My childhood tastes like tortillas with butter. One of my first memories is my grandmother – Grandmas, née Crespin – kneading flour and shortening together to make her homemade tortillas. I would sit on the counter and perform my duties as ball-roller, though I mostly ate the raw dough when she wasn’t looking. She would then cook the flattened dough on a cast-iron skillet, flipping them with her bare hands like only Hispanic grandmothers can. In exchange for a beso on the cheek, she would feed me a steaming tortilla smothered with half-melted butter.
When you leave a Crespin household, your arms will inevitably be laden with food. As you make the hour-long dance towards the door in a futile attempt to leave, waltzing between hugs and goodbyes and promises to bring over the succulent trimmings next week, you will find yourself carrying tinfoil-wrapped packages of tortillas, containers of green chile, last night’s leftovers, or if nothing else, a sleeve of Ritz crackers. If you leave empty-handed, we probably don’t like you, and if you refuse the food, we assume that we’ve done something to deeply offend you. The food says more about our love than the hugs do.
Family reunions are preceded by my (many) aunts and cousins crowding in the kitchen to form a tamale production line, while pots of posole bubble on the stove and pans of enchiladas crowd the oven. The recipes are less recipes and more oral histories of our ancestors. When you ask how to make green chile, Grandmas will tell you how her mother, Emma, would insist upon using New Mexican Hatch green chiles roasted by hand while tossing in a few spoonfuls of cumin or chunks of diced pork, measuring purely by instinct. When I eat my grandmother’s green chile, I am eating my great-grandmother Emma’s green chile – someone I never met, but accredit my entire existence to. I feel like I know her, if only through making her recipes.
The love language of food is carried by the other side of my family, too. My dad was the first person to teach me how to cook food to show someone you care. He would wake up early to cook us scrambled eggs for breakfast before school; after a long day’s work, he still comes home and cooks dinner for the family. He makes pancakes with a sourdough starter passed down in our family for generations and smoked brisket that takes hours to make. To take the time not only to feed, but nourish another with a carefully crafted meal – that is the ultimate act of love and care.
There is no language more universal than food. Cooking for those you love, communing over a meal, or simply sharing delivery pizza on your living room floor is the purest act of affection. Memories are formed in the passing of dishes over the Thanksgiving table, and in the passing down of family recipes. Relationships are built through shy first dates at coffee shops, wedding rehearsal dinners, and cakes baked for birthdays. The power of food lies in its ability to connect you in immediate one-on-one relationships and wider relationships to your culture, lineage, and ancestors across time and space.
In that way, food connects the world. It creates cross-cultural bonds; you can eat pho and, without speaking a word of Vietnamese, taste the history, heritage, and care passed down from generation to generation that wrote the recipe for the soup in your bowl. Food is a universal translator — not of words, but of feelings, memories, ideas, and stories. We may not share a spoken language, but the world shares the native tongue of food.