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“Bread of our Mothers”

Ruptures and Continuities in Families and Homemade Food Traditions

Eric J. Arnould
CBA 320
University of Nebraska – Lincoln,
Lincoln, Nebraska 68588-0492 USA
1 402 472 5758
earnould2@unl.edu

and

Linda L. Price
CBA 312
University of Nebraska – Lincoln,
Lincoln, Nebraska 68588-0492 USA
1 402 472 3156
lprice2@unl.edu

June 2001

Paper presented at the 8th Interdisciplinary Conference on Consumption, 26-28 July, 2001,

Paris, La Sorbonne.

Bread for our Mothers 10/09/01 1


“Bread of our Mothers”

Ruptures and Continuities in Families and Homemade Food Traditions

Abstract

Investigating the production and consumption of food within the household has the

potential to illuminate changing patterns of social division, commodification, and lifestyle, and

make visible household organization, management, and relationships. Contemporary food

meanings and consumption practices reflect the many complexities of postmodern society. In

an effort to bring together anthropological, sociological and marketing perspectives, we have

been doing research to understand "homemade" food production and consumption, and the

rhetorical relationship between "homemade" food and food or foodstuffs purchased in the

marketplace. This exploratory report focuses specifically on the social reproduction of

"homemade food" production and consumption practices between generations. Our attempt is

to understand relationships between "homemade food" and conceptions of the family as well as

how "homemade food" relates to other food categories. We argue that examining generational

continuities and ruptures in "homemade food" production and consumption can enrich our

understanding of how individuals negotiate and partition their individual and family identities.

This contributes to consumer researchers’ limited knowledge of the dynamics of

intergenerational consumption practices. Moreover, these continuities relate more broadly to

dynamic meanings of food preparation and the impact of food technology on family life.

Key words: families, food, consumption, production, homemade, social reproduction.

Bread for our Mothers 10/09/01 2


This was a challah like none other. …This was my Jewish grandmother’s pièce de
résistance. She nourished the entire extended family with her challahs, fusing us, like
the genes we shared, with her culinary magic…Challah was our connection with our
grandmother, and through her, to our ancestors. It may have been our palates that
defined the moment, but each time we consumed my grandmother’s challah, it was a
ritual affirmation of our sense of peoplehood and our place in history. …I feasted on her
challah for thirty-two years, until my grandmother passed away, taking the recipe to her
grave. Only then did it dawn on me that nobody in the entire family—not one of her
eighteen progeny—had acquired her skill. None of us, or our children, would ever
savor her challah again (Steinberg, 1993, 295-296).

Contemporary food production and consumption practices reflect many complexities in

postmodern society. Food marketers ceaselessly create new products and services that

potentially alter household production and consumption practices (Park and Capps 1997). As

consumers we find ourselves compelled to redefine or at least reconsider food categories, partly

in response to food practices that are detached from production and from the ecological

constraints that conditioned food habits in traditional and modern industrial societies (Fischler

1980). For example, normative models of social organization implicit in the fast-food industry

exert pressure on family life. Consumers’ accession to these normative pressures in some

instances has altered food habits, family life and consumption rituals (Ritzer 2000; Watson

1997). Ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat products represent another large and growing share of

US food expenditures again asserting the primacy of “saving time” and “meeting individual

needs efficiently.”

Food production and consumption practices remain at the heart of intra-household

relationships and constructions of home and family (Charles and Kerr 1988; DeVault 1991,

Dorfman 1992; Lupton 1994; Valentine 1999; Wallendorf and Arnould 1991). Moreover, food

represents a particularly strong form of anchorage in the past linking historical, individual and

household time, and also sustaining and reifying cyclical notions of time (Lupton 1994;

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Morgan 1996). Finally, food and meal preparation remains one of the few consistently

productive activities for urban households.

Food practices also reflect gender, power, and social stratification relationships and

negotiated and contested identity work within households (Grieshaber 1997; Valentine 1999).

Food industries, women’s magazines, cookbooks and advertisers reproduce the message that

providing a ‘proper’ meal is the key for women to a successful home life, and the failure to

provide good cooking is used by men to justify domestic violence (Ellis 1982). However, men

too participate in family food traditions, and in the U.S., increasing numbers of men cook

(Adler 1981). Investigating food production and consumption practices has the potential to

illuminate changing patterns of social division, commodification, and lifestyle, and make

visible household organization, management, and relationships (Grieshaber 1997; Warde and

Hetherington 1994).

