Mariam's Kitchen By Elizabeth Ehrlich

Food is a universal subject that comes to play in everyone’s lives. Countless fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy, and even human made candies are a form of food. Food is not just something people eat to satisfy their hunger. All over the world food is celebrated and praised. In every religion individuals pray before consuming the food. Personally in Hinduism we value food as gift given from god for our survival on earth. Food is well connected to religion but it can also bring back memories and moments. The taste of food can trigger a memory of you being somewhere, with someone, doing something. The kind of food you make can help you remember a person or a time. While reading the book “Mariam’s Kitchen”, written by Elizabeth Ehrlich, I came across
September Egg salad (8). From that text onwards I strongly believe food does trigger memories, especially in Elizabeth Ehrlich’s life. I am from a Hindu background and some foods have been in our family history for a longtime. In traditional times my ancestors cooked certain food that we still cook. My mother used to tell me about the “Sal roties”, they are made out of flowers, water, backing soda and sugar. As my mother told me in our ancestral times it was hard this particular food. They had to wait until the right season to actually plant the rice. The flower is made out of rice only. They had to let the rice ripened and go through a long process to make the flower. They didn’t have the technology we had today. It was this way for everything they grew. My ancestors were farmers and they used to farm all year long. They relied on farming for everything but once a year when a holiday of “Dashara”
For instance, Neguro, neguro is a wild plant found in the rain forest. It is green and has a curved shape. Few days after a heavy rain these plants grew massively and we used to pick them up. We ate this plant seasonally, we also sold them for money. It’s me and my mother’s favorite unfortunately we have not been able to eat this is years. As neguro is to me, wild mushrooms were Mariam’s favorite and a remembrance of her country and food. She believed, “The best kind of mushrooms in the world came from her forest in Poland” Mariam’s Kitchen (308). Mariam too could never taste this food because it couldn’t be found here in the US. Elizabeth Ehrlich tries to find them and brings in a yellow mushroom as Mariam described but Mariam knows the taste of it. This food means so much to her in terms of her early life that, she knows exactly what it tastes like and looks like as