I used to have a designated stool to stand on in the kitchen for the sole purpose of watching my mother cook, eyeing every movement, every gesture, every ingredient. At first I would merely watch, my eyes devouring every action and scanning each recipe with eagerness, before I could even identify the words guiding each recipe.
She would take me out to our garden in our backyard, where we grew fresh tomatoes, basil, mint, and other vegetables that she would assign to my sisters and I, and together we would pick out the ripest produce, my mother thanking me for having grown the vegetables. Every time we moved, there would always be a small conglomeration of plants growing, either outside or on the kitchen windowsill, always at the ready to be plucked and placed into a meal that we would all share. My mother thought it was important for her children to understand the value of nurturing and guiding a living being to grow, and to use it consciously and for the benefit of many.
Eating healthy was always on the forefront of my mother’s mind, but she never saw healthy food as a hindrance to creating delicious plates that we could love and enjoy. Something that I have always found beautiful was the way in which she would engage her dishes with humility as we thanked her and marveled at their taste, brushing the compliments off with a light smile or on special occasions, treating us with a short story of the food and how she used to eat it with our family back in Mexico when she was younger.
Something which always struck me was the way she would remark to my sisters and I, whether during the cooking process while we sat at the counter and accompanied her in the kitchen or while we all sat bunched together, that what we were eating was “comida de pobres,” or “poor people food.” Her family was never incredibly well-off in Mexico, and neither were we as we grew up, so the statement never held any negative connotations or felt like an insult, but rather, felt like a special secret that we got to hold in our stomachs and in the handwritten recipes that she kept from her mother and her tías. The dishes achieved the title of “comida de pobres” really only for the reason that the recipes were designed to be for whatever one could scrounge up from their fridge or their pantry, using leftovers or small amounts in order to create a hearty meal.
Every time I ate a dish which she warmly called “comida de pobres,” I thought to myself, “How could anyone ever want more?”. With each dish, however unintentionally, my mother taught me to embrace the reality we were granted with open arms, and to always cherish the efficient and healthy ways that we could go through the world, never truly needing to ask for more.
As I grew, those values never left me, and I found myself happily engaging in and finding my comfort zone within activities such as Earth Heart Growers in middle school–where we would visit local family-owned farms every week to help harvest and cook the family a meal. The act of harvesting produce straight from the source and using the ingredients to cook a meal both for my peers and the family which owned the farm only furthered the notion of the importance of sharing one’s food and exactly how the act of cooking is meant, not just to nourish and supply a person with nutrients, but to bring people together.
There is a satisfaction that comes with serving food to others and inviting them to take part in a creation of your own doing, watching them eat your food and join together, all before you are able to take a bite yourself. My mother would always make sure to serve her daughters before herself, even continuing to do so to this day, and now whenever I approach the time to serve a meal that I have made, it always feels right to take the time to first serve those before me.
As I advanced to high school, I found the Green Heart Project, a group that was close to Earth Heart Growers but based in Downtown Charleston and dedicated itself to nurturing younger generations of students to live sustainably and grow with their surrounding communities and environments. I attended events when I could and assisted with selling local produce and promoting their community gardens, even hosting a birthday party for one of my friends at one of their functions, joining together our group of friends for positive and meaningful causes all around.
Through my experiences in both projects, I found my desire to cherish sustainable food consumption and production morphing into a love that consisted of involving myself with my community and sharing the–sometimes literal–fruits of my labor. The desire grew alongside myself, and manifested itself outside of my home, especially as I grew into my cultural identity and understood the importance that being Mexican and growing up in a Latina household had on my personal development and the community that I wanted to involve myself in.
Living and being on-campus at the College of Charleston has allowed me to truly find a place for myself within its Latine community, and although there are significantly less opportunities for cooking for myself or others due to on-campus housing, I have maintained my love of cooking and food sustainability and still work to highlight its importance with each day. Through the Hispanic Latino Club, we have had gatherings at local Latine restaurants or club members’ homes to share our favorite dishes, and through my work with the Center of the Sustainable Development, we have been able to dedicate ourselves to the specific sectors of food waste and composting around campus. Despite no longer being able to readily whip up a shared meal with the help of my mother in my now kitchen-less dorm, the allowance of being able to continue my involvement within my own cultural community and with the process of conscious production and waste methods of food has given me the opportunity to find more purpose within my time.
Outside of extracurricular motivations, my academic goals that I have set for myself as an English major aspire to dedicate much of my time to meaningful activities in order to expand my knowledge and understanding of the world to transfer into writing. The power of the written word is akin to the power of sharing food, as both engage the many human senses to create an experience that can open up the receiver to whole new worlds. As long as there is room in the kitchen of our community for me to experience and interact with the creation of food consciously, then there is a place for the teachings of my mother to blossom, hopefully one day to be planted and shared with others once the harvest comes.
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