In contrast to research that focuses on the effects of market innovations on consumers,

the purpose of our paper is to illuminate some food practices of consumers by focusing

attention on "homemade" food production and consumption, and the rhetorical relationship

between their "homemade" foods and food or foodstuffs purchased in the marketplace.

Previous research suggests that homemade food plays a constitutive role in domestic rituals and

domestic social reproduction (Charles and Kerr 1988; Wallendorf and Arnould 1991). Hence,

the proliferation of “home meal replacement” products may be more socially significant than a

mere functional issue of household resource allocation (Park and Capps 1997). Many food

companies attempt to imbue processed foods with the character, traditions, and meanings of

“homemade,” or facilitate consumers transforming these products into “homemade” dishes for

their families (See Photo ; Price and Arnould 2000; Arnould and Price 2000). Because of their

Bread for our Mothers 10/09/01 4


efforts, family meals increasingly represent an intersection between the conflicting logics of the

domestic group and the global market economy (Bell 1996; Cheal 1988; Netting, Wilk and

Arnould 1984). And the appropriation of homemade meanings by the market is likely to be

countered by everyday acts of consumer resistance (DeCerteau 1988; Peñaloza and Price

1993).

Recognizing the centrality of food preparation and consumption in social life,

anthropologists have long examined its broader social roles. Indeed, there is a vast literature in

anthropology on food (e.g., Farb and Armelagos 1980; insert web site here). Studies of food

pro- and prescriptions (Douglas 1999/1975; Meigs 1984; Sahlins 1978) are a mainstay of

anthropological research. Anthropologists and some sociologists have also looked at the

impact of changing food ways on culture, economy, and identity in developed consumer culture

(e.g., Çaglar 1995; James 1996), transitional economies (e.g., Watson 1997) and developing

countries (e.g., Goody 1971; Goodman and Watts 1997; Orlove 1994; Rutz 1989; Roberts

2000; Wilk 1997; 1995a,b). Perhaps because of the complexity of intra-household and

longitudinal research, household food preparation and consumption has engendered relatively

less research attention (cf. Charles and Kerr 1988; Beardsworth and Keil 1997; Murcott 1983;

Valentine 1999; Wallendorf and Arnould 1991), particularly in an intergenerational context (cf.

Weismantel 1989).

Theoretical work on social reproduction and ritualization provides some guidance for

understanding the productive and reproductive role of household food practices. Social

reproduction is involved in, and brought about by, the knowledgeable use of rules and

resources by actors engaging in the routine practices of life. Social reproduction encompasses

both the physical and cultural recreation of the species. More importantly for our purposes, it

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includes daily maintenance routines as well as practices productive of the consciousness in

people that accepts the prevailing culture, ideology, and social relations of power. Social

reproduction produces a sense of social continuity achieved through modalities of change

(Bourdieu 1990; Giddens 1990; Gough 1980; Jenks 1993; Sokoloff 1981).

While research often adopts a macro level perspective on social reproduction, scholars

recognize that social reproduction takes place in institutions devoted to procreation,

socialization, sexuality, nurturance, and maintenance, including the family and household.

Indeed Giddens (1986) asserts that the everyday activity of social actors always draw upon and

reproduces structural features of wider social systems. The tasks of reproduction include

creating patterns of thinking and behavior that ensure the affiliation and integration of family

members into the wider social order. They also include household resource distribution and

pooling (Wilk 1989) and women's (and other's) (typically unpaid) domestic labor including

shopping and food preparation. Thus, social reproduction is in part constituted through the

everyday social and domestic activities of household members.

In this more micro-sociological vein, Charles and Kerr (1988) argue that “proper meals”

help maintain and reinforce a coherent ideology of the family. Lupton (1994) found food

memories and idealized familial social relationships bound up together. And Grieshaber (1997)

argued that mealtime rituals discipline and “normalize” children. On a cautionary note,

Campbell (1995) argues against reifying the family of household and recognizing the

complexity of intra-familiar processes including social reproduction. And Brown (1995)

emphasizes the contingent role of the domestic in social reproduction. He argues that in the

context of uncertain labor markets and a volatile global economy, middle class social

reproduction is not inevitable, but increasingly must be worked out across a variety of practices

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(e.g, Reay 1998). It seems that food production and consumption practices could be a

contested site for domestic social reproduction.

