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Mashed Potatoes and My Life Story
This is SippitySup's picture of his lovely garlic mashed potatoes. Click here to go to his must-read post on mashed potatoes two ways, simple and sumptuous.I was catching up on my blog reading and came upon SippitySup's funny post on mashed potatoes. It reminded me of my own childhood experiences of mashed potatoes, which aren't that typical anymore (how the U.S. has changed!), but I think a lot of people can relate to my story. I gave this talk in 2008 on mashed potatoes at my school, and it seems only fitting to share this the week before our U.S. Thanksgiving.
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I am here today to talk to you about mashed potatoes, those creamy, steamy mounds of buttery goodness.
My most memorable encounter with mashed potatoes occurred in 1983 at the Thanksgiving table of the Golding Family. At the time, I was a freshman at college. Laurie Golding was a sophomore transfer student, also in her first year. We met that fall on the field hockey field. We both played defense, I left wing and she a sweeper. We became teammates and good friends.
Since it was too far for me to travel back to my hometown, Laurie kindly invited me to her home to share Thanksgiving with her family.
Before I continue, I need to share a secret with you.
My mother had invested years of her life shoveling good manners into me. She developed in me the deep-seated belief that when I was out of the home, I was representing not only myself but the family. Generations were relying on me not to deface the family name.
My long-suffering mother, me in the orange dress, and my familyWith my ears ringing with my mother’s admonitions and my heart full with an internal promise to be on my best behavior, I and Laurie travelled the winding Mohawk Trail down the Berkshire Mountains, across the width of central Massachusetts to the bustling hamlet of Arlington, MA, home base for Laurie, her family, and her many relatives. This was a rare opportunity to stay in the home of a non-Filipino family. I was not only thankful but a little curious as well.
Imagine this scene. A lace-clad table extended to its full and glorious length, groaning with the weight of a glistening, golden turkey and all the side dishes. The table seemed to go on and on, surrounded by the members of the Golding Clan -- immediate family, aunts, uncles, cousins, and me. Everyone was talking and having a good time. I was enjoying my foray into the life of another family. In the din of happy conversation and patter, I filled my plate and took my first bites.
Wanting to compliment the cook, I leaned forward so that I could address Laurie's mother from my position near the middle of the table, she at the end.
"Mrs. Golding, these mashed potatoes are delicious."
Encouraged by her smile, I continued.
"What brand are they?"
A flash of bewilderment crossed her face. Thinking she could not hear me amidst the noise, I spoke more loudly.
"What brand are the mashed potatoes? Hungry Jack or Pillsbury?"
At my question, the table chatter seemed to stop mid-conversation. Everyone looked at me and Mrs. Golding.
"Why, they're real, dear."
"Oh," I said, "I didn't know you could make mashed potatoes from real potatoes."
There was a pregnant pause, and then everyone burst out laughing. The thought of an Irish family using potatoes out of a box was unthinkable to them. To me, I knew I had just made a social gaffe of epic proportion and had flushed my family reputation down the proverbial drain.
The only time I had had mashed potatoes in my family before was once a year, at Thanksgiving. As an immigrant family new to this country in the 1960s, we knew little more about potatoes than McDonalds French fries or potatoes cut for stew. But, we knew that mashed potatoes were as American as turkey and apple pie. We saw the ads in the magazines -- every Thanksgiving table had a bowl of mashed potatoes. Every year, we would dutifully go to the grocery store and search the aisles for the box with the picture of the mashed potatoes. At the Enrique Thanksgiving table, the mashed potatoes would inevitably grow cold and congealed as the rice bowl was continually refilled and the platter of pancit was cleaned bare of its soy sauce and lemon scented noodles. The noodles represent long life in the Filipino culture and thus are present at every celebration. But the mashed potatoes, ignored as they were, had a place at the table, a rite of passage for a family of New Americans in the New World.
