Comida parte dos: Sharing is caring

I consider myself a moderately generous person. If you need something and I have it, I most likely have let you borrow or use it. I share wine, I share books, I share toiletries, I share tips, we all know I like to over-share about my life. I’m generally the sharing type.

Until it comes to food.

I don’t know when it started exactly, but I have a little bit of anxiety with sharing food. I don’t know how to describe it other than I get the feeling of being cheated or like if I don’t guard my food it will all be taken and I will be left hungry. This feeling has only been exacerbated by my intolerance to gluten, which has made me incapable of eating most things offered to me, but does not make the things I am eating untouchable to everyone else. It isn’t to say I don’t share my food, I often share my food. I offer, sometimes people ask first. Only a handful of times have I actually told someone “no” about sharing my food, and these moments were embarrassing to say the least (unless we´re talking about Justin, in which case he had probably already eaten more than his share). And, lets face it, there are some foods you just don’t share. Honestly, I’m pretty embarrassed about this quirk of mine. I should just give and not expect to receive, and all of that other good “above it all” crap. But my problem is there are people out there that take and take and don’t give back.

Some have theories that it must have been started by being the youngest in a family of boys; three-older brothers ravenous in their adolescent growth-spurts, their insatiable hunger driving them to devour everything in site and leaving the poor, scrawny little sister with the decision to fight for her food or go hungry. It’s a good theory, but it has one major flaw—I was the pickiest eater around and would’ve done anything to be rid of the burden of a full plate of food. I mostly lived off cereal and hot chocolate. I do, however, have clear memories of my brother Sean leaving less than half-a-bowl of cereal in the box, leaving about the same amount of milk, and the un-holiest of all sharing practices; he used to break a cookie in half and pick the larger half for himself. Everyone knows it’s a cardinal rule of sharing that if you break the cookie in half, the other person gets to choose first.

Just like everything else in life, there are unspoken common courtesies. You hold open the door for the person with their arms full, you let pregnant women or the elderly take your seat on the bus while you stand, and when it comes to food, you offer, and the receiver only takes a little unless the person offering says it’s okay to take a lot.  So I suppose more specifically I have a problem with allowing someone to take more than their share of something. If we’re going halve-sies, we’re going halve-sies, and no one is getting more than their share unless someone is willing to relinquish their half. There are rules about these things.

Needless to say, the rules here are different.

You remember the general rule of elementary school of not eating in the classroom unless you have enough to share with the entire class? (I always hated that rule, by the way, and often hid lifesavers or mentos in my desk.) Well that is the rule of Peru. If you have food, you are sharing it with everyone present.

I once witnessed a moment when a single person eating a roll of bread in the presence of 12 other people was swarmed, and like some miraculous act of Jesus, somehow shared with everyone there. A roll. It was hardly the size of my fist. But the person knew that by having that piece of bread around others, they were obligated to share with everyone present.

Because this rule is so standfast, sometimes you don’t even have to offer food because people will ask for it and take it without waiting for a response. “Me invitas….” they’ll whine, and you’re stuck. Otherwise everyone just sits and waits for the offer, while thinking you’re an asshole if you don’t.

People don’t even drink their own beer. “Drinking circles” are the way to socially drink, which consists of one beer, one cup, and a group of people standing in a circle. There’s a whole process on how to pass it and everything. (I could write a whole post on just alcohol alone, so we’ll leave that for another day).

In the states I got pretty used to “my food” and “your food”, and unless an equal-share arrangement had been made with both parties, you stuck to eating your own food. Most times this agreement became null for me, as I generally had something gluten-free and the other person did not. Therefore, sharing was minimized quite a bit, as few people wanted to take some of my food without having anything to offer in return.

That doesn’t really fly here.

My mom sent me a package with GF mac and cheese in the mail awhile back. I held onto it for a long time, wondering when I could make it without having to share it. I learned in training that if you have something and you don’t want to share it, you hide it in your room and hoard it. Not exactly the healthiest habit to have, hoarding food and eating it in secret, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

So one day after getting to know my now host-family’s habits and schedules, I decided to go for it. Dinner isn’t a big meal here, it mostly consists of leftovers, and oftentimes is leftover rice with a fried egg and fried bananas. Sometimes my host family just eats bread and cheese (part of which I can’t partake in) so I decided it would only be just that I make my own mac and cheese and they eat their glutenous bread.

Within 60 seconds of readying the water to boil, every family member had stopped everything they were doing and had come from the furthest reaches of the household to stand in the kitchen and ask me what I was making. I showed them the box and they marveled at it, this foreign food item that appeared to be something made from wheat, but somehow magically wasn’t. They stood over me, uncomprehending this item that was both noodles and cheese, and yet the noodles were made out of rice, and the cheese was a package of powder.

Things moved on and my host-mom fried some eggs as I finished up the mac and cheese. Everyone had saddled up to their plate of rice and fried egg as I dished up my plate of the gooey, unnaturally-orange perfection. The whole time I felt everyone’s eyes boring into me.

I am not going to offer my food to them.

I am NOT going offer my food to them!

“Amanda, me invitas…”

Normally I can eat an entire package of mac to myself, but because I now had four people that wanted to try, I took less than half. Within seconds, my saving grace had been divvied up and everyone was eating the mac.

“Cultural exchange, Amanda, cultural exchange….you’re letting them try American food,” I told my inner beast of hunger.

“Oh, this is just like treschiz,” my host sister said.

“Oh, yeah…” everyone said as they realized what I had prepared was not, in fact, some foreign delicacy, but simply a food they knew and rarely ate, just with a different name. 

“Yeah….like treschiz, only I can’t eat treschiz because it’s made with wheat,” I said, trying to keep the smile big and passive aggressiveness down. “If you don’t want it, I would be more than happy to eat it, since it was a gift from my mom all the way from the United States of America.”

I think at this point my host-sister saw the beast, so she picked up her plate and left the room. I managed to get over it, told myself “you at least got to eat some of it, which is more than you had before.” Until the next morning, when I went to make my breakfast and found half a plate of my beautiful mac and cheese in the pig-slop bucket.

To be honest, it had been kind of a bad week, and seeing those noodles forsaken and scattered in a pile of food scraps was just too much. I might have cried a little bit. I might have also asked my host sister why she would throw such a thing away, when I had made myself clear that I would eat it.

That’s when I realized I needed a perspective change.

Whether I think I should share or not, they all do. And while I would love to indulge and have certain things all to myself, it only alienates my host family and makes me even weirder to them if I don’t partake in what they consider a common courtesy. Besides, I have a bag full of gluten-free mixes and absolutely nowhere to make them. Flours flop, even when they’re stored in airtight bags. Am I going to potentially let my gifts from home go bad in my stubbornness to not share?

This is still a process for me. I still keep certain food in my room (peanut butter will never be communal), I still hesitate on sharing certain things, rack my brain with ways to get away with eating it all to myself, and I sometimes stop by the tienda and buy cocadas or sublime’s to hide in my bag and eat in the secrecy of my room.

However, it´s getting easier. It’s actually kind of relieving, like a weight lifted off my chest. Less sneaking around and hiding, more happy faces and moments to bond with my host family. And it’s another step to integration. I’ll know I’m really integrated when I work up the nerve to lower my bottom lip and let out a whine of “Por favoooorrr….me invitas…”

Nah, I won´t do that. Gotta start small. Poco a poco.