I've always loved eating the meals my mom has prepared for me over the years, from her enchiladas, mole, tacos, and even her spaghetti which she only learned to make because she knew how much I liked it. There's always one that I loved much more than the other's and that's one of her tostada’s not only because of how she makes them but also because of the specific toppings on it such as, sour cream, lettuce, and cheese to top it all off. The mixed smell of chicken with chipotle sauce along with the taste and crunchy texture of the tortilla shell, all those flavors mixed together, their taste is like heaven to me.
When it comes to my love of Mexican food I always felt like it wasn't enough, at least compared to my family's love for Mexican food. My family has always enjoyed much more exquisite Hispanic meals such as elotes, pozole, menudo, and huaraches. I don't dislike those dishes but I'm not too crazy about them either, some of them either taste too rubbery like eating an uncooked tortilla or pasta that wasn't boiled properly or the taste over powers everything else to the point where it’s not enjoyable, such as eating a really spicy pepper or a steak with too much salt. I usually try to stay with other meals like quesadillas, enchiladas, mole, and of course tacos. I love their taste so much the combination of the savoriness of chicken, the smooth milkiness of sour cream and the just right amount of spice of green salsa are something to die for to me.
"Pozole rojo"
As I said before, nothing wrong with the meals my family likes but whenever there is any sort of gathering or get together, it always feels very weird between us, like strangers who are forced to sit close together on a bus strange. We try talking about what's going on in our lives and our interests, which is nice and all but it’s not familial in the slightest. Whether we like it or not we've built this distance between one another because we may share blood and some interest but that doesn't mean we automatically click together well.
Most if not almost all my family was born and raised in Mexico, nearly all of my many brothers and sisters in fact, so I never got as exposed to Mexican culture as much as they did. I on the other hand was exposed to nothing but American culture, values, history, etc. I could go on for hours on end about Lake Lanier and how everything about it from its inception was horrible, and I think I could barely manage to tell you a single cohesive sentence in Spanish.
The effect of being raised eating primarily American cuisine is that it often clashed with my family's taste and unfortunately I am many things and sadly a picky eater is one of them so each and every time I see one their exquisite dishes, I either A. Don't eat till I get home or B. Eat one of the other dishes they have like tamales or a taco and what not, whenever I do this I always feel slightly judged walking by my family “No tienes hambre” “No te gusta la pozole” “Tienes alergias con la comida” “No tienes hambre”. They thought I just wasn’t hungry or allergic and sometimes they just knew I wasn't a fan of the food they had unless it was really “generic” Mexican food. Until one day when my mom boldly decided to make tostadas for the whole family, a process that took her so many hours to cook for so many people to this day I still surprised with how she pull it off she effectively man my aunts kitchen a well oiled machine with no room for failure, having one of my cousins help her properly separate all of the chicken, another stirring the sour and at slow pace so it comes out smoothly, one of my aunts heating up every single tortilla we needed, another cousin trying to make sure they didn’t end up burning the beans, whenever I glanced by there I had thought I just witnessed the world's first food based assembly line.
Ultimately it was worth it in the end, they had all come out perfectly and we had more than enough for everyone. That wasn't the biggest surprise to me that day though, the biggest surprise was how everyone else had prepared their tostada. Some did it the same way I did, chicken on bottom, sour cream, cheese, and lettuce on top. There were many different variations of that one, sour cream and cheese below the chicken, sour cream on top of the cheese and lettuce, or the chicken on top of everything. Others didn't put any chicken at all, some just had beans with sour cream, cheese and lettuce, some with just chicken and nothing else, and some with just beans.
"Tostadas"
My cousin sat next to me with his own plate, each tostada being completely different from each other with no sense of rhyme or reason with any of them, I immediately asked him “Why'd you do them all differently?” He looked at me for a second and the only thing he said was “Because I can”. That's when I looked all around I finally came to a realization, it didn't matter, everyone had what they liked they didn't stop and look around on how others did it. They choose to do it the way they wanted, the way they enjoyed their tostada. Each and all of us were a tostada in our own way, it didn't matter that some of us like more exquisite food than the other's, it didn't matter that some of us can speak more Spanish than rest, it didn't matter that some of us were more nerdy than the others.
At the end of the day we are our own person and that's ok because that is what is great about all of us. No one is the same even if they are from the same country as you, the same school as you, even if they're related to you and that is amazing. That's being a person, that's the importance of individuality. At that moment I realized my family truly loved me despite everything that I was, but don't get me wrong they still mess with me from time to time and, make fun of me when I mispronounce some words while I'm speaking Spanish, but I know it's cause they care about me, so as way to try to pay them back I'm trying to improve my Spanish-speaking and trying meals that I never thought I'd eat in a million years, I’m still a bit picky though, but hey that's okay.
Attributes:
"Tostadas" by Christian Frausto Bernal is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
"Pozole rojo" by marthax is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
This is a beautifully written essay about the complexities of culture and how you've dealt with food. I really enjoy the last paragraph that signifies everyone is going to be different in the end. The amount of detail put into explaining the food was really well done, and it was easy to imagine it in my head.
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