Old El Paso's "authentic" Mexican Festive Dinners

In the chapter “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance” from Black Looks: Race and Representation, bell hooks theorizes the ways in which different races, ethnicities and cultures become commodified to fulfill the desires of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. hooks explains that the “commodification of Otherness”—described as the claiming of racial, ethnic, or cultural difference as a product to be sold, bought, and consumed—allows for more delightful and satisfying options “than normal ways of doing and feeling,” which refers to white culture (21). hooks argues that this commodification of Otherness expresses a desire in white culture to experience greater pleasure by breaking from the (white) “cultural anhedonia [inability to feel pleasure]” because different races, ethnicities, and cultures appear as just that—different, exotic, exciting, intense, dangerous (26). Commodifying the racial, ethnic, cultural Other becomes an “alternative playground where members of dominating races, genders, sexual practices affirm their power-over” (23) a specific group so as to not only take over and consume, but also to be “transformed via the experience of pleasure” that their difference implies is a possibility (22)—hooks exemplifies this transformation by way of sex, travel, and rap music. This transformation, hooks suggests, is not one of appreciation of difference, but one of claiming the Other in the name of white culture, as a way to absorb otherness into whiteness—“[there is the] assumption that the exploration into the world of difference…will provide a greater, more intense pleasure than any that exists in the ordinary world of one’s familiar racial group,” but upon reentering the familiar world, which remained intact while one roamed in the world of difference, one has been transformed by the experience and holds some part of the Other for oneself that has been taken from the Other (24). hooks’ theory of “eating the Other” arises from her notion of the commodification of Otherness whereby the dominant white culture consumes and absorbs the Other’s difference to “assert power and privilege” (36); the difference and problem between experiencing a culture and consuming a culture as a commodity is when the Other is consumed and forgotten, or absorbed, into the consuming culture. White supremacist capitalist patriarchy can decide and essentialize the difference of the Other for its own consumption.

Although hooks’ idea of commodification and consumption of the Other is not specifically in the context of literally eating and ingesting it, there are examples of this in the mainstream culinary culture that will help to clarify hooks’ complex theory. Think of fast food places in malls that sell Greek food or Japanese food. In the mall I frequent, there is a Greek place in the food court that sells “traditional” Greek fare of gyros, baklava, etc., but it’s not real Greek food. It’s a commercialized version, an “idea” of Greek food that is sold to the American consumer. As far as I can tell, this place is not run by Greek people, nor is the food prepared by Greek people that know how to cook real Greek food. There are usually, white, black, or Latino people who take my order and who throw lettuce and tomatoes on a flimsy piece of pita and wrap it up in tin foil. This Greek place in the mall commodifies the Greek experience and the “idea” of Greek food and Greek culture marketed and consumed in a culturally American (arguably dominantly white) context. It’s a question of authenticity—it’s the Americanized version of Greek we are receiving. In this case, Greek culture and food has been taken over and appropriated to serve an American version of Greek. I argue that for this to be considered Greek cultural appreciation, the ones cooking and serving the food ought to learn from Greek people the authentic Greek way of preparing and serving Greek food.

Another example of eating the Other from the “commercial realm of advertising” is Old El Paso’s 1986 television commercial for its frozen festive dinners (26). Old El Paso foods did not originate in Mexico; the brand was developed in 1938 by General Mills, Inc., an American Company. Perusing the Old El Paso page on General Mills’ website, there is a statement that says, “For nearly a century, Old El Paso has inspired consumers to bring fun and flavorful Mexican food to their dinner tables.” On Old El Paso’s own website, there is a section that tells the story of how a small canning company in New Mexico was bought by a “clever amigo” who eventually established the canned goods into a brand. The figure responsible for establishing the brand is repeatedly referred to as an “amigo,” “compadre,” and “old man El Paso,” but it is clear this person is not really Mexican—the story and brand originate from New Mexico and El Paso, Texas. It is clear that the Old El Paso brand of Mexican food is an Americanized version of Mexican food and culture; likewise, the 1986 television commercial presents much the same image. The woman’s voice singing the jingle claims that Old El Paso’s frozen festive dinners are a “great new change of place,” while a white woman and white man smile and eat Zucchini Medley, Spanish Rice, Chimichangas, Beef Burritos, and Enchiladas. It is suggested by the tagline, “It’s a great new change of place,” that this Mexican food is a way through which American/white culture can experience an Other, a different cultural and ethnic food, that provides “entertainment nightly,” implying pleasure to be had from a cultural food. Then, a male announcer states “Ole El Paso authentic festive dinners are now in your grocer’s freezer” (emphasis added); the question of authenticity arises again. The Mexican food is first of all mass produced and commercially packaged, stripping the food of some of its authenticity; then the commercial suggests the food is offered as “new dishes to enhance the white palate” by filming a white couple eating enchiladas and burritos (39); lastly, by stressing the idea that the consumption of this food is “a great new change of place,” the food, and by extension Mexican culture and identity, is packaged as a site for white pleasure that is effectively absorbed and thereby forgotten by white culture. Seemingly, this Old El Paso commercial is an apt example of hooks’ concern “that the Other will be eaten, consumed, and forgotten” (39).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCsLoqPVZf4&feature=related

