Food in LWFC

Food in this novel is really the only form of self-expression that Tita is able to use. The fact she's not from the richest family, her mother is domineering, and that she lives in a traditional patriarchical society leaves Tita with very little room for expressing herself. Food is her solace, with food she can express her love for Pedro, communicate to others the depth of her sorrow, and is even able to solve common problems.

Rosaura has no real connection to food, besides that she's not very good at cooking it and that Tita's food effects her life (i.e. the wedding). Gertrudis' life is profoundly effected by the food that Tita makes, as it makes her do things she otherwise wouldn't do. Mother Elena is eventually brought down by food, or a lack thereof, for fear of poison from Tita.

Food acts as a catalyst in this book in the case of human relations and for Tita it is a form of self-expression.

Like Water For Chocolate

Food plays a very interesting role in the novel. First, every chapter starts with a recipe, and is surrounded by the preparation and eating of the food. The food itself is the basis of the chapters, and leads to the various stories told. Almost all major events in the book happen either in the kitchen preparing for the food or at the table eating the food. Food interacts with the characters as well. Based on what was going on when the food was prepared, people eating feel differently. When Tita cried tears of sorrow in the cake batter, everyone eating cake felt sad and got sick. When eating the quail and rose petal sauce, Gertrudis felt an aphrodisiac effect, because of the love the sauce was made with. Tita was so happy making the turkey mole with almonds and sesame seeds, everyone eating it felt unexplainably happy. These are just a few examples of how food played a big role in the book and how it effects each character.

Food Traditions

Personally, being from an Italian family, food is a big deal for us. Every Sunday, for example, is pasta night in our house. It's something that was started in my Dad's family, and he was very adamant about it being a tradition in our house, so that's what we practice. Even if we're out Sunday night and can't have a pasta dinner as a family, we just reschedule for Monday or do it on Saturday.

As for big occasions, once again, pasta is a big deal. At almost every big family gathering, Thanksgiving, Christmas, reunions, etc., pasta is almost always the first dish. After that, especially on Christmas, seafood, such as baked clams or lobster, is served. Seafood for Christmas is another Italian tradition that has been passed on through my family.

Our food traditions revolve around not only food, but the people gathered for the food, and they are traditions that I hope to keep when I have my own family in the future.

Food Traditions

In our family the most common made dish would be rice and beans with tortillas. If family was getting together, an issue that needed to be talked about, or a celebration...I was never disappointed seeing that on the table. Its a simple dish that was made every time all the time and holds multiple funny occasions and memories. It was a simple dish that brought our family and friends together to enjoy a simple meal and the taste of my grandmas famous tortillas. When she got to old to make them it almost seemed like people started to drift off and away from each other. I believe that food as simple as rice and beans can hold power since it would bring my big family together. I still have the memories; I'm a horrible cook but i still aspire to get that recipe down on how to make the beans and tortillas just like mi abuelita (grandma).

Like Water For Chocolate

In the novel Like Water for Chocolate everything that Tita is feeling goes into her food. She makes Turkey Mole for her baby nephews party. She loves him so much, and is so happy taking care of him that she puts those feelings into the food. Everyone who eats her food that night at the party feels happier then usual without understanding why.

It is also possible to say that Tita's food is so good because she is so selfless. She takes care of her mother, her sister, her sister's husband(whom she loves), and her nephew. She never asks for anything in return, but to be close to the man she loves. She does not even ask to be with him; she only wants to take care of him and her nephew. That could be why her sister and mother can not cook like her. She cooks so well because she has such strong emotions, and so much passion.

Food Traditions

My families main food tradition is the corn bread stuffing we have on Thanksgiving. When my grandmother was alive she made it every year, and now that she is gone my mother has taken over the tradition. Most of our family holiday traditions have ceased to exist since my grandmother died, but the stuffing remains. It is not Thanksgiving to me without the corn bread stuffing. It has sage sausage in it, and all sorts of other really tasty ingredients.

My family did Thanksgiving early this year, so I went to my boyfriend's house on Thanksgiving Day. I learned about one of their special Thanksgiving, food traditions: corn pudding. I had never had it before, and can now say that corn pudding is delicious. My boyfriend's grandmother makes it every year, and according to him and his brothers, their mom tried to make it once and it turned out awful. Their grandmother's corm pudding is special to them. Even if their mom's corn pudding was good they would never admit it, because it was not made by their Mimi(what they call their grandmother. It can not be Thanksgiving for them without corn pudding just like it can not be Thanksgiving for me without corn bread stuffing.