It is no great insight to suggest that preparation and consumption of food can be thought

of as a ritualized symbolic practice. A ritualized social practice can be defined as an action

repertoire that is driven by or organized in terms of certain symbolic frameworks that permit

the structure to be transmitted through time and across generations even if inexactly. Notably,

when such a process results in an array of ritualized practices and relations in an embedded

group, the result is structural social reproduction. Food preparation is likely to become a

ritualized practice because is typically a routinely performed action that is part of the taken-for-

granted behaviors embedded in the social environment of the household.

Ritualization theory posits four features that affect the likelihood of continuity; the

likelihood that ritualized practices will be socially reproduced. We might expect to find them

in household food production and consumption. These features are salience or centrality to a

social domain, repetitiveness or frequency with which the ritualized symbolic practice is

performed; homologousness or the degree of perceived similarity among ritualized social

practices in a domain; and resources. Resources refer to the skills or characteristics of actors

and the materials needed to engage in ritualized practices in a particular social setting

(Knottnerus 1997; Sell, Knottnerus, Ellison and Mundt 2000).

This paper investigates the reproduction of "homemade food" production and

consumption practices between generations. Our attempt is to understand relationships

between "homemade food" and conceptions of the family as well as how "homemade food"

relates to broader food categories. We argue that examining generational ruptures and

continuities in "homemade food" production and consumption can enrich our understanding of

Bread for our Mothers 10/09/01 7


how individuals negotiate and partition their individual and family identities. These cross-

generational ruptures and continuities in the preparation and consumption of “homemade” food

illustrate how patterns of eating are negotiated and contested in a family. This contributes to

researchers’ limited knowledge of the intergenerational reproduction of consumption practices

(Curasi, Price and Arnould 2001; Curasi, Arnould and Price forthcoming). Moreover, these

ruptures and continuities relate to the broader impact of new commercial food technology on

family life (Ekici, Arnould and Price 2001; Ritzer 2000).

Method

Our paper draws on several data sets collected over a two year period, including: (1) a

set of depth interviews with 47 consumers ranging in age from 18-85 about the meanings they

associate with the preparation and consumption of ‘homemade’ food; (2) a set of 25 depth

interviews with primary household food shoppers, selected by type of household and eating

patterns, about food, food and technology, and food purchase decisions; (3) short personal

interviews with 2 different members of 25 families, representing different generations, about

‘homemade’ food preparation, meaning, and memories, and (4) specific food production and

food consumption memories of 25 young adults. In addition, we completed word association,

projective tasks with over 100 adults ranging in age from 20-50.

We attempted in each of our several data collection efforts to distinguish whether

homemade food constituted a category label, and whether and how that label was distinct from

other categories of food. For example, we discussed family meals, holiday meals, good food,

bad food, healthy food, junk food, comfort food, natural food, fresh food, restaurant food, food

eaten at home, processed food and so on, in order to define the parameters of homemade food

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and its relationships to families. We also explored, but don’t detail in this paper, the

relationship between homemade food preparation, and other household production activities

such as handcrafted objects.

Themes

We will touch upon a small number of interpretive themes including: 1) how consumers

produce the idea of “homemade;” 2) ritualized factors (centrality, repetitiveness,

homologousness, and references to skills or characteristics) affecting reproduction; 4) the

intergenerational transfer of homemade food production; 4) how producing homemade meals

negotiates boundaries between home and market. Finally, we will posit some conjectures about

the relationship between homemade food and disjunctures and ruptures in family tradition and

elaborate directions for future research.

1. Producing the Idea of “Homemade” Food

References to homemade food often show up unprompted in discussions about good

food, family meals, and holiday celebrations. Although homemade food may be thought of as

“good” food, part of a “family meal,” or central to holiday celebrations, it is distinct from these

other categories, because past traditions, the producer, and the act of production all figure

prominently into what is thought of as homemade food. The following excerpt captures a

number of the themes that run through our data.

I: First, what words or phrases do you associate with “homemade?”

