EATING UP TRADITION:

AN AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY OF EVOLVING TRADITIONAL FOOD

By

EMILY WEISKOPF-BALL

Integrated Studies Project

submitted to Dr. Carolyn Redl

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts – Integrated Studies

Athabasca, Alberta

February 2012

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Abstract

In the introduction to Food and Culture: A Reader, Carole Counihan elaborates on the growing academic interest in writing about food. From psychology to ethnography and cookbooks to photography, food has infiltrated almost every academic discipline.

While one may wonder what could possibly be left to say on the topic, the truth is that few studies have focused exclusively on the ways in which traditional foods have changed over the past three generations. This project analyzes the ways in which the expectations of traditional foods and their preparation have been adapted over the past three generations. Although primarily an autoethnographic study, this projects interviews a sample of male and female family members to understand the ways in which shifting generational attitudes and behaviours have changed the traditional foods that are expected, chosen, and prepared for a given family gathering. Through a second interview that filmed that participants making a chosen food, my data is analysed using the study of material objects and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). These methodologies allow me to study the ways in which modern conveniences influence the ways in which the food is made and to determine if certain foods are beginning to be left out of the culinary repertoire.

Keywords: autoethnography, food studies, material objects, Critical Discourse Analysis,

tradition, interview

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Table of Contents

Background and Methodology...... 3

Analysis...... 18

Conclusion...... 36

Appendix A...... 29

Appendix B...... 40

Works Cited...... 41

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Background and Methodology

For human beings, eating is not only vital to our survival but it is also a way to make others feel welcome, to satisfy needs, and to distinguish ourselves from others both economically and culturally. Yet, few people take the time to critically analyse what they ingest. According to Roland Barthes, “we do not see our own food, or, worse, we assume that it is insignificant” (28) when, in fact, food “sums up and transmits a situation; it constitutes an information; it signifies” (29). Indeed, it was not until after the sudden and tragic death of my husband's parents, Doug and Karen Ball, in August of 2009, as well as having both my grandfathers undergo open-heart surgery in 2010, that I realized certain of my family’s most treasured recipes would disappear if they were not written down. In an effort to ensure that the foods I cherish would not die with their makers, I began working on a family cookbook.

Since then, I have observed a number of different family members planning and preparing food in both similar and dissimilar ways. I have watched my Oma, Tante

Ingrid, and Tante Susie bustle in Oma’s small kitchen; each lady to a counter, dancing around each other in near perfect unison to prepare the anticipated turkey and side dishes.

Contrarily, I have often wondered why my mother picks and prepares new and fancy meals to celebrate a special visit or occasion when she could make easier, more familiar dishes that would give her more freedom and allow her to spend more time with her guests. I have also seen meals at my Grand-maman and Grand-papa's shift to simpler fare and/or potluck suppers. They now make bigger dishes, for example, cipaille, that can be prepared ahead of time and reheated. Weiskopf-Ball 4

Since her birth in February 2010, I purposely let my daughter play with cooking tools and ingredients in the hope that she will someday be able to make these same meals herself. At just under two years of age, she is already able to break open an egg and pour ingredients into a bowl. I have taught my husband how to make some of the traditional dishes my family loves and have learnt to make some of the ones his mother used to prepare.

The foods that I have made, watched being made, served, and eaten over the course of the past year have led me to question our traditions: Why are we the only people I know who eat Lebkuchen at Christmas time and why is it that we call the syrup- based cookies Big Hearts instead of their proper name? Why does my brother-in-law’s family put potato in its cipaille and cheese in its meat pie when we do not? Why do my

German cakes turn out dry and crumbly when no one else’s seem to? It was not until I began reflecting on our traditional foods that I realized just how embedded they are in my understanding of myself. In fact, the foods I will talk about in this essay form a reoccurring thread that not only binds my family together, but whose colours, tastes and textures define who we are.

When I began my research, I was surprised at just how far the field of food studies reaches. In the introduction to Food and Culture: A Reader, Carole Counihan elaborates on the growing academic interest in writing about food. From psychology to ethnography and cookbooks to photography, food has infiltrated almost every academic discipline. While one may wonder what could possibly be left to say on the topic, the truth is that few studies have focused exclusively on the ways in which traditional foods have changed over the past three generations.

Rather, many works are interested in daily food habits. For example, Diane Tye's Baking as

Biography analyses daily foods from a folklorist perspective to "supplement [her mother's] Weiskopf-Ball 5

incomplete life history" (15). She delineates the development of folklore's interest in food studies by drawing on a number of works, for example, Don Yoder, Jay Anderson, Shortridge and

Shortridge, and Margaret Bennett, to show that daily food habits tell an important personal story.

Barthes' "Toward a Psychology of Contemporary Food Consumption" looks at everyday items, for example, sugar and cheese, to show that foods are ultimately institutions that "necessarily imply a set of images, dreams, tastes, choices, and values" (28).

Other studies look specifically at a woman’s place in the kitchen. Charles and Kerr's

Women, Food and Families determines that "practices within the family [such as food practices] which are totally taken for granted are... constantly reproducing social divisions and ideologies"

(2). Since "women are generally the ones responsible for feeding themselves, their partners and their children" (8) all meals, including those special meals (for example, Christmas and/or Sunday dinner) prove that "food is important to the social reproduction of the family in both its nuclear and extended forms, and that food practices help to maintain and reinforce a coherent ideology of the family throughout the social structure" (17). Although more in line with the aims of this paper, Berkley's At Grandmother's Table Women Write about Food, Life, and the Enduring Bond between Grandmothers and Granddaughters ultimately exemplifies the role of women as not only food makers but also teachers of values and ideologies.

A fair number of studies focus exclusively on the specific food habits of a particular ethnic or religious group. Mary Douglas' essay, "Deciphering a Meal," looks at the classification of animals and the rules that "govern the common meal as prescribed by Jewish religion" (45).

Edna Staebler's Food that Really Schmecks is not only a collection of recipes from Canada's

Waterloo County but also a semi-ethnographic study of its inhabitants based on food practices.

Finally, David Sutton's Remembrance of Repast is a study "of the relationship between food and memory on the island of Kalymnos, Greece" (ix). Though these are but a few examples of the many studies that have been done on the subject of food, the categories nevertheless illustrate the missing link to traditional food as a generational construct. Weiskopf-Ball 6

There are a number of essential texts to consider when biting into food studies.

Claude Lévi-Strauss' "The Culinary Triangle" cannot be ignored. His theory that a group can be analysed by the way it views the relationship between raw, cooked, and rotten foods as well as the myths and rites the group ascribes to the roasting and/or cooking of its cuisine, lies at the heart of most studies about food. Similarly, Roland Barthes’

"Toward a Psychology of Contemporary Food Consumption" and many other works on food as signifier as well as Margaret Visser's books Much Depends on Dinner and The

Rituals of Dinner have changed the way the academic world thinks about food and food practices. The notion that food is unimportant is no longer possible. In fact, "what is chosen from the possibilities available... how it is eaten, with whom and when, and how much time is allotted to cooking and eating it – is one of the means by which a society creates itself and acts out its aims and fantasies. Changing (or unchanging) food choices and presentations are part of every society’s tradition and character" (Visser Much

Depends on Dinner 12). It is precisely the issues of food choice and preparation with which I am concerned.

