings home 200 grams. Sometimes people forget to conserve and respect that things that are “free”. I wasn’t mad though because I remember what my host mother stated once, that people should be able to eat freely until they are satisfied because it is horrible to deny someone food. When your life consists of eating basic foods everyday, food different from the norm will always be desired and consumed.

As a university undergrad, I know that we have complex economical relationships with food during college but I challenge other students to think deeply about their relation with food. And how about your language about food and eating? Some times just changing words, can changes lives. What are couple important things that you learned about food this year?

A Mesa de Bom Comer

I am not a nutrition major, but I am a foodist. A student studying the importance of food beyond our physical dependancy. In the last few years in college, I learned that food is the quintessential example of achieving a happier, healthier life.

In my host family’s home in Belo Horizonte, I noticed several foodways that I wanted to change, but I had to stop and think why do I wanted change these foodways. Demanding change without reason will prevent you from being able to educate and kill the motivation of others. I wanted to leave a picture with my host family that summarized some of the food rules that we tried to implement over my four months time living with them. I wanted to make something similar to the new MyPlate icon, but something more personalized just for them. So I thought, heck with the plate! I want a MESA, a Mesa de Bom Comer (a Table of Good Eats).

Basic Food Rules anyone can apply without studying nutritional sciences:

My Garden, Our Garden

My Garden, Our Garden: my first vegetable garden with my host family in Brazil

I decided to try my hand at growing a vegetable garden. The project was initially for myself, to learn and connect more with my food studies. Yet, I quickly realized that there is a lot more to gardening than just biology and manual labor. Every time I stepped foot into my garden, tons of metaphors came to mind. The most important was learning that nature is life. We have to treat it like a relationship and not an obstacle. It needs to be loved, fed, and wanted or it will die. If it dies, we will die. Maybe not instantly but we will decay eventually from inside out.

In my food studies, I always hear this statistic that only 4% of the population of the United States grows all of the country’s food. I assume that there are not many Americans who want to do the physical labor or devote the time required to grow real food, nor understand the complexed science and biological relationships between nature and food. But, I feel that we have to challenge ourselves to learn about food. Just like any field of study that we might get into, we must learn the basics, the history, the traditional ways and thoughts to achieve something different, great, and truly innovative. I always remember the example that Rocket Scientist, Wernher von Braun; it is said that he didn’t like mathematics and physics but his fascinations with space travel inspired him to study the subjects he needed to achieve his dream. So I thought, if I want to bring food sovereignty to the world, then I need to understand what is food. Hence the garden.

My Food Pantry

In my last post, I wrote about the Cesta Básica (CB), a basic package of foods that my host family and I eat everyday. Another month has passed and we received our CB, this time there was no toothpaste but some coffee.  When opening up the CB and putting the items away, I thought about about my mom, my biological mother that is, coming home from the grocery store and together my family would “upload” the car full of plastic bags. Here in Belo Horizonte, they just passed a law banning plastic bags and my the way we store food is very different.

Basically, there are three places where we store food in my Brazilian home–well, three visible places that is, because my family is know for hiding food as well, comer na graveta (eating in the draw)–in Kitchen Jars, the Refrigerator, and my host Dad’s Closest.

Kitchen Jars 

Keeping basic ingredients in kitchen jars seems like something from my grandmother’s era. I grew up in the plastic world of pre-packaged processed foods, zip lock bags, and Tupperware (notice how the last two are brand names). Yet, here in Brazil it common to have a collection of 6 to 10 kitchen jars containing the basic foods they eat. My home has 5 Potes Mantimentos (Grocery Pots), listed from largest to smallest respectively:

1. Arroz (Rice)
2. Açúcar (Sugar)
3. Farinha (Cassava meal)
4. Fubá (Corn meal)
5. Café (Coffee)

   In the past, a lot of people used a 6th container for Feijão (beans) but now most people just cook batches from the 1kilo bags.

Looking at kichen jar’s size, number, material used in their construction, what ingredients stored inside can say a lot about Brazilian society.

What kitchen jars are common in the States? In your home? A cookie jar?

Refrigerator

The frige is the second most popular place to store food in my home. One day I opened up our Geladera and saw the following:

1. A pot with milk that was old and spoiled when my family bought it. They refused to throw it away, because it could be used for something. After about a month, I pitched it. For some reason I felt kinda bad not knowing how to utilize it.
2. Half a head of cabbage, one of the few vegetables that my family Mineira eat.
3. A leftover dinner plate that my mom didn’t finish eating (spaghetti and beans).
4. A plate of chicken bones (don’t know what we did with this).
5. A plate of frozen fat. I think that it was pork fat.
6. Bowl of Chuchu that I chopped up.
7. A pitcher of juice that I made from the orange tree in the front lawn.
8. Plastic container of Tempeiro (a mixture of salt, garlic, parsley, and green onion) that my family uses universally to season everything. My mom also makes Tempeiro to sell, but it rarely gets sold because she is not physically capable (obesity) to walk around and sell it. Even though she pays my brother to sell it for her, he doesn’t do it because there is little profit and with the few hours he gets away from college and work, he would rather do other things like sleep.

My refrigerator here is so different from my mother’s (full of condiments) or grandmother’s (full of food that goes bad) in the States. Even though this refrigerator looks poor and empty, I think there are many positive things that we can learn from it.

What is your refrigerator like? How do you use it to store food?

Papa’s Closet

The most socially complexed of all the areas that we store food in my home is my host father’s closet. In addition to the tons of random stuff that he saves in there, there is a metal self that acts as our food pantry. Unlike many pantries in the States, our pantry does not hold a variety of goods that we like to have on hand to eat, instead most of our food is surplus from the Cesta Básica. When something runs out in the kitchen jars, we are allowed to go in a take a replacement. At first, I did not understand why they didn’t keep the food pantry in the kitchen, but over time I learned their eating ways and realized the more food out, the more they will consume and are likely to waste.

Initially, I was surprised to see that my host father never locks his closet, considering that he tries to control food consumption and utilizes every little bit possible. There is a lot more to the social politics of his closet but that investigation will require much more timing living with my host family.

Some might read this blog post feeling sad for my family for lacking an American style pantry, yet I have come to learn what is more sad is our foodways in the States. With our abundance, we don’t respect food and spend most of our time complaining about it. I argue that really, we are the poor and dumb.

Cesta Básica

In Brazil, the government considers food a social right and requires as part of their minimum wage law. One attempt to combat hunger in the country is the Cesta Básica. It is a package of basic necessities, almost entirely food, to hopefully sustain a family of 4 for a month. This is just one of the country’s initiatives to feed the population.

What national food security programs are commonly known in the States: Food Stamps.. WIC?

My attraction to the Cesta Básica started while living the last few months with two Brazilian host families. One I will classify as poor and the other as rich. With my rich family, my 1st pai (father) would buy and give his house maid a Cesta Básica once a month to help support her. Now, living with my poor family, my 2nd pai receives a Cesta Básica monthly from his work to survive.

The other day my 2nd pai let me open up our Cestá to see what we got to eat this month.