livelypsyche

I had this realization a few years ago: If I don’t learn my mom’s Indian recipes while she is still alive, they may be lost forever. When she moved to the U.S. in the 1970s, my mom had to adjust her cooking methods, ingredient use, and techniques to what was available to her at that time. In part because of these adaptations, I came to understand, no one makes Indian food exactly the way she does. So I slowly began the process of collecting recipes from her, focusing first on the ones that originated from her or were passed down from her mother. In my attempts to replicate her tried and true process, I pressed her for measurements of ingredients she has probably eyeballed for the past 30 years. But when I hear my mom talk about how hard it is to recreate the particular flavors of some of her mother’s specialties, I know that precise measurements are not enough and I am in the midst of a lifelong endeavor to prepare food that tastes exactly like what my mom would make.

As I continue to gather recipes from my mom, I notice that this process is as much about the sharing of memories about the role of food in family relationships as it is about documenting them on paper. Through my work as a psychologist, and as a mother myself, I am becoming more and more aware of how the process of cooking, feeding, and eating, as well as our relationships to food as a whole, are so complex and variable. In so many ways, eating is really more about our relationships to others and to ourselves than it is about the physical food itself.

This dynamic around food, relationships, and culture is apparent in our everyday lives, as well as in the media. We have all seen TV shows and movies portraying somewhat of a caricature of an immigrant mother. When the Italian grandmother or the Greek mother labors over a meal and (strongly) encourages her children to eat, she is doing more than just nurturing them with food. As I see it, part of this emphasis on feeding is related to the significance of holding onto and continuing to take in the culture of origin, via the food offered by the caregiver. For immigrant mothers like mine, reenacting a process of cooking and feeding that has been performed for generations in her family helped her feel more connected to her family in India. Just as importantly, serving her children the food she grew up eating reinforced the connection to our roots, in some ways bridging the gap between generations separated by thousands of miles.

In many ways, the challenge of raising children who understand and appreciate our heritage and cultural origins is greater for my generation than it was for my parents’. And this challenge will probably grow with each subsequent generation. Preparing food and feeding loved ones is such a significant part of Indian culture and family relationships, so I hope that my son will maintain an interest in trying the foods I grew up eating. I believe it’s one way in which he can feel closer to his family of origin and develop an ongoing appreciation of Indian culture as a whole. And maybe one day soon he will spend the day in the kitchen with me and my mom, observing, helping, learning, and forming memories of his own. In the meantime, I’ll keep adding to my recipe book and striving to prepare dishes that taste like what my mom makes, all the while reminding myself that it’s not really about the food.