It is not while eating my morning toast or cereal that I think of Doug and Karen or worry about losing the family I still have. Rather, it is at Christmas, Easter, and

Thanksgiving that the reality sets in. When we change a component of our traditional meals, I am reminded of making pasta instead of turkey for Christmas dinner one year and watching Doug, a person who put a lot of importance on traditional fare, pout. It is when my husband and I took on hosting Thanksgiving that I realized we are all getting older and may not all be together in the coming years. It is seeing plum cake, tortes, and fruit flan that I know my family's foods are not mainstream. If the basic meal is a Weiskopf-Ball 7 microcosm of the macrocosm, if a particular food item, such as wine or cheese, can represent a cultural reality, then the importance placed on traditional foods, whether an entire meal or a specific dish or dessert, can reveal as much, if not more, about our society’s food habits. It is therefore in these special moments when food practices represent who we truly are. As I began working on this project, I realized that I could fill a gap in the current research being done on food. Moving away from the common and every day to look at the special is to look at the degree to which shifting social trends and food practices are related to changing expectations about the traditional foods that are chosen and the ways in which they are prepared.

The foods you will read about in this project are extremely significant as they represent who I am: a French/German-Canadian Catholic. My Anglo-Saxon husband and

I currently live with our one daughter in Corbeil, a small village in Northern Ontario.

Corbeil, along with Astorville, is part of the Township of East Ferris which has over

4,100 residents, 33% of whom are French ("Community of East Ferris"). At one time, however, the township was 99% Francophone. North Bay, where most people go to work, is a roughly twenty minute commute and has 53,980 residents ("It's all here:

Community Profile") though the majority is Anglophone.

As with many Canadians who come from a mixed heritage, my cultural roots are important in defining who I am and what foods I eat today. My maternal grandparents grew up in rural areas that were very French and Catholic. In their homes, the men worked outside while the women ruled inside. My Grand-maman, Rolande, is a homemaker who moved to Astorville from Bonfield, another small, Francophone village roughly twenty minutes away, when she got married. My Grand-papa, Bernard, worked Weiskopf-Ball 8 for the CNR before opening his own heating and electrical business in Astorville.

Interestingly, and for reasons she cannot explain, my Grand-maman did not spend much time cooking during her formative years. While she remembers her mother and some sisters working in the kitchen, she did not cook until she married. At that point, she learnt through trial and error and by asking her mother and sisters questions. My Grand-papa, like most men of his generation, did not participate in food preparation until his retirement. He is now an avid bread baker and often helps my Grand-maman with traditional foods such as tourtière and cipaille. Despite his absence from the kitchen, he, like the other men in my study, has a very keen sense of what happens in there. In fact, he published a book in 2010 entitled Paintings and Childhood Memories in Astorville,

Ontario in the 1930s that devotes an entire chapter to the work women did at the time.

My paternal grandparents originate from much different places. My Oma was born and raised on a farm in Windhoek in Namibia, Africa. She spent most of her childhood years in a boarding school away from home. Thus, like my Grand-maman, she did not learn to cook until she was married and did not receive any real training from her mother. She met my Opa in her late teens, who had left his native town of Bad Dürkheim,

Germany due to extreme wanderlust. Although they started a family in Namibia, apartheid influenced them to leave the country and, eventually, landed them in Canada.

Having lived through the Second World War in Germany, my Opa experienced enforced rationing. This has certainly contributed to his finicky diet and a passionate desire for the foods he liked as a boy; foods my Oma learned to make in Germany before coming to

Canada. Many of the recipes she makes come from Dr. Oetker’s baking and cooking books or from magazines she had access to when they first moved here. Like my Weiskopf-Ball 9 maternal grandparents, gender roles clearly determined food practices in their relationship. Although my Opa has been known to make the occasional pretzel, he still does not participate in the preparation of the foods we consider traditional. Rather, his knowledge of them stems from the fact that they have not changed.

My mother, Carmen, was born and raised in Astorville. She met my father,

Wilfrid, when they were in their early twenties. In my parents' home, gender roles and expectations continued to dominate food preparation. My mother was a homemaker until her four children were in school fulltime. She made a lot of her own food and worked alone in the kitchen as my father was gone early and back only in time for dinner.

Although she did not learn to cook from her mother either, my mother did graduate as a food service supervisor from Canadore College in North Bay. Thus she has a genuine interest in food preparation which she passed on to my siblings and me when we were quite young. My father now occasionally prepares food but his participation is limited to pretzels and Sunday morning tea biscuits. Importantly, however, he is able to describe, in great detail, the foods he considers traditional.

My siblings, Natalie, Lydia, David, and I are at similar stages in our lives. Except for David, we are all married and starting families. While we are able to make nearly any food we want, Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving meals are usually eaten at my parents and grandparents and we still expect to eat specific seasonal foods at Oma and Opa’s and/or at my mother and father’s.

This is primarily an autoethnographic paper, a methodology I stumbled upon when I took Athabasca University's "What I Tell You May Not be True: Autobiography,

Discourse Analysis, and Post-Colonialism." The methodology instantly spoke to me as I Weiskopf-Ball 10 was searching for a way to make my cookbook more than a straightforward compilation of recipes. I wanted to include interviews, stories, and memories because I knew that by analysing the food we choose to make, I would gain a better understanding of myself and where others like me fit in society. In Creating Autoethnographies, Muncey explains that autoethnography is often used as an attempt to “subvert a dominant discourse” (31) or because it tells of a “deviant case” (5). Though this was not my problem I, like many researchers, struggled to adapt my research project to meet disciplinary and/or methodological requirements and rules.

There is no denying that ethnography has a history of sometimes drawing as much on personal experience as on qualitative data (Anderson 375-376); yet, the presence of the self in one’s research is a controversial issue. Even when they are obviously personally connected to their research topic and the subjects they are studying, traditional ethnographers work to erase their presence from their research. In 1975, K. G. Heider coined the term “auto-ethnography” in order to change the meaning of “self” from the researcher to the researched. His resistance to traditional ethnography, and the academic field's resistance to the inclusion of the authorial voice, created much debate at the time.

In 1979, David Hayano continued the debate when he raised questions about “judging the validity of anthropological data by assessing the characteristics, interests, and origins of the person who [does] the fieldwork” (quoted in Muncey 32). He described authoethnography as research conducted by ethnographers “who had studied their own cultural, social, ethnic, racial, religious, residential or sex membership group [and/or] who had acquired an intimate familiarity with certain sub-cultural, recreational or occupational groups” (quoted in Muncey 32). His criteria for autoethnography can be Weiskopf-Ball 11 summarized as “some prior knowledge of the people, their culture and language [and the] ability to be accepted to some degree or to pass as a native member” (Muncey 32). Since then, autoethnography has developed into its own branch of ethnographic research.

Today, autoethnographers define the methodology as “research, writing, story, and method that connect the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social, and political” (Ellis 30). Heewon Chang supports this definition by stating that the methodology “combines cultural analysis and interpretation with narrative details” (46).