R: Elegant, artistic, exquisite, time consuming and made with loving hands. Creativity
that comes from someone who appreciates the beauty of fashioning, or shaping a work
of art their way. Apple pie, mom's cooking. Whenever I think of homemade I see my
mom or grandmother making something in their kitchen. Brownies, cookies, soup.
Really anything can be made at home as long as the right person is making it.
Truthfully I prefer homemade over fast food or eating out. I guess I’m old fashioned
like that. The taste, you see there is a skill that is required when you speak of
homemade. You have to know how to really cook or at least be able to cook that

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special dish really well. Anyone can cook something and say it is homemade but, to
me, homemade requires a certain type of mastery. I mean cooking out of a box is not
what I consider homemade. I’m talking about from scratch. A pinch of this, some of
that, now that’s cooking (male, 41, married, 2 daughters).

As illustrated in this quote, homemade food is differentiated from commercially

produced food, generally has an elective quality, and a creative potential. At the same time, it

references the past, possession of skills, and most often particularizes the producer—in this

case two women, mother and grandmother.

Our informants sometimes systematically contrast the qualities of homemade food with

manufactured food. For example, the following excerpt from our interviews identifies

singularity as a quality of homemade food. It is a quality resistant to mass reproduction:

And whenever something is manufactured, it loses some of its originality because it’s
now being made by a system that produces it the same way each and every time (male,
41, married, 2 daughters).

While authenticity is contested terrain in postmodernity, across many domains of

practice people appear to value it (Arnould and Price 2000). Our data suggests a number of

elements that provide homemade foods with an aura of authenticity. These include: congealed

labor (you pour yourself into it); elective or voluntary preparation; uniqueness; preparation

mixing creativity with fidelity to tradition; and assumptions about intergenerational continuity.

The first excerpt captures this idea of congealed labor and voluntary preparation:

I: Um. Can you tell me a little bit about your sister?


R: - Well, my sister. She’s a very wonderful lady. She talks all the time, more than I
do. She loves, always loves to cook. She’s good-hearted, she’s making pies and
goodies for all her church, whenever they have a birthday or something, she’s always
bringing something. She brings treats to the kids. She’s just a good person all the way
around, as far as that goes. She, uh, I think she’s very lonely because she lives in the
country and doesn’t see many people, so when she can bake something to take it to
them, it makes her feel good.

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A second excerpt speaks to the issue of spontaneity and mystery associated with the production

of homemade foods.

I: How do you prepare them?


R: Oh, my gosh, don’t ask me the recipe. Um, I don’t know. Just basically breaded
cinnamon rolls, cinnamon rolls, I don’t know, I got a recipe in front of me when I do it.
I don’t even know what I put in them.

Thus, while special recipes are constitutive of homemade foods, serendipity separates them

from mass-produced foods.

The next excerpt from our interview data captures the idea of uniqueness, mystery,

fidelity to ethnic tradition and assumptions about intergenerational continuity. Of course, the

informant also begins the text by imputing loving motives to the grandmothers who cook

homemade food for their descendents.

R: Yes, even for holidays, still she makes it cause she knows that my dad and I both
love it. My other grandma makes homemade noodles. And, we go there, and she'll
have it with either beef stock or chicken stock when we go there. Everybody in the
family loves grandma’s homemade noodles, because nobody else-I mean, her family's
all from Germany, and they made this in Germany. It's kind of a family tradition.
Grandma taught us all how to make 'em, and we all know how to make 'em. We just,
for some reason, can't make 'em as good as grandma does.

A final excerpt from a youthful informant also illustrates the links between homemade food and

ethnic tradition, nurturing women, and special holiday times.

Yes, I associate the homemade pies with my grandmother, oh my mom and my


grandmother. My family is German. They make a lot of homemade German dishes
that I associate with my family. Oh, let me see, I associate beef stew with my Dad’s
family because we always eat it on Christmas. And the homemade bread I think of my
family. I think that’s all I can think of (female, age 24, married, no children).

An additional dimension to the production of homemade is the idea that homemade

food is conceived of as a gift. Both producers and recipients identify homemade food as a

special gift, and both men and women recognize homemade food should be shared:

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R: Another thing people use to like to make was homemade beer. I can remember my
dad making it when I was a kid. I can’t tell you how good it was. And then my son
John, he makes it quite often. A lot of people make it. And I think people make it not
necessarily because it’s good, but it’s fun. It’s something they’ve done themselves and
then they can talk about it and share it. So that’s the good part about things that are
homemade. I think that. That’s what I think about as being homemade. Things that
you use yourself and share with others...You know, and the same with the things that
my wife cooks and bakes. You know, she shares that with our daughters and daughter-
in-law. And those are all good things and good times.
I: Now, by sharing do you mean the giving of the food?
R: Sharing of the... Well, not only that but sharing of the recipes and passing it on (58
year old, male, married, 5 children, four grandsons).