Pancit Canton
The Golding fiasco wasn't the only incident in my checkered life of bad table etiquette. Years before in 1974, I had made a similar gaffe, buried deep away from my mother and held to light only in the darkened box of the Catholic confessional. A sin? Maybe not, but surely something I thought could land me in purgatory – which is a threatened state of limbo for unrepentant Catholics -- if I didn't confess to the priest what I was shamefully hiding from my mother. In any case, Becky Garling, who was in the 4th grade with me at the Assumption School, and who also lived in my neighborhood, invited me to her house for dinner. This was actually the first time I would go for dinner at a non-Filipino's house. Again, I knew that the FAMILY, in capital letters, was relying on me to honor the family name. I was at the dinner table, and again, I was on the search for something polite to say to Becky's mother, who had just completed her dinner preparations. I scanned the table and its contents -- its plate of baked chicken, bowl of boiled carrots, and a lonely basket of Wonder Bread, sliced white bread that I knew was for lunchbox sandwiches. Something was missing... Aha! Excited with my discovery, I exclaimed to Mrs. Garling in my desire to be helpful with getting everything to the table.
"Where's the rice?"
When I saw the look of dismay cross Mrs. Garling's face -- you see, she had never had a little Filipino girl before to her dinner table – and heard her apologetic response,
“We eat bread, honey,”
my stomach fell to the floor. My poor mother. What would she do, with such a graceless daughter?
What was unthinkable to me at the time was that there could be a dinner without rice. In my house, rice was ever present, always available for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Yes, we had our share of Pop Tarts and Captain Crunch for breakfast and we ate the lifeless PB&J or ham and cheese sandwiches for school lunch. Well, at least three of us four children did. My older sister hated these sandwiches so much that she secretly threw them behind the clothes dryer until one day, with a broken dryer on his hands to fix, my dad exposed the hidden graveyard of dozens of crinkled paper bags filled with the remains of long forgotten sandwiches. Sandwiches, frankly, were flat, limp, and uninspired. But a breakfast of rice with eggs and fried Spam or bacon, sprinkled with vinegar? That was food that spoke to the soul. The same for an aromatic lunch of rice, stir fried meat, and vegetables. And dinner? Dinner was sacred. Rice wasn't an option but a must. How could one substitute a couple slices of sad Wonder Bread, I thought, for the life-affirming, fragrant, steamed rice?
Whether at the Golding table or the Garling table, these memories are carved in sharp relief in my mind’s eye, symbolic of the importance of food to culture. Within the United States, there are multitudes of Americans whose American tables celebrate the legacies of their first homelands. Mashed potatoes are the ultimate comfort food for some, mixed with fond memories of family weekday dinners, holidays, and perhaps perfumed with the gratitude of previous generations that were sustained on the humble tuber. For others, it's white rice, not drowned in soy sauce or doused with butter and salt and pepper, but pure grains of pearly, sticky rice. For others, it's corn tortillas, cous cous, pasta, barley, or bread -- all meaningful in their own way, imbued with their own cultural power and memory.
My living as a foreigner in my own land, so to speak -- because I was born here in the United States -- and being a rice eater in a land of mashed potatoes and Wonder Bread -- prepared me for my own experiences abroad, living in Italy and Japan. Fast forward to yet another dinner table in Florence, Italy, in 1986, this time the vinyl-clad table of my Italian host family with my Chevy Chase, MD, born and bred Italian-American roommate, Eliza Antonoli. In front of us was a first course of risotto, an Italian rice dish. It was absolutely delicious, creamy and dotted with pinkish morsels of seafood. My roommate inquired what it was, to which our host mother replied, "Polpo." Eliza, whose ethnic Italian background was not that helpful to her speaking the language, looked to me for translation. "Octopus," I said helpfully. Eliza leaned forward over her plate and blew like a whale, powerfully evicting the offensive mouthful, sticking out her tongue like it was scalded. I felt sorry for Eliza’s mother. As for me, I had already learned my lesson.
I hope that -- as you enter others' homes or countries that are not exactly like yours or as you welcome people from different cultural backgrounds into your home – you will remember that everyone comes to the table, so to speak, with different cultural expectations. What may seem unthinkable to you may be completely normal and even endearing to someone else. All is worth experiencing and celebrating, even with a few social gaffes here and there. I hope that you will appreciate all the world has to offer in terms of food and the cultural power it has, to beckon, evoke, and transform. Hopefully, you will learn to love new flavors, textures, and combinations, and make lasting friendships and memories along the way.
By the way, I now know how to make excellent mashed potatoes. And not out of a box.
Thank you.
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