In fact, an autoethnographer’s “story will emerge out of the juxtaposition of [one’s] own experience and outside influences, and the interaction between the two” (Muncey 10).

Indeed, even a traditional ethnographer “[realizes] that identity and meaning are never static and that what we are creating is at best a snapshot of a place in time, hopefully a meaningful one that will aid in our understanding of the world around us” (Miller and

Deutsch 140).

This process of juxtaposing, or layering as Etherington calls it, constitutes a valid source of information. As an autoethnographer, and using Etherington’s model, I can

“[position myself] within the text, [and] by deconstructing dominant discourses and taken-for-granted assumptions about the world..., by refusing to privilege one story over another, and by allowing new stories to emerge... [I can] co-create [a] multifaceted and many-layered [story] that [honours] the messiness and complexity of human life... and

[enables me] to create meaning out of experience” (27-28). Intimacy and vulnerability are crucial to good autoethnographic work because “[a]utoethnography wants the reader to care, to feel, to empathize, and to do something, to act” (Ellis and Bochner 433). In this sense, Ellis, Bochner, and Flaherty insist that narrative inquiry is different from Weiskopf-Ball 12 traditional analysis because it opens the door to a dialogue that includes all of the participants rather than a monologue in which the researcher “has the last word” (438).

By reading through the following evolution and analysis of the foods my family considers traditional, I hope the reader of this essay will question his/her own traditional foods and engage in a dialogue with his/her own past.

Autoethnography and the juxtaposition, or layering, of stories cannot depend entirely on my own experiences. Thus this project also relies on the data I have gathered through interviews with the specific family members described above. Interviewing is an important and appropriate methodology in such a research project as it “is most consistent with people’s ability to make meaning through language [and] affirms the importance of the individual without denigrating the possibility of community and collaboration” (Seidman 14). Interviewing also allows the participant to speak in his/her own voice and is more personal than written surveys. I conducted two interviews for this project. The purpose of the first interview was to have the participants identify the traditional foods they consider most important and to reflect on the ways in which the preparation of those foods has evolved during their life times. These questions essentially ask the participants to answer the “’grand tour’ question… in which the interviewer asks the participant to reconstruct a significant segment of an experience” (Seidman 85).

Using a questionnaire that the participants were given in advance (see Appendix A), the first interview asked them to answer general questions about their expectations of traditional foods and to describe the methods they use to prepare them.

The second interview asked the participants to choose one of the foods they consider most “traditional” and to prepare it. The purpose of this second interview was to Weiskopf-Ball 13 give them a chance to elaborate on their expectations of traditional foods, and to demonstrate the ways in which they make them (see Appendix B). Essentially, it gave the participants a chance to tell a story about the chosen food and to make autobiographical connections and comments on social norms and expectations about food choice and preparation. My goal with both the open-ended questions and the observation of the food preparation was to better understand the ways in which past and present attitudes toward the food influence contemporary choice and preparation. There is no doubt that the people being interviewed have been influenced by a number of factors such as gender, race, education, and culture and bring these perspectives to the interview. However,

“[a]cknowledging these influences while probing into detail and emotion, as well as the

‘facts’ of the situation, makes the oral history a co-creation or construction between the interviewer and the interviewee” (Miller and Deutsch 87). In this sense, it is a perfect way to support the autoethnographic data. Both interviews were filmed, transcribed, and then coded using a coding scheme that emerged from transcripts and are not related to standard theories from the field of food studies.

The information was then analysed using a combination of material culture research and Critical Discourse Analysis. According to Skibo and Schiffer, “the manufacture, use, and disposal of any technology – past or present, simple or complex – is woven into a social, economic, and ideological tapestry that is, in many ways, unique to a particular place and time” (1). Jules Prown affirms this statement by explaining that

“human-made objects reflect, consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, the beliefs of the individuals who commissioned, fabricated, purchased or used them and, by Weiskopf-Ball 14 extension, the beliefs of the larger society to which these individuals belonged” (1). In fact, as much as food is a signifier,

[b]y the use and display of objects, we express to others what we feel our identity

to be and where we feel we are located in society. While each individual has

unique and subtle variations in how they classify objects and how they make

meaning through them, their classifications are also linked to collective

consciousness at some level, allowing them to gain ideas of place, both their own

place and the place of others in a culture or society. (Miller and Deutsch 182)

Material objects are used by everyone. Thus the study of the objects used to make and serve traditional foods are more inclusive than written records – especially since few written records exist in relation to this area of study.

The study of material objects is a more objective methodology than autoethnography and/or interviewing. Even written recipes, which are themselves "a narrative which can engage the reader or cook in a ‘conversation’ about culture and history in which the recipe and its context provide part of the text and the reader imagines

(or even eats) the rest... is open to subjective intervention and interpretation" (Floyd and

Forster 2). Written recipes tell us “what could be made, but they don’t actually tell us whether they were used and with what frequency” (emphasis not mine Miller and

Deutsch 184). My second interview addressed this precise issue. By having my participants make a food of their choice, I was able to see what recipes stood out to them, what objects they used or refused to use to make the food, and to clarify the meaning the food has had in their lives. Weiskopf-Ball 15

The final method I used to analyse my findings was Critical Discourse Analysis

(CDA). There are many different forms of both discourse analysis and Critical Discourse

Analysis. Using Rebecca Roger’s explanation of CDA, I define the critical part of the methodology as “an attempt to describe, interpret, and explain the relationship between the form and function of language... [in order to] explain why and how certain patterns are privileged over others” (4). I define the discourse part as “a system of meanings...

[that] both reflects and constructs the social world and is referred to as constitutive, dialectical, and dialogic” (5). I define the analysis part as a way to “figure out all of the possible configurations between texts, ways of representing, and ways of being, and to look for and discover the relationships between texts and ways of being and why certain people take up certain positions vis-à-vis situated uses of language” (7). Ultimately, this project is interested in going beyond a mere analysis of “how language is used ‘on site’ to enact activities and identities” – what Gee terms “discourse” with a “little d” (7). Rather, he explains that, “[t]o ‘pull off’ an ‘X’ doing ‘Y’ it is not enough to get just the words

‘right,’ though that is crucial. It is necessary, as well, to get one’s body, clothes, gestures, actions, interactions, ways with things, symbols, tools, technologies, and values, attitudes, beliefs, and emotions ‘right,’ as well, and all at the “right” places and times” (7).

Furthermore, language’s primary function is to serve as a scaffold between humans and social activity and “human affiliation within cultures and social groups and institutions”

(Gee 1). Thus my family is an institution that has developed certain expectations, or rules, about which traditional foods should be eaten and how they should be prepared.

Since CDA is interested in not only what is said but also what is left out (Rogers

7), the choice to make certain foods at the expense of others, as well as the decision to Weiskopf-Ball 16 combine specific foods says a lot about my family’s identity. Rowe argues that it is necessary to consider both action and talk when doing CDA. Since many transcribers ignore nonverbal cues and actions, their analysis is only a partial understanding of what is being communicated (80). Ultimately, my participants’ attitudes toward food choice and preparation is their way of “‘pulling off’ a particular social identity” (Rowe 89). My transcripts of the second interview therefore included expressions, movements, tools, techniques, and use of space in order to better understand the full implication of the participants' attitudes toward the foods being made and the way they prepared them.