A woman informant talks about the enjoyment she gets from homebaking for others. In one
place she comments:

Well if you bake, you make something, you know, for someone. You do it because you
enjoy doing it for people. And its your own little personal touch, some special recipe
that you like to make or special cookie that you’ve made for years, or you just like
doing things for people, you know, to give a gift.

And to be sure she has made the point, later in the same interview she comments
I: OK. How does it make you feel when you cook these foods?
R: Real good. I had company a while back and she ate three helpings. It really made
me feel good ‘cause. Then when she didn’t come back, it made me think I’d killed her!
But, it makes me feel good; I like to cook for people. I like to, like here, where I live, I
bake all the time or make treats, they’re always scolding me but I love to do it and they
don’t have anybody to make them for them, so, I really like it (female, ages 66-70,
retired, widow, 3 children; three grandchildren).

A young man recalls the taco dinner his mother prepared for him as a special birthday gift.

I thought of my mother’s taco dinner as “homemade food” because it was an exciting


treat that was made only on special occasions. It made me feel special because she took
time to make my favorite dinner….I could not wait to indulge in this wonderful meal,
made just for me…When the time came to eat the dinner, I savored every last bite. I ate
nearly five tacos and did not want to stop. I knew it would be awhile before I had
another real homemade meal.

These last excerpts not only reinforce what was said above, but also suggest that homemade

food is embedded in what Cheal (1988) calls the moral economy of gift exchange and sharing.

2. Ritualized Factors Affecting Reproduction

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The literature on ritualization and reproduction identifies four factors that affect the

likelihood of continuity in small group rituals. Searching through our interview data we were

able to find evidence for some of them.

Centrality. The centrality or salience of homemade food to the social domain of the

household is a bit difficult to assess from interview data alone. While informants value

homemade food, this value is not evident in the frequency with which they prepare it. Frequent

references to love and family speak to the importance of homemade food production and

consumption, but not necessarily centrality. Sometimes the interviews suggest that although

prepared infrequently, homemade food is central, and certainly salient to issues of family

identity as in the following exchange:

I: Can you talk a little about those recipes, and what you know about family
traditions associated with those recipes? Is there one sticks out?
R: Well the Swedish ones, and because the Nord’s are all 100% Swede. Ah, at
Christmas time we always had to have fish.
I: Okay. Traditional, Swedish dish?
R: Right.

In interrogating the issue of centrality, one might ask “Are the Nord’s 100% Swede and so

prepare Swedish recipes or is the preparation of Swedish recipes the guarantee of the Nord’s

Swedish identity?”

On the other hand, informants often comment about the infrequency of eating family

meals together, suggesting that homemade meals are relatively rare. Several comments are

pertinent

R: We very rarely sit down and have family meals, Um, so the first thing that comes to
my mind is like Holiday meals when we sit down and eat like Thanksgiving. When I
think of cheesy hashbrowns that we always have every Holiday meal. But other than
that we never sit down and eat a family meal.

And,

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I: Are there holidays that stick out in your mind when we all come together?
R: When we all come together? Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, even family
birthdays, I know they’re not holidays but we get together for those. BBQ!

Quotes like these suggest that home produced and consumed meals are not very central or

salient to informants’ sense of identity. However, other data suggests that homemade meals are

purposefully rare and for that more central as suggested in the following exchange:

I: Do you, could you prepare this food more often or do you save it for those special
occasions? Or. …
R: We save it for those special occasions. We have a turkey in the freezer right now.
An extra turkey that I bought at Christmas time because they were so reasonably priced
thinking that I would cook in January because we all love turkey...I haven’t done it yet.
And I think it’s my mindset. Turkey is for Thanksgiving; turkey is for Christmas. And
leg of lamb in our family was for Easter. So I won’ t cook it for Easter (52 years old,
two children, married 31 years)

There are family members in our data that view homemade meals as an everyday event,

but it is still sometimes hard to assess the centrality of homemade meals to our informant’s or

their family’s identity. Sometimes when homemade meals are everyday, they may only be

appreciated when their frequency declines, as illustrated in this informant memory.