LWFC

Throughout the novel Like Water For Chocolate food seems to be personified in a sense. It carries out the novels overall theme of control. For T is seems to be food that rules and controls in every situation she is not in control of. One example of this is the 'poison' wedding cake. She was unable to control the situation of her sister marrying her love. Therefore the cake took on the role of a valiant robin hood type, silently sneaking in and making everyone at the wedding sick, just about as sick as T herself felt at the situation. I took great joy in reading this section. It reminded me of my sisters wedding where everyone (including bride and groom) got food poisoning... happy honeymoon?

Character Sketch (Like Water for Chocolate)

In Like Water for Chocolate, food plays a dynamic role. Food is the vessel through which the reader fully understands Tita's emotions. Every recipe that she prepares is filled with her tears or her passion or her anger and this is transferred to the characters who eat the food. For example, when Tita prepares the wedding cake for Pedro and Rosaura, she is overcome by sadness at the loss of her lover Pedro. Her tears then fall into the cake, and when the people eat it at the reception, they too are overcome by sadness at losing lost loves and end up vomiting due to their intense emotion.

Food is more than just a vessel for Tita's emotions. It also becomes a foreshadow for the novel. Anytime the reader comes across Tita preparing a recipe, they automatically become aware that something vital is going to occur. After the wedding cake fiasco, the reader becomes acutely aware of the power of Tita's food and is therefore anticipating the affects of her food on others.

Food and Family

Food is the center of many family gatherings. It doesn't matter what time you arrive at my grandmother's house, she immediately wants to know if you will be staying for dinner. Within minutes she has a pot of sauce and sausage on the stove ready for whoever decides to stay. Once dinner is ready, we all gather around the dining room table and talk about anything and everything. Dinners like this always brings my extended family together.

Special occasions are quite similar, but the amount of food is doubled, sometimes tripled depending on how many people are coming. My grandmother has four children, four daughter/son-in-laws, twelve grandchildren, and there are always a few extra guests or family members thrown into the mix. To accommodate everyone, we have to set up an extra dinner table in the living room. The two tables are always filled with food that my grandmother makes from scratch. She loves cooking for all of us, and prying her away from the kitchen long enough for her to each something is quite the chore.

For us, food is what brings us all together, and it is what truly stirs up some of the best conversations.

Food and Characters

Food in this story is a deeply held tradition, but it also at times is a vehicle for the feelings of Tita that enables others to feel what she does.  The food feels what she feels.  When Tita feels a lustful passion for pedro it goes into her quail and roses dish and makes the middle sister lustful as well.  Earlier when she is depressed and making the cake for Pedro and Rosaura's wedding, her depression and longing goes into the cake and as a result make everyone who eats it; extremely depressed.  The food molds it self to how Tita feels. Because she is so in tuned with food, the food becomes in tuned with her.  In a way the food acts as quasi journal for Tita.  She cannot tell anyone her feelings for fear of Mama Elena finding out, but she can unload her problems onto the food and receive some sort of comfort.

Like Water For Chocolate

Throughout the part of the novel that I have read, Tita seems to be constricted in many, if not all, aspects of her life. Her mother is in a sense her master. Mama Elena does not take Tita's feelings into account when making decisions. So to counteract this inability to express what she wants, Tita lets her emotions become infused in the food she prepares. Whatever she was feeling while preparing the food is acted out by those who partake of it. An example is when Mama Elena becomes paralyzed and Tita is the only who can care for her. When Chechna and John try the food prepared by Tita it tastes perfectly fine to them, however, when Mama Elena tastes it there is a bitter element to the food that convinces her that Tita is trying to poison her. Food is a major component in the novel also because the author uses specific recipes to tell her story.

Characters and Foods

The most prominent role food plays is relaying Tita's emotions. They are added into the mix as if they were a regular ingredient. Food can be grievous, sorrowfully reminiscing of, and longing for, lost love (as with the Chabela wedding cake), passionate and lustful (as with the quail served in rose petal sauce), remedial or bitter (as with the ox-tail soup), and so on.

It can all be explained simply through Tita's emotions. When she made the wedding cake, she was grieved that she had lost Pedro. She was unwilling to throw away the rose, so she made a dish that kept the momento of love from Pedro. The ox-tail soup reminded her of her love for the kitchen while it only served bitterness to her mother for having suppressed her from her desires for many years.