CDA became an issue at the very onset of this project. While the definition of the term “tradition” was clear in my mind as meaning “a long established and generally accepted custom or method” (OED), not everyone agreed. I had anticipated that, in relation to food, my participants would see the word “tradition” as referring to a specific food or grouping of foods that have come be expected at certain times of the year or during certain celebrations. While such traditional foods could be as obvious as those served at Christmas, Thanksgiving or Easter, I expected that my participants would also refer to more seasonal foods. Furthermore, knowing that “tradition” often implies that something has been “handed down... from generation to generation” (OED), I instructed my participants to include stories about new traditions as well as those from their childhood.

For my participants, "tradition" generally means a combination of three things: foods that are remembered from childhood but that cannot be, or are not easily, replicated today; foods that we still make and look forward to though they may not be mainstream; and foods that have cultural significance. Although I have not found a clear definition of Weiskopf-Ball 17 the term “traditional food” in any cookbook or academic text, my research has revealed that “traditional” seems to imply all of these versions of the definition: an accepted custom or method, something that has been handed down or taught through specific methods, something that defines a culture, and/or something that represents a certain identity.

Traditional food practices are an important site of power-knowledge relationships within families and, therefore, society as a whole. Many times during both their first and second interviews, my participants admit that they do not know how certain foods are made or how to perform certain techniques crucial to successfully producing a certain food. In many cases, this is due to the fact that the “secret” belongs to someone else; usually someone considered an expert on the subject. Other times my participants reveal that certain foods are no longer desirable because of their ingredients or the way they are prepared. This sort of decision making is clearly a reflection of larger social trends and discourse. Finally, many participants reveal that some foods are no longer being made because they take too long to prepare due to our current lifestyles. This is ironic since foods that require an equal amount of time are still being made. Thus CDA has allowed me to investigate and understand the power traditional foods have over our activities and practices.

Since starting this project, I have compiled a list of well over a hundred meals, side dishes, breads, and desserts that members of my family consider traditional – too many to properly analyse in an essay of this length. I have therefore focused on the foods that came up most often in my interviews and that best exemplify the definitions of the word "tradition" listed above. I also use these categories to organize my paper. Overall, Weiskopf-Ball 18 this structure allows me to layer stories from all three generations in order to fully analyse the impact these foods have on us.

Analysis

My interviews with my grandparents make it clear that the word "traditional" refers, on one hand, to foods they remember eating as children but that do not have the same value or importance today. When my maternal grandparents were growing up,

"many products were rationed: sugar, butter, and meat to name but a few" (Rochefort

Painting and Childhood Memories 40). Yet, because they lived in the country, they were able to generate enough meat, produce, and dairy products to satisfy their needs. Gardens were a "necessity if [they] wanted to eat well... They cultivated radishes, beans, onions, peas, corn, tomatoes, and more" (Rochefort Painting and Childhood Memories 66). In the fall, many vegetables were pickled and preserved, the potatoes were stored in dark, unheated basements, and the carrots were buried in the sand. Meat was frozen then placed in barrels of grain. Anything left in the spring was canned. Though neither of them talks about an abundance of food, neither remembers any real rationing either. While gardens are still common, not many people pickle and preserve vegetables anymore. This once routine task and staple food item is now sometimes difficult to complete independently.

For her food interview, Lydia made my Grand-maman's relish. She picked this recipe for two reasons: because she "didn't get around to making it last year... and really missed it" and because "[t]his time of year it feels like fall... and [she] actually [knows] people with green tomatoes." In fact, Lydia was able to rely almost exclusively on fresh produce from people's gardens for her ingredients. Though it is not a recipe she makes every year, and is a dish other members of the family, even my grandmother, do not Weiskopf-Ball 19 make, she picked this food because it is a taste she associates with tradition. When one makes relish, one is reminded of the women who used to make it in the fall to use up the vegetables in their gardens. Importantly, relishes, ketchups, and chow chows were not always the hamburger and hot dog condiments we know them as today. Rather, these hearty dishes had distinct flavours that could stand on their own or highlighted the flavours of the other food items being served.

Growing up in Germany during the war, Opa remembers his family of four living off of three quarters of a pound of meat a week and buckets full of potatoes. Though his family had a big garden that could produce vegetables, they did not live on a farm so did not have the same access to protein or dairy. People had to be resourceful in those days.

To vary the potatoes and other vegetables which represented about ninety percent of their meals, his mother made boiled potatoes, boiled potatoes with cottage cheese or liverwurst or blutwurst, potato pancakes, and fried potatoes on the stove top. The prevalence of potatoes is not surprising. Originally brought into Germany by Frederick the Great in

1744 to fight peasant hunger, potatoes were a staple German food item by the end of the

1800s (Barer-Stein 220). Though they were already an integral part of German food practices, potatoes served the populace well during these hard economic times. Other meals Opa remembers from his childhood are Dampfnudeln, with a variety of sauces, and bread and apple pancakes. These sweeter meals allowed his mother to use up leftovers while also giving the illusion of eating something special.

Oma grew up on a farm in Namibia but went to boarding school as a child. She did talk briefly about some of the food she ate there, like horrible bread soup made from stale bread with raisins and rare treats like fresh grapefruit donated by a local farmer. Weiskopf-Ball 20

Overall, however, the war does not seem to have had much effect on what she was fed .

Her childhood food memories come back to eating fresh fruit: "as a small child, when we were still on the farm, we had fruit trees... peaches, apricots, and we had grapes. And we had peaches like this [demonstrating with her hands] and when you bit in them the juice would run through... that was super!... we always go and buy apricots here, just to try, and they don't taste good. Not what I, we, remember."

Pork by-products also exemplify this aspect of the word "traditional." When butchered, pigs were quartered and divided into sections. Their blood was then boiled and seasoned until thick enough to put into the casings that had been made from their intestines. My Grand-maman remembers these blood sausages later being sliced and fried in butter and Opa reminisces about eating them on a number of occasions. The pigs' feet were used to make ragout. Other parts were used to make sausages, head cheese, and creton. The description of the process by both my grandfathers is uncannily similar. It is obvious then that this system, which Opa claims to have been "universal" for all the farmers of his region, was actually universal around the world.

In today's fast-paced society, and given the availability of such vegetable and meat products in our grocery stores, there is no need for the average human to undertake the labour intensive and time consuming work needed to produce these food items.

Lydia's second interview spanned the course of two days because the vegetables needed to stand overnight. By the time the relish had been prepared and jarred, most of the second day had passed. Since there was little waste in the 1930s and 1940s, one can conclude that these foods were invented to use up an abundance of vegetables and leftover animal parts. Today, few people raise and slaughter their own pigs. They are also Weiskopf-Ball 21 affluent enough not to care about throwing food out so do not spend time worrying about the waste that goes on in grocery stores and factories.