It is difficult for me to pick out a single memory of eating homemade food growing up.
Eating homemade food was an everyday experience where we would all gather around
a table and eat what mom prepared…As I have grown older my feelings toward
homemade food have changed. I remember hoping for those nights that we would go
out and eat. However, now when I think of homemade food, I think of my mom’s and
she is an excellent cook, but was very underappreciated growing up. Now that I am on
my own, I see how much time takes to make homemade food and appreciate it so much
more.

This young woman goes on to describe how her mother who always produced homemade food

gave them a special gift this past Christmas—she compiled all the recipes they loved growing

up into a cookbook. Emily relates:

It was among the most special presents I have ever received, because I know how my
mom labored for years to prepare food for us because she loved each of us so much. It
is also full of recipes guaranteed to be great!

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Emily’s treasuring of this gift seems to support the salience of homemade food to her

own identity and both the giving of the gift and it’s reception attest to the central role of

homemade food in the social organization of her family. Another young woman who “from the

time I was born” gathered around the dining table to eat some of “Mom’s home cookin’” marks

the salience of this food to her family saying:

In my opinion, homemade food always seemed warm, even if the food was cold,
because dinnertime was such a family event for us. Homemade food is the best food
you can find…Family and love are the two biggest ingredients in our homemade food
since we sat down together every night to eat. My siblings and I each had a prayer that
we liked the best and one of us was responsible for the dinner prayer before the meal.

Courtney goes on to observe that homemade food is bundled with family rituals, beliefs, and

chores that cumulatively represent both homemade and family for her.

Repetitiveness. In contrast with “centrality,” which remains ephemeral in our

informant texts, memories of homemade food characteristically evoke idealized themes of

typicality and repetitiveness in informants’ texts. Commonly, holidays and verbal glosses such

as use of the terms “always” or “every” signal informants’ sense of the repetitive quality of

homemade foods. For example, Rhonda says,

I bought this one kind of ice cream it seemed like homemade ice cream. We always
make homemade ice cream for Christmas and it tasted pretty much close to what my
dad makes. Most things you buy aren’t close to homemade, I don’t think. I think you
can really tell the difference (female, full-time college student, senior).

In a similar vein, Mary comments about the meatballs and breads she makes at Christmas.

I guess because it’s our connection to our heritage and um, we always serve it every
Christmas Eve and I grew up that way and my kids have grown up with every
Christmas Eve and I think it’s something that, that makes them proud of their heritage.
Um, and it’s a very special tradition that, that we have at just Christmas time. So it’s a
very special time (female, age 51, married four children: ages 13, 17 18 and 23)

The same references to repetition and continuity are found in the following exchange:

Interviewer: Okay and then is there a specific holiday that maybe has the best meal or...

Bread for our Mothers 10/09/01 15


Audrey: Well usually, every, all our holidays we like to, I mean, like Easter,
Thanksgiving, Christmas, those are the three big holidays and we always seem to go,
you know, Thanksgiving will be turkey and everything and then Christmas is your
whatever you, you want with your Christmas. When I was home and growing up every,
every holiday was spaghetti, meatballs and gravy. That was the big thing. We had
turkey and all that but that was our, I don’t know if you’d call it a big thing or a side
dish, I don’t know but we always had it.

And again, this middle-aged informant looks back affectionately on a life-time of holiday

oyster stews prepared by his now aged parents:

R: Uh, sloppy Joes with my mother. She’s always made really good sloppy Joes,
maybe that’s just because what I was used to when I was a kid and this is a terrible food
to most people but oyster stew. My mom and dad always have, and to this day, oyster
stew every Christmas Eve and every New Year’s Eve and they’re in their 80s. And
when I was a little kid I always remember we always had oyster stew and I could never
figure out how come we went all year with no oyster stew and then we had to have it
two weeks back-to-back, I couldn’t figure that out but that’s just their thing, you know
(male, age 51-55, married, five children, four grandchildren).

Similarly, Anne H. (24) recalls a memory connecting homemade food with a specific producer,

writing:

The one thing that comes to mind about this would be my grandpa making cinnamon
rolls…The preparing part was that he would get up at three in the morning to prepare
the dough and when we got up and went over there before school, we would always
want to look at the dough but he never let us because he said it would fall and not rise
anymore, but every now and then we peeked…If it was your birthday or your turn to
bring snacks to school or any “special occasion” you got to pick what you wanted, and
it was always the cinnamon rolls.

