A Eucharistic Experience
I visited the Congolese family today bringing over my daughter and the 8 month old whom I am watching this week. We chatted and then the mother invited me to eat with them. I said “yes!”
So we sat around the table and she had multiple platters. First, we each had our own dish and it was the salmon steaks we had given them in a tomato type broth. Then she had a platter of cooked cabbage with onions with what looked like tomato color on it? Then she had a big pile of dough in the middle of the table. No forks, or spoons. I was all game.
First she did the blessing and she started out with the prayer that every Catholic around the world understands without knowing each others’ language. She did the Sign of the Cross. (I love that there are commonalities with our Faith!) And they prayed over the food. Then the youngest boy grabbed my attention and began to show me how to eat. He first grabbed a piece of dough and rolled it in his hands. He then used the dough to grab the food on the plate and then place the food in his mouth. I copied him and found it was a bit tricky to get all the food in my mouth without making a mess. I watched some more and realized that my technique was off, so I did exactly what they did and had more success. I should mention that my daughter was all-over-it. What? We get to eat with our HANDS? Yay! She told me she wants to eat like ******’s family from now on! I looked at that dough and thought, “this is familiar! This is like the Mexican tortilla!” In Mexico, you don’t use utensils. You use the tortilla to eat with.
Do you know that when you eat without utensils, there is very little clean up? Talk about environmentally friendly AND mom friendly! Less work. Seriously, these Africans are on to something.
I should mention that the food was DE-LI-CIOUS! It is amazing how we can use the same ingredients and make them taste so different! I love cabbage. Tomato. Salmon. Broth. Salt. Onions. I have never had them taste like that, though.
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What a love feast! My wife and I lived in intentional co-housing community for five years and had similar experiences with a variety of Africans, Koreans, Latin Americans, and Australians all sharing their love through food. Humility. Gratitude. Friendship. Love. What is better?
It’s exactly like the Ethiopian food as I eat it all the time; or years ago, when I worked with some Kurds; and I know it’s the same in India. There is indeed something interesting, more “concrete” about eating in that way. And it’s quite communal.
ah nice…eating with hands is great…except when you’re eating soup
Awesome, Henry.
Thank you for posting this amidst the flurry of political banter. It reminds us that the simple ritual of eating together is one of the most important things we do throughout the day.
“In Mexico, you don’t use utensils. You use the tortilla to eat with.”
Better to say: “In Mexico, depending on what you are eating and where that is, tortillas might substitute as utensils”
That would be like saying that in the US people pick up their food with their hands because all you knew was how US people predominately ate hamburgers and pizza…
Not nitpicking, just think that all the well-intentioned “its just so cool how the foreign people do stuff” can get a bit patronizing (albeit unintended) sometimes.
Sam: Of course. Keep in mind, my husband is Mexican and I have had to learn how to do things in a Mexican form. Tortillas are present for every meal and mostly used as a utensil. That is their purpose.
That’s great, really. Although, Mexicans especially (myself included) and their US friends too can be very provincial when there is no reason to be. Also the “my ____ is Mexican” can come across as quite tokenistic, even for me to say “hey, I’m Mexican so here’s how it is,” would be bad reasoning.
Petty as it seems, tortillas are a major Mexican fare, to be sure, but that varies from region to region and season to season. I’ve seen people assume that a tamale should be put in a tortilla (like they do at Taco Bell) and make themselves look silly. Truth be told, extending this point beyond tortillas and Mexicans, even our “own” is usually too narrow a view for generalization purposes.
Many Mexicans, and other Latin-Americans for that matter, grow quite tired of the ideas that all we eat is tacos, enchiladas, chips and salsa. This all plays into a rather colonial way of “normalizing” things to make them comfortable to live with and talk about.
Last thing, ever eat a chile relleno or sopa de pescado with a tortilla?