Furthermore, these vegetable and pork-based foods require a certain amount of experience and skill. On thirteen occasions during the first forty minute segment of her interview, Lydia was unsure about a certain aspect of the recipe. On three occasions, she made notes to ask my Grand-maman. These observations juxtapose Opa's recollection of the professional butchers who were "so good... [They] would cut [the fat] on an angle, around the edges, and then [they] would go with [the] big long knife and go like so. Make these cuts also about a quarter inch apart. And then the other way around too." Like

Lydia, my grandparents were never forced to perform the tasks alone. Thus they would not likely be able to presently yield successful results without help. Though relish is much easier to make than liverwurst, both are examples of food practices whose secrets are kept by an older, more experienced generation.

Finally, though these pork products can now be bought in grocery stores and delis, my maternal grandparents do not buy them because they taste nothing like the ones they remember eating as kids. While Opa does buy them regularly, he nevertheless laments the loss of the traditional taste he remembers. Even in Germany, he claims, it is impossible to find the same liverwurst he ate as a boy. One can therefore conclude that these once common foods have come to be regarded as special because they cannot be reproduced in one's home. This reality gives them special significance and clearly associates them with a rural, less-industrialized time and place.

The various potato meals my Opa recalls from his childhood similarly did not become traditional fare for the next generations. Both Oma and my father talked about Weiskopf-Ball 22

"sweet night," the one night a week Oma would make a sweeter meal like potato or apple pancakes, waffles, or milk rice, but neither of them talked about Dampfnudeln or potatoes. These iconographic German foods were not continued because my father and his siblings did not appear to have liked the texture of dumplings and are now too much work, and produce too much food, for a two-person meal. While my Opa certainly misses meals like Dampfnudeln in a vanilla sauce, they must live on in his memory.

These remembered but discarded meals are important to consider when looking at modern traditional fare as they say a lot about today's culture. For example, all four grandparents believe that the pork by-products are too rich for the modern human being.

This means that our lifestyle has changed enough that such rich foods are neither necessary nor privileged. Furthermore, we can buy relish and foods like liverwurst rather than make them ourselves. Though we have had to sacrifice familiarity of taste and texture, we are not equipped to take on the tasks ourselves. In letting go of these traditional methods and customs, my grandparents have accepted to live by modern ways that rely on consumerism and industrialization. Had they refused and continued to make these foods themselves, they would certainly be considered odd and different. Essentially, they have conformed to a discourse about "normal" Canadian behaviour and "good" versus "bad" food.

Contrarily, some of their favourite childhood meals have continued to thrive despite societal pressures. The tradition of eating waffles for dinner is but one example that came up in many of the interviews as a special treat for supper and the occasional brunch. Importantly, German waffles require a special machine that makes a thinner waffle than the more common Belgian version. Though these machines can now be Weiskopf-Ball 23 purchased at any major retail store, they were once unavailable in Canada. In fact, Oma had a special outlet in her kitchen that was converted to European wattage so she could use her waffle maker when she came to Canada. The once rarity of the machine made this already special meal even more significant. My father and his siblings, like me and my own, have likely never realized just how unique we are. In our health-food crazed world, few families would consider eating waffles with maple syrup, sugar, jam, and/or Golden

Lyle syrup an acceptable supper; yet, this tradition has been handed down to us and we see nothing unusual about it.

My family has never, to my recollection, owned a bottle of table syrup. Rather, we have always been lucky enough to have actual maple syrup because we make it ourselves. This French-Canadian tradition came to us from my Grand-papa whose father owned a sugar shack. He recalls spending a lot of time there as a boy trying to make his own syrup and taffy. My Grand-papa was unique in his own time since most families had to rely on molasses for their sugar fixes. For as long as I can remember, we have had a sugar shack in my family. It is not only an important site for family gatherings but also constitutes an essential part of our food practices. The combination of German waffle and

French maple syrup is but one example of the hybrid nature of our current traditional foods and, together, highlight some of the foods that we expect to eat in our homes.

Traditional foods are also those that connote a specific culture. For example, my parents and siblings mentioned cipaille and tourtière as traditional French-Canadian meals. Though my maternal grandparents also mentioned the meals, when asked if these were examples of French-Canadian cuisine, my Grand-maman responded that she believes they are simply Canadian since they have always been prepared with the Weiskopf-Ball 24 produce available in Canada. Like her, many people would be surprised to learn that the

Babylonians were making a meal very similar to tourtière back in 1600 BC1 and that a recipe for patina, a comparable meal, was also found in 400 AD (Lemasson 102). The meal evolved throughout the centuries so that by medieval times its "castle-like appearance..., complete with crenels and topped with the banners of the lords at the table, transformed [it] into a perfect representation of feudal power" (Lemasson 104). By the seventeenth century, it was still being served in French and English courts but was also crossing class lines since it was "extremely practical, easy to make and preserve, apparently within the means of all and thus able to connote, on the whole, a gastronomic civilisation” (Lemasson 106). In the nineteenth century, royalty did not want to be surprised by unknown meat in a pie and thus the meal was relinquished to the gentry

"who lived off the products of the land" (108). By then the meat pie and its variations had not only made their way into a number of cookbooks but had also landed in Gaspésie,

Quebec with the arrival of European settlers.

It is certain that people from Gaspésie moved to Charlevoix, the region my

Grand-papa's family comes from. As farm land and opportunities presented themselves in

Ontario and many Quebecois emigrated to places like Astorville, they naturally brought their food practices and traditions with them. In fact, the cipaille and tourtière continued to be staple, but unnoticed, regional foods until the 1970s when the French needed to affirm their status as equal Canadian citizens. At this time,

the will to reconstruct a typically Québécois culinary patrimony emerged. This patrimony

was founded on a return to regional cooking and served to promote culinary

1 In fact, Jean Bottero, a French anthropologist discovered the recipe on clay tablets in many Babylonian archaeological sites (Lemasson 100). Weiskopf-Ball 25

distinctiveness at the provincial level... Since the 1970s, the tourtière... [has become] the

culinary emblem of a culturally rich and complex country with a fierce pride in its French

cultural heritage and its promising future. (Lemasson 113)

To this day, the East Ferris winter carnival and summer picnic, both originally

Francophone events, sell cipaille as their main fare.

Furthermore, my maternal grandparents and my mother recall eating cipaille on

Christmas Eve during the Réveillon; another important French-Canadian tradition2.

Tourtières were not something people ate regularly throughout the year because it is a richer meal than the common meat and vegetable suppers. Cipailles, however, are more common. Grand-papa's mother made cipaille when there were work bees on their farm since this hearty meal could sustain the hardworking men. Today, they are ideal for large gatherings because they are easy to prepare, can be made in advance, and feed a large group of people. Though they are relatively expensive and rich, like tourtière, they are only eaten once in a while.