Anne H. associates homemade food with Grandpa preparing cinnamon rolls for her.

Homologousness. Homologousness refers to multiple instantiations of ritualized

practices. Resemblance between instances is thought to reinforce salience and foster

continuity. For example, when Lindsey thinks about homemade food, she thinks of her

grandmother’s meals, noting, “My grandma is my favorite cook, only because she always

makes food from scratch.” Lindsey goes on to describe making homemade pancakes with her

dad using a recipe passed down from her great-grandma, and also observes a summer tradition

Bread for our Mothers 10/09/01 16


of eating fresh, sweet corn. In our data on homemade we find frequent reference to a number

of holidays that occasion homemade meals and family togetherness. Christmas and

Thanksgiving are two of the most commonly associated ones, but informants also mention New

Year’s, Easter, birthdays, and Valentine’s Day. Informants also sometimes mention multiple

recipes or dishes that are homemade and evoke particular producers. Some informants then

produce these recipes for particular family members or on specific occasions that reference the

past.

Traces of the Producer. Compared to other categories of food such as “good food”

and even “family meals,” homemade embodies references to the skills and characteristics of the

producer. Homemade food invokes an active producer, someone making the food, very often

tailored to please particular family members. In some cases, informants define homemade food

in terms of a specific producer, as in the following quote:

I always compare homemade food to grandma’s. If it tastes like grandma’s food. Just
because you can tell that grandma spent a lot of time preparing the meal (interview
13*).

Asked to recall a specific memory involving homemade food, Molly writes:

When I hear the words “homemade food” I automatically think of my mom at home in
our kitchen. She would start the cooking while still in her work clothes and then would
be running to and from the bedroom changing while preparing the food. When I think
of homemade food, I think of the love that it is prepared with. Because while some
restaurants prepare their meals individually, they don’t do it for you. They do it for
someone they don’t know. When homemade food is being cooked, it is being made for
someone you care about.

The special, typically familial, link between the producer and consumer is central to the

meaning of homemade, as the following young woman Debra tried to explain.

I would enjoy my grandmother’s pecan pie a lot more than a frozen store bought pie.
My grandmother makes pecan pie especially for me and this is something special for
me…Grammy is getting kinda old and I know that whatever she does takes lots of time
and energy, so I appreciate her making something for me that much more.

Bread for our Mothers 10/09/01 17


When probed on what makes food homemade, or for instances when purchased food seems like

homemade, informants reference the producer/consumer link. Later in the interview, Debra

observes a distinction between catered and homemade food:

If someone makes it personally for you or something…then you will know they care
about you instead of the caterer being paid for dong the task or job. You feel that you
are loved.

Crucial in this and other informant’s descriptions of almost “homemade” food is a sense of
something that maps to a loving producer tailoring a unique product just for you. Notice that
this also links with our earlier discussion of homemade food as a gift.
Like many of our interviews, the following discussion illustrates both the
intergenerational transfer of homemade recipes, and the producer’s investment of self, care and
skill.
I: So are there certain foods you feel are best if they are homemade?
R: Oh absolutely! Homemade bread, that’s much better than bought bread. Homemade
soup definitely! There is no comparison. And that’s because people put a little bit of
themselves into it I think. And they add a little of this and add a little of that, and they
have perfected it.
I: Can you explain that anymore?
I: Well, I think homemade is something that people learn by doing and a lot of things
that are homemade maybe have been passed on by prior, by their parents or
grandparents….A good example would be, I don’t think you see too many new recipes
for kulaces…. And it’s heritage. And then some people you know, I guess it’s again
people have talent and they put a lot of themselves into those homemade items. (58
year old, male, married, 5 children, four grandsons).

This text reasserts that homemade food is composed of elements and that it is a creative work

of bricolage as suggested in several previous informant comments. It also implies that certain

types of foods--kulaces, for example-- that reference characteristics of the family like ethnicity

are apt to be singled out as appropriate for home production and appreciated for having been

home-produced. In addition, there is explicit reference to the idea that intra-generational

repetition—learning by doing—and inter-generational transfer of skills and knowledge adds

worth to homemade foods.