In relation to other characters, foods have the effect of transferring Tita's emotions. Because Tita was grieved, full of desire, and bitter, the eaters received the same emotion. The remedial ox-tail soup is an exception, for which I have no explanation. It could have been any other food that was "foreign to [John's] house" with the same effect. Chencha made it, but she didn't transfer any emotion; the dish and its aroma only aroused in Tita memories of her past life.

Rosaura became a conduit for Tita and Pedro's lust for each other after eating the quail. She received a portion of that passion through that role, and that heat led her to a different path in life. Food not only transfers Tita's emotions, but it changes things. It changes people and their story. It touches their heart, which contributes to that change. The only exceptions are the Chabela wedding cake and the turkey mole, which produced feelings of sorrow and happiness for a short time. The only exception to that is Nacha, who took her life after remembering her lost love.

For Mama Elena, food had a negative effect on her. Tasting the bitter ox-tail soup made her even more miserable as it made her take foolish measures in order to counteract the 'poison.' She realized how no one appreciated her, and yet she tried to protect herself even more. She did not realize her true image. Perhaps it reminded her of her own bitter experiences of lost love and being forced to marry another through set customs and tradition. Maybe that was what drove her to take a dose or iperac, to do something crazy.

Pedro, Chencha and John seem to be the odd ones, as food has no powerful effect on them. Champandongo is a mystery in that the food itself had no effect. It was made with bad temper, but it did not transfer that emotion but overcame it to be an enjoyable meal. In a way, I guess it says that the situation is good although the feelings are not. So now food is immune to emotions.

Food seems to have its own personality.

Defining Food and Family

By define, I guess you mean which food characterizes my family? Or which foods do my family eat on special occasions? I will answer both questions.


Vietnamese tradition:
For a wedding, the characterizing food would be a fried, oily pig (for the initiation ceremony which is customary in Vietnamese tradition). You read right. For New Year's, it is a round container with slots for many kinds of delectable candy like coconut, ginger, soybeans and other ground foods all sliced and sugared for eating.

Family tradition:
For graduation or coming home from school or visiting, it varies. Sometimes we go out and eat at a restaurant, but I consistently remember pho or some other Vietnamese noodle for the home menu. Maybe because it's my favorite food or because it is so served so often, that's why I remember it. But I do not really see it as much as a tradition as it is a common serving at special occasions.

Now that I think about it, there is one tradition that we have, but I don't remember how it got started: when guests come over, my mom prepares a griddle with fresh meat and seafood ready to grill on the tabletop as well as a boiling bowl, for lack of culinary knowledge, for the noodles and green vegetables. I miss the mussels, which are expensive but are so good.

The defining link between these two 'traditions' is that, except for the last example which I think is a Thailand dish, they both serve Vietnamese foods. It is not a tradition because it has been passed down, but it is a continual clinging to Vietnamese customs as my family and I continue living in America.

So, in short, what foods characterize my family? Vietnamese foods, or noodles, specifically.
What foods do we eat on special occasions? Vietnamese foods, or noodles of any variety.

Like Water for Chocolate

Food is a major component in expressing Tita's feelings, which she is incapable in doing well, without the flavor of her food.
Due to traditional confinements, Tita is unable to express herself, and she communicates her feelings to her family with the food she cooks. There are many examples of this seen throughout the book, such as when Tita creates the ox-tail soup that is made with her love and care so her mother could get better, or the lust that accompanied the flowers that Tita used that was from Pedro.
Tita allows her family to feel what she is feeling through her recipes, which is important for Tita's self-expression of her internal flame.

Food as a Character

The food is what Tita bases her life off of. It seems to be an extension of her at first, but then it begins to take a complete control of itself before Tita does. The food ends up curing, healing and killing those that matter most to Tita or are plaguing her. Throughout the novel food is the only thing that everyone can relate to. It is the one thing that brings people together and pushes them apart. It is an observer of all of the conversations of the family, because it is in the kitchen and notices everything. A perfect example is the tamales. They would not cook because there was fighting going on in the house and outside the house, so Tita had to trick them by singing to them. The food is like a child that affects everyone. And it is the only thing to survive the fire at the end, so it is the only thing of that family to survive after the big fire are the recipes that were so powerful.

Rather than a character in this novel, food seems more of an extension of Tita's character. It expresses the emotions and desires that Tita cannot. Her longing for Pedro is expressed in the wedding cake disaster, her desire for him through her sister and the rose petals, and her cheerfulness through the food at the party. Tita is trapped by her mother and by convention, and the only way she can express herself is through her cooking. Though the people eating her food don't realize it, they are understanding Tita through her food; they feel what she feels, and when they eat is the only time that happens.