Post Tagged with "meal times"

Granny, I’m marrying a vegetarian

Petya (Bulgaria) and Kyle (USA)

My grandparents are sweet simple people. They live in a small village up in the Mountains of Bulgaria and spend most of their time working their land and taking care of their animals. They always look forward to Christmas when, traditionally, the entire extended family gets together for a big feast. We usually eat pork that came off the back (or butt) of a pig they had been raising themselves.

Grandma was a little bit suspicious when she found out I was planning to marry an American boy. Her suspicion turned into outrage when she found out that Kyle was not only American but also vegetarian.

What do you mean he doesn’t eat meat?
Well, he doesn’t, Grandma.
No meat at all? Ever? Not even for dinner?
No. No. No. He’s been vegetarian for most of his life.
What do you mean most of his life?
He’s been vegetarian since he was 15.
Does his mother know he doesn’t eat meat?
She does, Grandma. She does.

Grandma is quiet for a little while. I know she’s trying to come to peace with the idea that she will have a foreign non-meateater in her family soon and she will simply have to accept that. I also know she loves me more than anything and in her silence I recognize a true effort to stay positive. Still, she really seems to be struggling with the whole vegetarianism thing. It really is THAT BAD for her. Eventually, she breaks the silence:

OK, so… he’s vegetarian. But does he drink?
Well… I am not sure how to answer, but I choose to say the truth. He does drink, yes.
OH! GOOD! You should have just told me earlier.

She seemed SO happy and relieved. And I guess she was right. I should have told her earlier.

Petya has a whole blog dedicated to her cross-cultural marriage. In her words it is ‘an ongoing story about travel, cross-cultural (mis)-understanding and running-ins with immigration authorities on both sides of the Atlantic ocean’

Go and have a look at How to Marry a Bulgarian.

Enjoyed this?
Read more stories of cross-cultural encounters from My Partner is a Foreigner.

Santi (Indonesia) and Nico (France)

It becomes obvious there are two food cultures living in our household. Breakfast is always simple, with some toasts or cereals and fruits. Lunch is reserved for French food and dinner for Indonesian cuisine. None of us made the rule, this arrangement of French lunch and Indonesian dinner appeared out of the blue during our first year of marriage.

Actually, lunch is more Nico’s style than French cause he mixes French, other European and Mediterranean foods all together. Different kind of fresh breads from bakeries are the only ones allowed on our table. Roast beef, turkey and chicken hams, various types of spreads like hummus, fish paste and beef pate, roasted egg plants, salad, raw veggies with dips and of course large variety of cheeses are never missed. Nico likes to experiment with sandwiches by inventing different mixes and matches between the filling/spreads and breads. It’s fun to see our dining table loaded with different foods. Spreading and making sandwiches on the spot are moments we cherish as we often have good chats about everything. Although I mostly eat left over from the Indonesian dinner as my lunch *truly Indonesian I am*, I enjoy the moment whenever I join.

Dinners are my cookings, 99% Indonesian dishes. I began to cook a lot only since we moved to the US. When living in Holland I was spoiled by hundreds of Indonesian restaurants and toko all over Amsterdam so there was really no need for me to master Indonesian cooking. The first months in the US, I had no choice but to try out recipes if I wanted to keep eating my favorite dishes. I became even more motivated to cook when Joseph started to eat table food as I wanted him to enjoy them like I do. He loves eating rice as much as eating bread. Nico skips the rice once in a while, but he always eats the dishes. We still need to help Joseph eating since he’s still learning how to scoop the rice and dishes into the spoon, otherwise it will take him ages to finish his plate. Unlike lunch, dinner table is occupied by our plates and cutleries only. We scoop the meal directly from the warm pans on the stove, and rice is in the electric cooker on the counter top. Dinner is usually faster because everything is ready to eat. I cook pasta and potato dishes whenever only when I’m bored with rice *yes, sometimes I do feel a bit too ricey*.

Celebration dishes are the ones we all look forward to. Not only for their special tastes but also because they appear on occasions only. On Eid-Il Fitr, I prepare specials like rendang, opor ayam and sayur lodeh. Even though we don’t celebrate Christmas, from time to time Nico cooks real French cuisine on some of his family’s festivities. On birthdays we simply buy a nice mini chocolate cake from Whole Foods, sing birthday songs in French, Indonesian and English, blow the candle and enjoy the yummie slices.

To me, foods represent cultures. Having French and Indonesian dishes on our table show that each kitchen has a place in our family. It’s touching to see Joseph appreciates both. We hope Louise will do the same, they both are children of France and Indonesia after all.

The above story is an excerpt (taken with permission) from Santi’s blog Trilingual+1, about living and raising her 2 children, Joseph and Louise, in a multi-cultural environment. Santi and her husband have both lived in several different countries, and are currently in Germany. Read the original post here.

Enjoyed this? Read more stories of cross-cultural encounters from My Partner is a Foreigner.

Are you saying I’m fat?

Kyle (USA) and S. (Chile)

“Ahhh, Kyle, gordita, como estas?”

(Translation: Ahhh, Kyle, fatty, how are you?)

This is how my father in law would greet me every time we went over to his house. Although, the word gordita was alternately replaced with “rellenita,” another term, also referring to plumpness.

At first, I thought I needed to be on model behavior for my husband’s parents, so I would just grit my teeth, clench my fists, and smile and nod, when all I really wanted to do was punch his dad in the face, as he insulted me about my weight over and over and over again.

Finally one day I’d had it. When my father in law inevitably brought up my weight at the dinner table in front of everybody, telling me I looked “even fatter than normal,” I took the bait and snapped back, “Well, you look older and more wrinkly than normal.”