It is interesting that despite a firm tie to French-Canadian culture, my maternal grandparents do not immediately associate these meals with their linguistic and cultural past. This lack of connection is perhaps due to the fact that cipailles and tourtières vary from one home to the other. No two versions are the same as each individual has his/her own way of seasoning and preparing the meat and crust. Even cookbooks do not promote one recipe over another. In Lorraine Boisvenue's Le guide de la cuisine traditionnelle québécoise, for example, there are nine different versions of cipaille and nine different versions of tourtière. Recipes even vary from mother to daughter and from one sibling to

2 The Réveillon is a meal eaten after Midnight Mass which included, in my family, a chicken broth, tourtière, fruit, fruit cake, and cookies. People did not eat before going to mass so this was a welcome meal. Also, it marked the end of the Advent season so people who had been limiting their food intake were quite happy to eat rich and hearty foods. Weiskopf-Ball 26 another. My Grand-maman was never given a written recipe from her mother. Rather, she was told to put a little bit of this and a little bit of that when she first started and has come up with her own version after years of practice. Such versatility could certainly explain my grandparents' failure to see the dishes as cultural icons though it is certainly puzzling since the rest of the people interviewed clearly associate the meal with French-Canadian cuisine.

My mother chose to make tourtière as her food item for the second interview of my project precisely because it is a French-Canadian tradition she always looked forward to eating at Christmas. Like my Grand-maman, my mother received very basic instructions when she began making these meals. Though she eventually based hers on two of the recipes in Boisvenue's book, she has modified them over the years. Her tourtière page is not only dog-eared and stained but also bookmarked by a piece of paper on which she has made notes about the quantity of meat and pies needed to satisfy her growing family as well as the spices that she has added to accommodate my father's palate. She explains that the pork called for in the recipe should be ground bigger than the beef or veal. Although she does not know why this is, it is a practice that the local butchers know as they purposely prepare the meat that way around Christmas time when people are making their tourtières. She also explains that she had a hard time finding the veal for her recipe because, during the summer, butchers do not offer the same variety of meat. Importantly, the tourtières she made that day did not taste quite "right." While we initially thought this was because we were eating them in the middle of summer, my mother later hypothesized that the discrepancy was due to a difference in the quality of the meat. She explained that she used to have to strain off a lot of fat from the cooked Weiskopf-Ball 27 meat but that the tourtière she made that day, and again at Christmas this year, did not produce anywhere near the amount of fat it used to. This simple difference, a leaner product being sold in the grocery stores, could certainly account for a difference in the taste and texture of the final product. If such changes in quality continue, we will have to adapt our expectations in regard to some of our traditional foods the same way my grandparents have done with the pork by-products and relish they ate as children.

Another example of culturally representative food is yeast dough. Yeast dough, dough that requires yeast which must be proofed, is neither German nor Namibian per se but is a necessary means to produce some of the cakes and breads we have come to associate with being German. In the dedication to German Home Baking, Dr. Oetker claims that all the items in the book are "traditional German cake recipes." Thus these cakes connect us firmly with German foodways. My Oma never knew yeast dough when she lived in Windhoek. She explains that "[her] mom never used yeast because in South

Africa you could buy the soft yeast and it never worked for her... So [Oma] got [her] yeast experience when [they] came over and in Germany [where] Opa's mom taught

[her]." Despite having had little experience with it before her marriage, yeast dough is now an important part of her baking repertoire.

Yeast dough is the base of Oma's plum cake, one of her rhubarb cakes and one of her apple cakes. Other than the plum cake, Oma's yeast dough cakes are made with the fruit they grow themselves. These cake recipes communicate some of the important values by which my grandparents live. Both my Oma and Opa are accustomed to eating seasonal foods rather than purchasing fruits and vegetables whenever they want. When I decided on my definition of the word traditional, I expected seasonal foods of this sort to Weiskopf-Ball 28 be a major focus of my participants' conversations. This was mostly only the case for

Oma and Opa which proves the extent to which eating locally grown, organic foods is important to them. They have always had a sizeable garden, unlike my maternal grandparents who have varied the size of their garden depending on their health; my parents who have, until recently, been too busy to garden; and my siblings, of which only

Lydia gardens. Oma and Opa grow a number of uncommon vegetables, for example, kohlrabi, kale, and savoy cabbage. While these vegetables are certainly making their way into haute cuisine and being introduced in contemporary recipes such as those found on the Food Network and in the LCBO Food & Drink Magazine, they remain outside the norm. In fact, Oma and Opa purposely planted these vegetables when they arrived in

Canada because they were not available in the local grocery stores.

In comparison, there is no indication that the rest of my participants consciously buy produce that is in season. David, for example, served fresh, imported berries during his second interview, and I have witnessed a similar abundance of out-of-season fruit served at many family gatherings. These, often expensive food items, are a symbol of luxury and wealth. Just as we now buy relish and liverwurst without caring about waste and manufacturing standards, our distance from the fruits and vegetables we purchase is a sign that we do not care about the process that goes into harvesting, transporting, and preserving the "fresh" prduce we buy in the grocery store. Thus the fruit cakes made with yeast dough mark Oma and Opa as unique.

Cakes made with yeast dough are more complicated "and take longer than with

Baking Powder (sic)... With [baking powder] no special treatment is required, either for the ingredients... or for the room in which they are being prepared. When using yeast the Weiskopf-Ball 29 ingredients must be warm and the room in which they are being prepared should be at the right temperature 99oC. (37oF.)" (Oetker 170). Cakes made using yeast are therefore not for the evening baker. If one wants to be successful, one needs to have time to let the dough rise properly. Thus these foods are better suited to a person who stays home during the week or who loves baking enough to give up a part of the weekend. The modern day wife does not have time after a long day of work, and an evening filled with children and domestic chores, to tackle such challenging recipes. These foods therefore signify a lifestyle that is no longer common in today's society.

Just as the waffles require special tools, so too do German cakes. The Dr. Oetker cookbook lists all its ingredients in weight rather than in cups. One therefore needs a weight scale to measure many of the ingredients. Today, there are a number of affordable digital scales. However, a good, old-fashioned, baking scale is both hard to find and expensive. Knowing how to use it is also a skill one needs to learn. I have often made

German cakes in the German class I teach in my high school. Since few people use this tool anymore, I always have to explain how the scale works to my students. I have to remind them of simple facts such as the need to reset the scale every time one changes the bowl being measured into. These are skills that my siblings and I have because we have made these recipes often enough. It is even a skill my father demonstrated when he made pretzels for my project. It is clear then that repeated exposure to such tools has made us familiar enough with them that we neither avoid these recipes nor need to convert them into more common units of measurement. Interestingly, when Oma first arrived in Canada, she always converted the Canadian recipes' cup measurements into weight. Though she likely does not realize it, her reluctance to make the switch shows a Weiskopf-Ball 30 resistance to the dominant discourse and a keeping with traditional ways. Today she does sometimes use cups but still finds it easier to measure by weight.

Finally, yeast dough, which Oma also uses to make the buns for her stuffing, allows me to discuss the role of such "traditional" meals as those served at Christmas,

Thanksgiving, and Easter and make important comparisons between both families.

Though Oma has tried to use store-bought buns and white bread for her turkey stuffing, they do not produce the texture she desires. The buns she makes can be soaked in water and still hold their density when passed through the meat grinder along with the giblets and onions her recipe calls for. When they first moved to Canada, Oma prepared and served a goose as the roast meat. This too partially stems from German tradition. Opa recalls that turkeys were not commonly known in the Germany of his youth. Geese were more popular since, unlike a turkey that must be fed grain only for its meat, geese could be "put on pasture" at no cost to the owner. Furthermore, geese could be used to make soap and the fat was rendered to make a spread that was eaten on bread. Though goose appears to have been the preferred meat for Christmas dinner, these were hard times and people ate what they could get. Thus Opa does not remember a truly "traditional" holiday meal. The same reality appears to apply to Easter and they would not have celebrated

Thanksgiving at the time.

