Regional food culture varies a little, but food bonding is huge in the South.
Sympathy meals are a big thing, a big and very real thing. A sympathy meal is basically a huge dish of some sort of comfort food, which is defined by Southerners as hearty foods that reheat well and last a while (and we can give you thousands of examples), that you bring to any one of your acquaintance, no matter how distant, in light of a tragedy. From the death of a loved one to the loss of a job…Sympathy meals. In the South, we believe grieving or job hunting is hard enough without having to physically feed your family. So we feed each other, and that’s how we bond as a community.
Neighbours bond over food in times of crisis. When Ike came through my town, we all lost power, and we all had meat in our refrigerators and freezers that would go bad, so the whole street dragged out their grills and we made use of some of the holes that trees had left behind when the storm ripped them up, and we had grilled and pit barbecue. And for a day, it didn’t matter that we were hot and that a tree had fallen through his roof or that her car was totaled by debris or that their home was flooded and that no one except the lucky ones on the hospital grid had power. Because you could sit down on the remains of someone’s chimney and share a plate of food with your neighbour, and that little plate held all that mattered in the world.
Texas food portions are legendary for their size, but it’s because we associate giving surplus food with caring for someone. We may not always have the ability fix your promlems, but we can feed you so you have one less thing to worry about. Because shopping and cooking takes up more than just money. It takes time, you have to think about stretching your dollar and how to prepare something, then you have to prepare it…It’s far more cost, time, and stress effective in our books to feed someone with our dollar than it is to drop money into a basket at church or a paypal account. And even being on the receiving end…yeah, having the actual money would be nice, but it is relaxing to know I could just go into the freezer and reheat this at 350°F and have dinner for a week. I know that person gave what they could give, and they gave it in a way that allows me to have a little more time to work without worrying about being hungry.
From an anthropological viewpoint, it’s fascinating, as it creates a culture of unbalanced reciprocity without measurable imbalance, which, in a society of very clear balanced reciprocity, actually results in stronger bonding than if the imbalance were measurable. Like, America is all about that balanced reciprocity. Things cost what they cost. I give you $5, you give me one small rotisserie chicken. Lending and paying and done with exact calculations. I always know how much money I owe you or you owe me, and if the debt drags out too long, it creates strain in the relationship and the bond breaks down. But how do you quantify the value of a pot of homemade gumbo? How do you keep a balance book of tamales given in return for pecan pie given in return for a pyrex of lasagna? How do you record the exact monetary transaction in giving someone a hamburger casserole one year and receiving a dish of shrimp and grits the next? You can’t. I mean, you can, but who has the time? It creates those transactional bonds without adding the strain of expecting an exact return on investment, and then the transaction becomes the basis of a new relationship, instead of the by-product of an established one. And given that these transactions are often made during times of crisis, they create deeper trust and empathy in relationships than other, measurable transactions do, resulting in a tighter knit community that is more likely to band together in larger crises.
But to my boyfriend? This level of food bonding is beyond him. Sympathy meals happen, but only if you know the family well. Comfort food is junk food you eat when you’re sad. A spontaneous cookout would not happen in the midst of tragedy and destruction, because families would think first to provide for their own, not outsiders. His mom makes excess food for us when we visit that we can take back in a cooler, and she’d do it if someone helped their family with a big issue, but offering brownies to the cable repairman is not their norm. He doesn’t understand why I go out of my way to have a full-on buffet spread when two friends come over to play board games, because he wasn’t raised in the Southern food culture, which is intense. But for me, it’s how I show you I love you. I try to make my home your home when you visit, and part of that means feeding you.
And, while some of this may seem like small town vs big city…It’s more regional differences and values at play. Because he grew up in a Midwestern town of six thousand, and I grew up in a Southern city of six million.