Works Cited

hooks, bell. “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance.” Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End. 1992. 21-39. Print.

General Mills, Inc. “Old El Paso.” General Mills.com. General Mills, Inc., 2011. Web. 30 September 2011. <http://www.generalmills.com/Brands/Meals/Old_El_Paso.aspx.>

Old El Paso. Oldelpaso.com. Pet, Inc., 2011. Web. 30 September 2011. <http://www.oldelpaso.com.au/about-us/the-story-of-old-el-paso.aspx.>

Who ever thought a potato could mean so much?

For every Thanksgiving of my childhood, I remember eating the feast at my Mimi and Pawpaw’s house—crumbly stuffing made of cornbread, hard-boiled eggs, onions, and celery covered in thick brown gravy, peppery green beans that mushed just a little when you pressed them with your tongue to the top of your mouth (from the garden, of course), little toasted yeast rolls (the only thing that was not homemade), thick slices of white- or dark-meat turkey also covered in gravy, and my favorite, Pawpaw’s candied yams. Those sweet potatoes were like having an excuse to eat dessert with the meal. Long thick strips of orange sweet potatoes that turned burnt orange-colored and a little brown after simmering for hours in a thick syrup made of sugar and cinnamon. I remember standing beside the stove with the steam buffeting my face as I stared down into the pot watching bubbles slowly push their way to the top through the syrup, sliding past the potatoes that would cook so slow and so long that they would fall apart on the fork for all their tenderness. When Pawpaw would catch my sister Laura and I stirring around the pot of potatoes, he would cry, “Hang on, now! Don’t stir ‘em, they’ll fall apart. You gotta push ‘em down gently, but never stir ‘em.” Pawpaw’s sweet potatoes were a part of special meals I came to expect; they were a real treat and we always had them at Thanksgiving. So, you didn’t mess with the potatoes on the stove unless you didn’t want to have any.

            Since I have been in college, I have traded off going to Mimi and Pawpaw’s house for Thanksgiving so I could spend the holidays with my Mom or my Nana, both of whom I no longer live close to. So there has been a year or two when I have forgone the taste of Pawpaw’s sweet potatoes, but I always felt like it was not really Thanksgiving without them. This past year I visited my Mom in Texas for the holidays, and my boyfriend came with me for the first time. My sister and I decided to take on the cooking since we knew Mom would not want to slave over the stove (she’s a good cook, but she prefers spending time with her flowers), and it was important to me that the meal would be cooked the right way and as impressive as we could make it, partly because I wanted to impress my boyfriend, and partly because it would feel more like Thanksgiving. (I have been to a few Thanksgivings where we sat in front of the TV while eating, and it never felt special—there’s something about formally sitting at the dinner table all together that just makes the meal special and makes it stand apart from any other dinner.) Needless to say, I just about had a nervous breakdown while cooking this meal. Having never planned a meal this big before, Laura and I just kind of started with no plan at all—we readied the pot for the potatoes because we knew that would take the longest besides the turkey. But, we added too much water and brought the sugar to a boil before the potatoes were sliced, so the syrup became too watery and almost boiled off before the potatoes went in. Eventually, we had the potatoes cooking on one eye of the stove, green beans on another eye, a pan of cornbread in the oven and onions and celery sautéing on yet another eye (for the stuffing), and on the fourth eye, a pot of boiling eggs. And then all the sudden, the stove and oven quit working. The pilot light for the gas stove had gone out because too many eyes were heating at full blast. That is when I began to panic because I thought we had ruined it. I almost cried—well, I did cry, to be honest. I walked into a back room and pulled on my hair for a minute and lay down with my eyes closed while I thought of how to fix it. It was embarrassing—I had been talking so highly of how great the meal would be to my boyfriend and everyone else that I could not stand the thought of it being a failure. I finally went back to the kitchen, poured a glass of cabernet sauvignon to the rim, and finished cooking. The meal turned out fantastic for all our mishaps, and everyone was happy.