My maternal grandparents similarly do not remember eating a specific roast meat for Christmas, Easter or Thanksgiving. Turkeys were not available in their area until a local farmer began raising them. According to Andrew Smith, author of a number of books on role and significance of turkeys, the tradition of eating this large bird at

Christmas comes from the United States. Since Weiskopf-Ball 31

no single cultural Christmas tradition monopolized American foodways, the

unifying model for the American Christmas dinner of the middle to late

nineteenth century was supplied by Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol (1843).

Most American food writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

prescribed a Christmas dinner of roast turkey with gravy, mashed potatoes, sage

and onion stuffing, and plum pudding. (126-127)

Though Dickens was British, his novella was nevertheless influential in America.

Turkey for Thanksgiving similarly comes from the United States. In fact, this truly American holiday, which was initially "a substitute for traditional English autumn holidays that were not observed by the Puritans," like Guy Fawkes Day and the Harvest

Home Festival, became "a celebration in which the extended family gathered to share a grand dinner" (Smith and Boyd 119). As illustrated by the November 1928 issue of

Chatelaine Magazine, the menu associated with this day, "roast turkey with chestnut or celery stuffing; cranberry jelly; giblet gravy; sweet potatoes; creamed cauliflower; apple, nut, and celery salad; pumpkin pie with whipped cream; and coffee”(Smith and Boyd

133), was considered traditional by the late 1920s. Though the menu very much reflects the Thanksgiving meal that used to be consumed at my maternal grandparents, today's

Rochefort Thanksgivings have become potluck. They are now also held at my home and there is no real "traditional" food. My husband usually serves pork as the roast meat and the side dishes, which other family members bring, range from Sweet Potato Brulé to couscous to broccoli.

Christmas dinner has also changed over the course of the past few years. My immediate family celebrates Christmas on Christmas Eve. Though we had been eating Weiskopf-Ball 32 beef fondue for a number of years, this Christmas Eve we ate manicotti. Both these meals were chosen so that my mother could be with us rather than spend the entire day in the kitchen and to accommodate our growing family's needs. Christmas dinner has also varied over the past years. The mix of foods and flavours at Thanksgiving and Christmas are a sign that the traditional turkey is not as important as it might once have been.

Perhaps it is because we know we will eat it at Oma and Opa's or at some other time during the year, but people seem happy to be together as a family and appear not to care as much about the food they are eating.

Such evolution has not taken place at Oma and Opa's. There the roast turkey is prepared with Oma's unique stuffing and served with spätzle, sliced cucumbers and tomatoes, homemade apple sauce, and either corn or coleslaw. It is always the same meal with the same flavour and the same texture. This consistency is an incredible feat to achieve. Yet, it once again demonstrates the thorough understanding Oma has of the meal she is preparing and the time she is able to devote to it. Significantly, both my parents remember eating goose at Oma and Opa's which means the traditional meal did not change for some time. Furthermore, my father remembers eating rendered goose fat as a spread on his toast. This is a sign that, at one time, Opa did produce some of his childhood foods in Canada. Yet a lack of time and support for the food eventually made him stop. Furthermore, a growing family necessitated more meat than a goose could provide and forced Oma to switch to a turkey.

For their second interviews, both Oma and Natalie made spätzle, another German food. Though there are recipes for it, neither needed one when making it for me. This is partially due to its simplicity but also illustrates a familiarity with the recipe that my other Weiskopf-Ball 33 participants did not have with the recipes they chose. Their methods for making the dish differed slightly. Like my mother, Natalie measures out the required water, about a quarter cup per egg. Oma, on the other hand, simply uses her kitchen tap and opens and closes it the number of times equivalent to the number of eggs she has in her bowl. In his interview, Opa explained that the true way to measure the water is to use the empty egg shells.

The analysis of food preparation, best exemplified by the juxtaposition of Oma and Natalie making the same food, touches on the material object aim of this project and allows me to make significant conclusions about the effect that modern society has had on the ways in which we are currently making food. For example, during their food interview, I observed Grand-maman using a microwave and a Kitchen Aid mixer while

Grand-papa ran an electric deep fryer. Both grandparents agreed that modern appliances, like the deep fryer, are safer since cooking donuts and similar foods on the stove have been the cause of many house fires. They also explain that microwaves and electric mixers have made life much easier. Yet the donuts still necessitated old fashion techniques. When the dough became too thick for the machine, my grandmother finished adding the dry ingredients with a spoon. She also had to kneed and roll the dough out by hand. Oma does not own a microwave and, despite some arthritis, mixes all of her food with a spoon. She does, however, own an electric meat grinder. Thus it is important to note that this generation has no qualms about using modern tools when they makes life easier.

The next two generations similarly combine modern and old fashion tools. For example, my father mixed his pretzels by hand rather than with a mixer because the batch Weiskopf-Ball 34 was too small to warrant taking out the machine. Yet, some traditional methods of preparation are still too time consuming for the contemporary cook. For example, though my mother said she had hoped to grind her own meat for her tourtières, she bought meat that had already been ground because she did not have enough time. Her parents, however, still grind their own meat. This alone would account for a difference in the final product. Using good quality tools also came up a number of times throughout my interviews. David, for example, has invested a lot of money into Henkel products because he believes they are the best. He did not use his Henkel pans when frying his eggs and commented on the difference in the appearance and quality of the final product.

Similarly, Grand-maman explained that the baking dishes one can buy today produce nicer foods than the metal dishes of the past. Yet, many of these items are expensive and therefore can only be purchased if one is has the money and cares enough.

The second interview also illustrated shifting gender roles in the kitchen. Grand- maman and Grand-papa both participated in the making of the donuts though Grand- maman did all the prep work and left Grand-papa in charge of the dangerous deep frying.

This division of labour does not appear to have been a coincidence since my grandfather talked about having cooked the donuts they made at Christmas. Despite the overall harmony present during the interview, there is still a marked hierarchy in this space.

When he tried to give my grandmother advice or help her out with her part of the food making, she was quick to give him a look or to tense up. Hence it is clear that she still considers herself to be the expert on the issue. When it came to my grandfather's part, however, my grandmother had no problem giving him suggestions and checking on the status of the donuts. Rather than fuss, he smiled and did what he was asked. Weiskopf-Ball 35

At my Oma's, Opa did not even step into the kitchen while she was cooking and he did not participate in the second part of the project because he does not make anything himself. He was, however, quick to give advice, for example, the measuring of the water with eggshells, and to request more food than Oma had planned to make. Clearly the boss, however, Oma did not modify her system. The separation in this home is therefore clearly more aligned with traditional gender roles.

My mother and father, as well as my siblings' interviews, proved that men and women are capable of cooking and baking independently. It was interesting to observe, however, that as soon as my mother came into the kitchen, my father began asking her for advice and that she automatically began cleaning up behind him. In fact, she had laid out most of the ingredients and tools he would need before the interview started. Though he knew where things were and moved around the kitchen with ease, her silent but obvious involvement, like my Grand-maman's looks and nonverbal reactions, proves that women have a hard time letting go of their traditional roles and that men are generally ready to give in to them.

