I think the idea of "food as literal expression of love [for another]" is universal, jokes about Italian, Jewish, Chinese, Southern, South African, Mexican and Irish mothers aside. It's just that when you get to the elderly mothers (grandmothers, godmothers, and so on), you get not just "eat, eat, you should eat more!" but what they're giving you to eat is stuff that... well, when you're a kid, it's... hard to control the ewwwww response.
My extended family (especially the blue-collar and/or rural parts) cooks fish whole, so the bit about still having eyes & head was where I really started to lose it. I can so relate.
Thanks to trauma from my grandparents, I still have a thing about food-with-eyes. I remember going to eat with a Chinese coworker and she introduced me to an absolutely awesome Shanghaiese steamed fish dish, but it's served whole. She caught me taking some of the shredded vegetables and carefully covering just the fish's eye... and gave me That Look (the one all mothers have). I turned beet-red and she just laughed at me. It's the eyes! Childhood flashbacks! Food staring at you! Family trauma!
I have absolutely no idea how it is that I adored flounder as a kid, seeing how that's a fish often served whole and it has TWO EYES on the same side. You'd think that's a double whammy. Bizarro kid logic at work in there somewhere, I'm sure.
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Date: 2 Jan 2011 09:43 pm (UTC)My extended family (especially the blue-collar and/or rural parts) cooks fish whole, so the bit about still having eyes & head was where I really started to lose it. I can so relate.
Thanks to trauma from my grandparents, I still have a thing about food-with-eyes. I remember going to eat with a Chinese coworker and she introduced me to an absolutely awesome Shanghaiese steamed fish dish, but it's served whole. She caught me taking some of the shredded vegetables and carefully covering just the fish's eye... and gave me That Look (the one all mothers have). I turned beet-red and she just laughed at me. It's the eyes! Childhood flashbacks! Food staring at you! Family trauma!
I have absolutely no idea how it is that I adored flounder as a kid, seeing how that's a fish often served whole and it has TWO EYES on the same side. You'd think that's a double whammy. Bizarro kid logic at work in there somewhere, I'm sure.