            Pawpaw’s sweet potatoes are much more than just sugary candied yams to me. They are a part of some of my best childhood memories of spending time with my Pawpaw, Mimi, and Dad when I did not get to see them often. Those tubers are a source of nostalgia and comfort, something I knew would always taste right and would always be there for a special meal. It was important to have them while I spent the holidays with my Mom to share with her, my step-dad, my step-sister, and my boyfriend something that always made me happy and made me feel close to the people I love. I know this is a dish I will serve my family for the rest of my life, not just because of the sentiments attached to them, but because they’re yummy. Those potatoes ought to feel special. I encourage you to try them, I haven’t heard a person yet who has said they did not like them:

Pawpaw’s Candied Yams

1 pound raw sweet potatoes

1 cup sugar

1 heaping teaspoon ground cinnamon

**For every pound of potatoes, use one cup of sugar

Peel and cut potatoes into long strips. Put all the sugar in a large pot and add small amount of water—just enough to melt the sugar. When sugar melts and comes to a boil, add potatoes. Let boil then turn down heat to a simmer. DO NOT PUT A LID ON THE POT. Takes about 1 to 11/2 hours to cook. DON’T STIR—gently push around pot with a wooden spoon.

After reading the personal narratives from Avakian’s Through the Kitchen Window, I have been thinking of different candidates to interview for the personal food narrative writing assignment. I have considered my Pawpaw because he is the primary cook in my grandparents’ household, and I think his narrative would be an unusual one. Where did he learn his skills? Did he always like cooking? When did he begin cooking the family recipes that he cooks now? Another person I thought of interviewing is a woman from work, an African-American lady who talks to me often of the meals her and her family prepare and eat together. I wonder where she learned to cook some of her favorite meals and what the implications are of preparing and eating meals with her mother, daughter, sister and the rest of her family many nights. Are there certain tasks allotted to specific members of her family? Do her mother and sister and herself have specific recipes that only they prepare for the family? The last person I considered talking to is my Nana, she is geographically closer to me than Pawpaw, and I could spend a weekend with her talking about and cooking food. I think she will be an interesting person to interview for this project because we have talked before about the meals she cooked when my Mom was a kid and when she was married, and whether or not she liked it. Even though she is a white middle-class woman, I think her story will be interesting and different because she grew up in the generation when women were expected to cook for their families and like it, and I get the feeling she didn’t love it so much. Nana is more than likely who I will interview for this project.

To Breast Feed, or Not to Breast Feed?

Jill Lepore’s article “Baby Food” from the January 19, 2009 edition of The New Yorker slowly builds an argument after pages of relating the history of breast-feeding, breast pumps, and commercialized baby food. The acceptability of breast-feeding in public is charted through the historical evolution of breast pump machines and what benefits they offer; even before the technology of the breast pump, the question of who should breast-feed (in regards to white women versus black nannies), and whether women who were “so refined, so civilized, so delicate…[should] suckle like a barnyard animal” were discussed by doctors, philosophers, and legislators (Lepore). Ultimately, Lepore argues that promoting breast-feeding by promoting pumping negates the “social and emotional benefits” that come from a mother holding her child to breast-feed when a baby is fed its mother’s pumped, frozen breast milk—“something you plug into a wall socket is a far cry from a whisper and a kiss.” Lepore asserts that non-bathroom lactation rooms in workplaces seemingly meant to support/promote breast-feeding are a “paltry substitute for maternity leave” and “feel cold-blooded;” she emphasizes that although pumps can be convenient, they should not replace the closeness of mother and child during breast-feeding, if mothers choose to breast-feed at all.