Conclusion

In his interview, Opa explains that with members of his generation, "[s]ome people go in other countries and they immediately discard everything... Others like [us] stick to what is Christmas and Easter... We want the stuff the way... it was." For my paternal grandparents, traditional foods have therefore been one way to hold on to the past while also creating comfort in a new and different environment. For my father's generation, traditions can sometimes be problematic. In novels such as Frank Paci's Black

Madonna, Hiromi Goto's Chorus of Mushrooms, and John Marlyn's Under the Rib of Weiskopf-Ball 36

Death, one sees the second generation characters reject the same food-related traditions their parents adhere to in an effort to become more "Canadian." It is important to note that this was not the case for my father. Rather, he capitalized on his differences by trading his German foods for Canadian ones at school.

My maternal grandparents explain that no matter what, nothing tastes the way one's mother made it. Thus traditional tastes can never be truly replicated. Yet, memories of the past live on through the foods themselves because making and eating them create dialogue and discussion between generations. Though they might seem different, my mother and father similarly cling to certain food practices as a way to identify themselves in a changing world. Although my mother has always been surrounded by people with the same traditions and so never experienced the culture shock my father did, the French-

Canadian foods she identifies with clearly show a similar allegiance to a specific linguistic and ethnic heritage. My siblings and I belong to a generation that is interested in experimenting with foods from various parts of the world. Though we have introduced our particular food habits and choices to our partners, we have also incorporated their culinary practices into our own. Some of our foods can be considered different and exotic but we do not see them that way. They are part of who we are and we rarely question them.

Traditional foods are not static. As this paper has shown, the foods that my family and I consider traditional stem from important cultural practices or were invented or modified out of necessity. In fact, the foods I consider tradition today have ultimately been chosen for me by past generations just as the foods my daughter will one day consider traditional will have been chosen, in part, by me. The evolution of traditional Weiskopf-Ball 37 foods clearly communicates that our society is changing. While my grandparents reminisce about the flavours of their past, the modern cook does not have the time to make complicated foods such as liverwurst. Through the memories my grandparents share during their interviews, it is clear that eating such special foods is a way for them to

"reconstruct a significant segment" of their childhood; an "experience" (Seidman 85) far removed from today's reality. Similarly, the absence of these foods from my siblings' interviews demonstrates that once staple food items have little value to our generation.

Though most of my participants claim that the food we eat is not as important as being together, their very identification of certain foods as traditional, their acknowledgement that some foods represent our culture or family, means that traditional foods are, in fact, significant.

Furthermore, by juxtaposing the techniques and tools used by all three generations, I am able to demonstrate that the pork by-products my grandparents are fond of will likely never be made in our homes again whereas relishes and ketchups might survive if we take the time to tap into the sources of knowledge, the experts, who are still around. The focus on modern versus old-fashioned appliances has similarly allowed me to show that our fast-paced lifestyle has created tools that enable us to make certain time consuming foods more conveniently therefore ensuring their survival over others. Thus both Critical Discourse Analysis and object material research have proven to be vital methodologies in this study.

CDA also allows me to demonstrate that we are less likely to indulge in an excess of fattening foods because we have been influenced by current discourses on good versus bad foods. Although indulgences do exist and many foods, which are simply too rich for Weiskopf-Ball 38 a daily diet, do still have a traditional role, there seems to be little objection to making changes to traditional menus in order to stay healthy. Similarly, products that were once rare and created anticipation are now readily available in local supermarkets. Rather than being forced to wait for a specific event or season, there is a tendency to go out and buy these specialty items whenever one has a craving. Thus modern practices show we are generally not concerned with giving power to the food industry's consumer driven practices and standards.

By layering my participants' stories with my own experiences and observations, I have used autoethnography to "co-create [a] multifaceted and many-layered [story] that

[honours] the messiness and complexity of human life... and [enables me] to create meaning out of experience" (Etherington 28). I can confidently conclude that while my family’s traditional foods still figure as part of “a long established and generally accepted custom or method” (OED), they do not need to be associated with a certain time of the year or during certain celebrations. Though it is true that some foods taste better at a certain time of the year, or when made by a specific person, as long as the foods we consider traditional are available at some point, my family members will be satisfied. At the very least, I hope the personal nature of this project has made the reader reminisce about foods from his/her past and question the traditional foods that are being made today. While we may not think about the past when we eat, the stories are there, waiting to be told.

Weiskopf-Ball 39

Appendix A Interview #1 – Questionnaire

For the purpose of this study, the word “tradition” means “a long established and generally accepted custom or method” (OED). In relation to food, it refers to a specific food or grouping of foods that have come be expected at certain times of the year or during certain celebrations. Although “tradition” often implies that something has been “handed down... from generation to generation,” please understand that I aim to find out what is “tradition” to us today – new traditions are important and should not be dismissed simply because they aren’t “old” or because they weren’t passed down from a previous generation.

1. List the foods you consider to be traditional.

2. Are you involved in making any of these foods?

If so, please explain your role by telling If not, please explain: me: a. who makes/has made it, a. if it’s something you make alone or are b. why you are not involved, helped with, c. when you first had the food, b. how long you’ve been making it, d. what changes you have observed in the c. how you learned to make it (i.e. recipe preparation and presentation of the food written out by a friend or family member, since you first ate it, oral instructions, observation), e. how it looks and tastes when “done right,” d. how long it takes to prepare, and e. how its preparation has changed since you f. where else you’ve eaten it. began making it (i.e. has a tool or appliance been invented or discovered that makes it easier to prepare this item), f. how you prefer to serve/present it, g. where else you’ve eaten it, h. how other versions compared to your own, and i. how a “success” looks and tastes.

3. In what context does one find this/these food/s?

4. What does that larger context mean to you?

5. How do these foods reflect your religion or ethnicity?

6. Do you consider traditional food to be an important part of a gathering?

7. Could you do without certain traditional food/s? Could you not do without a certain traditional food?

8. Can you please make any additional comments that you feel are important to this study.

Weiskopf-Ball 40

Appendix 2 Interview #2 – Observation of Food Preparation

Chosen food: ______

1. Why did you choose to make this particular food for today’s interview? Was there a food you would have rather made but couldn’t?

2. Why do you feel this is traditional? What makes it special?

3. What memories do you associate with this food?

Weiskopf-Ball 41

Works Cited

Anderson, Leon. “Analytic Autoethnography.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography.

Vol. 35, No. 4, 2006. p. 373-395. November 8, 2010.

http://jce.sagepub.com/content/35/4/373

Barer-Stein, Thelma. You Eat What You Are. Toronto: Culture Concepts Inc., 1980.

Barthes, Roland. “Toward a Psychology of Contemporary Food Consumption.” Food and

Culture: A Reader. Ed. Carole Counihan and Penny Van Esterik. New York &

London: Routledge, 1997. p. 28-35.

Berkeley, Ellen Perry. At Grandmother’s Table: Women Write about Food, Life, and the

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