Silence.

Crickets chirping.

Me turning beet red as I realized I’d just said something truly offensive.

Eventually someone coughed politely and changed the subject. But, after dinner my husband took me aside.

“Why in the world would you insult my dad like that?!?” he asked.

I told him, “I’m sick of the weight comments, tell him to stop insulting me.”

And then the error of my ways was explained to me. My husband told me that in Chile, “Gordita” is a term of endearment and is only used lovingly. He also explained that it’s not at all impolite to bring up other people’s weight loss/weight gain and that if people do, that just means they care about you enough to notice.

And then I explained to my husband that telling someone they look fat/fatter is one of the rudest things you can possibly do in my culture and that certain gringas (ahem, not me, of course) are even prone to random acts of violence when old men, who are also fat, feel it necessary to make weight comments.

Needless to say, hubby had a little chat with my father in law and my fatness, or lack thereof, was never brought up again.

Kyle’s blog Just Married Chilean Style has more stories of married life in Chile.

Enjoyed this? Read more stories of cross-cultural encounters from My Partner is a Foreigner.

Lamia (Turkey) and Roberto (Italy)

I am from Bursa, in Turkey and my husband is from Bari, in the south of Italy. We have been married for 5 years. We’re coming both from Mediterranean countries so there are not so many differences but in these 5 years we managed to find some! The first thing I noticed is the Italian food is so different to Turkish food.

Let’s start with my first Italian family meal. It was in Bari, with my husband, his brothers, sisters, cousins, wives of brothers… Huge table! We ate seafood and when it arrived the whole family said ‘wow! look at this!’ The dish was octupus cooked in seawater. They said I should taste this very delicious food. I tasted and I couldn’t chew it, it was like rubber tasting of salt. All eyes were looking at me… ‘Do you like it?’ they asked. ‘Mmmm… it’s ok’, I said. I asked if anyone would like to finish and they jumped on it! In Bari fresh octupus is a delicacy.

The meal time is quite different in our countries. In Italy, Sunday lunch can last from 1:30 to 5pm. In Turkey it is from 1-2pm. In Italy they eat pasta, followed by meat or fish. We eat soup (in winter) and mezze to start. We eat pasta as main course and sometimes at the same time as the meat. And we make pasta into a salad with yoghurt. For my husband it was very strange to see me eating pasta with yoghurt! ‘what are you doing??’ he said. Now he also eats pasta with yoghurt (woman power…!)

The second difference is coffee. Italians are so quick to drink their espresso or macchiato. In Turkey it is a ritual to drink Turkish coffee and chat. We need at least 15 minutes. Everytime I drank coffee with Roberto I expected to sit and chat. But our coffee arrived and he drank it in one gulp. I am still disappointed but I got used to it (man power…!)

So on pasta I won. On coffee he won!

Lamia’s blog Bursa Daily Photo shows photos of her town Bursa, in Turkey

If you have a cross-cultural story to share please send it to info@pocketcultures.com

Firoozeh (Iran/USA) and François (France)

The first time they met François, my parents insisted on taking him to the nicest Persian restaurant in Los Angeles. My father ordered the appetizer sampler, which François ate with gusto while questioning my mother about the ingredients:
“Is this the spice sumac?”
“Are these the thin-skinned Persian cucumbers?”
“Is the feta made with sheep’s milk?”
Once the appetizers were finished, François selected the most copious dish on the menu, the sultani, a combination of lamb, beef, and chicken kebob on an enormous mound of rice. His order arrived, looking as if someone had just grilled an entire petting zoo. François ate and ate and ate. My father asked me, in Persian, whether he always ate like this. My mother said, in Persian, that she hoped he wasn’t going to get sick. Meanwhile, François kept eating.

By the time he was done, there was not a grain of rice left on his large oval plate. My mother told him how lucky he was that he could eat enough food for three people and not be fat. François was of normal weight – although he did outweigh me, which fulfilled one of my two requirements for dating a guy. The other requirement was a total lack of interest in watching sports on television. François fulfilled that one, too.

Unbelievably, he ordered dessert, exclaiming that he couldn’t possibly imagine skipping the rose water and pistachio ice cream. By then, I was just hoping that if he did throw up, it wouldn’t happen in my father’s car.

Once we arrived at my house, I asked François why he had eaten so much. “I know that Middle Easterners love to feed people and I wanted to make a good impression on your parents,” he said. “But now I need to go lie down”

The story above is an extract from the book Funny in Farsi published with permission from Firoozeh Dumas. Firoozeh is the author of Funny in Farsi, an excellent and funny book of tales about growing up Iranian in America, and her second book, Laughing without an accent, has just been released.

Enjoyed this?
Read more stories of cross-cultural relationships on My partner is a foreigner
Share your story – fill in the form

Malina (Bulgaria) and David (Spain)

The Christmas menu in my boyfriend’s family home in the south of Spain consists mainly of mariscos (seafood). The star dish is the gamba roja – large red prawns. The proper way to cook it is with sea water. The problem is getting the sea water out of the sea! Their house is on the beach, but the thought of getting knee high into the sea in December shocks everyone in the family (as it is assumed one will get a cold immediately), and this task builds up as the big challenge of Christmas day.

As someone who comes from a country with proper winter, it was understood that the cold will not affect me, and I bravely assumed the task the first Christmas I spent there. Now it is always up to me to make sure there is sea water for the gamba roja!

Do you have a cross-cultural story? We’d love to hear from you. Please write to us at info@pocketcultures.com