            Meanwhile, Amy Bentley charts the evolution of commercialized solid baby food that she claims largely “displaced” breast-feeding. In Bentley’s article “Feeding Baby, Teaching Mother: Gerber and the Evolution of Infant Food and Feeding Practices in the United States,” she examines the feeding of babies in pre-industrial America when feeding fruits and vegetables was thought to “contribute little in the way of nourishment helpful to infants” and that a diet of milk only up until around twelve months of age was sufficient (66). In the early Industrial era, canned goods were not readily trusted and were too expensive for most; although doctors and pediatricians “still considered breast-feeding best” during this time, they did advocate artificial formulas and supplements like cereals resulting in more and more women relying on the authority of science and medicine rather than their own parenting abilities (67). Eventually with the discovery of vitamins, feeding babies fruits and vegetables caught on and expanded, but the process of straining fruits and vegetables was difficult and time consuming. So this is where Gerber baby foods come in—“Conditions were such that commercially canned baby food provided mass quantities of pre-prepared strained fruits and vegetables to a public primed to accept them” (74). A major selling point to mothers of Gerber canned baby food was the “products’ ability to impart to women freedom and mobility, a notably modern concept” (78-9); that notion combined with the convenience and time-saving ability of canned baby foods made commercialized baby food more attractive than breast-feeding, thus its “displacement.”

            And here I express my comments and problems with these arguments. First of all, I agree with Lepore that pumping breast milk should not replace the connection that is fostered between mother and child during breast-feeding, but I do not think that the pump makes mutually exclusive “the mother, or her milk, [matter] more to the baby,” as she states. I think pumping is extremely convenient for a woman who want to feed her baby natural breast milk instead of formulas or supplements but might be caught in a situation where it is not the best time to be unbuttoning her blouse and throwing a towel over her baby’s head—such as eating at a restaurant or riding on the subway (the acceptability of public breast-feeding is another matter). Also, Kate Harding criticizes in her response article “Throwing the baby out with the breast pump” one of Lepore’s statements that I also find problematic: “When did ‘women’s rights’ turn into ‘the right to work’?” Screeching halt, please. Seriously? Women’s rights have everything to do with the right to work—it’s a BIG part of the whole equality argument, and the argument that women are innately nurturing providers where men are not. Harding sums it up nicely: “implying that the hard-won right to work outside the home ought to be regarded as a comparatively trivial concern [to mother-child bonding and the need for longer maternity leaves]…is throwing the baby out with the leftover expressed milk.” All of this can be done simultaneously—working outside the home, mother-child bonding, AND pumping when it is needed—these are not mutually exclusive options. Technically, these should not be either/or options anyway, although society makes that difficult sometimes. Contradictive to her own underlying argument, Lepore asserts that the social and emotional benefits that come from breast-feeding can be given by other people who are not breast-feeding the baby as well—meaning men, children, other family members, etc as Harding points out. Bottles are not made to fit only the shape of a woman’s hands, they are just made to hold—by anyone’s hands.

            As for Bentley’s argument, she seems merely to assert that commercialized and mass-produced baby foods (from companies like Gerber) caused the decrease in and displacement of breast-feeding, not whether it is a good or bad thing. But it is notable that Bentley focuses on the effect of ready-made solid foods on mothers especially, their misgivings and distrust of canned foods, their second-guessing of their parenting abilities in the face of medical authority, and their resultant “freedom and mobility” from this new convenience (78). Bentley’s article perhaps unwittingly so adheres to the notion of “biology as destiny”—the idea that since women have the physical/bodily ability to bear children and nurse them, they are therefore innate nurturers and providers and responsible for the raising of children. I cannot deny that women can lactate from their breasts in order to feed children where men usually cannot (why even have breasts if you can’t use them?), but I argue that this ability, or inability, does not make me (as a woman) an innate nurturer or provider and therefore solely obligated to child-rearing. I think the role of child-rearing and all that it entails is learned and assumed, rather than innate in any gender, even though society and politics often tell me I am wrong.

Works Cited

Bentley, Amy. “Feeding Baby, Teaching Mother: Gerber and the Evolution of Infant Food and Feeding Practices in the United States.” Avakian, Arlene Voski and Barbara Haber, eds. From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies: Critical Perspectives on Women and Food. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005. 62-88.

Harding, Kate. “Throwing the baby out with the breast pump.” Salon.com. 12 Jan 2009. Web. http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/2009/01/12/breastfeeding_101

Lepore, Jill. “Baby Food.” The New Yorker. 19 Jan 2009. Web. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/01/19/090119fa_fact_lepore