Comfort food and culture!

Ruth Newberry has joined the Xplore team in the USA working with our students who are about to begin their adventure of living and studying abroad.  In this poignant article she talks about spending much of her childhood in a foreign country and how food sparks memories of the culture and family that made Spain her home for many years. 

Mercedes, myself and Mom

'Comfort food. When I say those two words, I’m transported to another place. I think about my family, my childhood, my history. It’s funny how food can do that for you. Same is true for smells. I grew up in Madrid, Spain, in the 1980s. It was not a particularly good time for smells but it was for food…and still is.

My mother, a full-blooded Irishwoman from the north of the country, was brought up on potatoes and vegetables from her father’s garden during World War II. My great-grandmother would always keep a pig in her tiny garden. You knew where your food came from and it was an honest place. The food wasn’t seasoned with exotic spices or interesting ingredients. It was straightforward and served a purpose. 

I was six when we moved to Madrid, the perfect age to be particularly fussy about food. I loved pizza, Fruity Pebbles, McDonald’s Happy Meals and bubble-gum ice cream. I also loved the tuna casseroles and ramen noodle experiments my mother tried. I most certainly did not like the strange shellfish and anchovies marinating in tin cans with pull-tops. I feared the little plates of octopus and the cow’s tripe sautéed in a fragrant tomato sauce that were brought out at the city bars my parents would wander into. During the week, I attended a British school where the food was bland and recognisable.  On Saturdays, my dad would bring me to the American base where he worked so I could play with other American kids and load up on hot dogs and popcorn, while my mom checked out books from the library.

Alberto and David

Mercedes, who became a second mother to me, is the mother of my two best friends from my youth, Alberto and David. They lived two floors below our apartment and are my definition of a true Spanish family. They held season passes to Real Madrid games and spent their summers in the pueblo where Mercedes grew up, a sleepy town two hours east where sheep are still herded through the dusty, cobbled streets. The boys marched home in their school uniforms every day for two hours to eat their main meal of the day prepared by their lovely mother.

The children from the neighbourhood

Back at home, though, I spent hours watching those two boys play in the courtyard of our apartment complex from my bedroom window on the fourth floor. It didn’t take long before my parents pushed me out the front door and locked it behind me. I had no choice but to make friends with my Spanish neighbors and learn their language. The boys’ father taught me to swim and their mother taught me to eat. I started spending hours in Mercedes’ kitchen, watching her prepare meals and learning to make what would become my comfort food. I ate the exotic white asparagus with homemade mayonnaise, the fish head soup, pork empanadas, the bean stews and cocidos, without asking what was in them. I learned to suck the juices from the shrimp heads and gobbled up morcilla, blood sausage, without complaint nor question. I began to crave the foods in the Spanish market and turned my nose up at the tater tots and French fries in the frozen aisle of the Army and Air Force Exchange Service.

Before we moved back to the states, my dad recorded Mercedes and me on VHS cooking tortilla Española. It’s a cute video that I’ve watched a hundred times, not only to reminisce but to perfect my cooking of the dish. Despite this, mine will never be as good as hers. Comfort food to me is about finding my childhood and recreating a memory. It’s hard to do that without Mercedes, her family and Spain itself…no matter how hard I try.

This summer, families from Asheville, N.C., and Brooksville, Fla., will host international exchange students from Spain, Germany, and Italy. I’ll be supporting these brave teens in their attempt to try on American culture and life for size. These kids have chosen to leave their comfort foods and loving families to try something new in a strange home. They are looking to understand a foreign world and culture. My hope is that they will leave the U.S. with a memory they will want to recreate in the future. They will be introduced to foods that their host families will prepare and encourage them to try. Strange foods like collards, buttermilk biscuits, pulled pork barbecue, key lime pie. Maybe they’ll try ramps or scapes for the first time, perhaps molasses or apple butter. Maybe it will be a recipe passed down generationally from other parts of the country. More than that, though, I hope they’re introduced to someone like Mercedes. A person who has invited them into a completely foreign way of life, who encourages them to create memories associated with food and culture. Someone who will make these foods for them again when they return years later to visit as adults. 

They might not ever turn to American foods for comfort, but they will turn to the memory and find comfort in the friendships they created over here. Even though I don’t speak with my Spanish family as often as I should, I have this whole other culture I’ve been invited into. There is nothing in the world that feels as good as belonging.'