Bread for our Mothers 10/09/01 18


As a testament to the strength of the association between homemade food and a loving

family member who produces that food, individuals without this type of connection express

difficulty talking about the concept, as observed by Milly, a professional woman in her 50’s,

with 5 grown children.

I was thinking back on the interview. One reason I think it’ s difficult is so much of it’s
on food and what that means to you. And I probably come from a unique family in that
we don’ t have traditional foods. Our mother didn’ t spend anytime cooking. It wasn’ t
considered a love act or something that was nostalgic. And so I, uh, I’ ve not
associated, as I know is typical of many families, I haven’ t associated a lot of different
foods with people or events or because frankly with my mother, I can’ t think of a single
food that is tied to her or to any event. And you know, I think that is pretty much the
same in our family. I don’t, I don’ t think, uh, food is an act of love and therefore
through the years I’ve usually hired somebody to do the cooking for us.

Milly recognizes a socially constructed meaning of food that is oppositional to her own feelings

about food. Milly is a loving mother, adored and admired by her children, but mostly not for

her gift of food. Nevertheless, interviews with two of her adult daughters reveal that they adore

her homemade strawberry pie, and one of them has now taken on the kin-keeping role of

producing this treat for the family.

In summary, this section suggests the likelihood that the ritualized practice of

homemade food will be socially reproduced. The centrality of homemade practices remains

somewhat ephemeral within our informant reports. However, repetitiveness, homologousness,

and skills and resources of the producer are evidenced consistently and numerously throughout

our data. We thus turn to a consideration of the social reproduction of homemade practices.

3. Intergenerational Transfer of Homemade Food Production

Homemade food produced in the present nearly always references the past, as

informants nostalgically recall the heritage, previous episodes, and the intertwining of

production with previous producers. A gourmet meal, made with fresh ingredients, using a

Bread for our Mothers 10/09/01 19


new recipe, is not a homemade food exemplar, although when pressed, informants might give it

membership in the general category of “homemade.” Prototypically, homemade food is food

that has been produced many times before and for the informant, not by the informant. Present

day food production practices are set against a backdrop of food consumption gifted by an

earlier producer. In general, homemade food reflects past traditions, and generational slippage.

Past Traditions. References to the past pervade our data. The following exchange is

typical:

Amanda: Are you aware of any homemade recipes that have been passed down
from generation to generation?
Sandi : Yeah, we have a little box full of them. They just get handed down and
we learn to make them.

References to the past prevail regardless of the cohort sampled. Grandmothers refer to

their mothers and grandmothers when they talk about homemade food, as do their daughters

and sons, and their daughters’ daughters and sons. In this sense, “homemade food” nearly

always has an ephemeral and nostalgic quality—it is perpetually passing away, to be recreated

by the next generation. Consequently, ruptures and continuities are fundamental to the

conceptual essence of homemade food. A young man under 25 refers to his “old-fashioned”

parents in much the same way as we expect our grandmothers to.

I guess my parents are old fashioned, my mom was really old fashioned, she did all the
cooking, and we sat down with her. You had your meat, you had your potatoes, you had
your vegetable, you always had something from the four different food groups.

For Peg, a woman in her 60’s, talk of homemade food sparks idealized memories of the farm,

What do I mean, oh, home prepared, maybe talking about fried chicken. And the good
fried chicken is when years ago when we butchered our own chicken right from scratch.
That was the good chicken… Oh ya when we butchered, we always butchered our own
pigs on the farm also. Dad always butchered his own pigs. We cut it up, packaged it
and everything so we could put it in the freezer.

Bread for our Mothers 10/09/01 20


Peg goes on to talk about how she learned to prepare recipes from her mother and grandmother,

“my grandmothers on both sides were always good to teach mom,” and “mom always passed

them down to us, and I’m very fortunate that mom’s around to tell me certain things.” She

notes that her mother still joins her in preparing cinnamon rolls for holiday occasions.

Uh, one thing that I picked up which, you know all the older people made was their
bread and we still make bread, homemade buns. If we didn’t have that at a meal, at a
holiday meal it just wouldn’t be a meal, may as well, they’d probably turn around and
go back home. Cinnamon rolls. I, when I make the homemade rolls, I always make a
pan of hot cinnamon rolls so when they (family) get there they can have a cinnamon roll
before dinner. And it doesn’t ruin their appetite either.

As with many of our informants, Peg feels that without the homemade rolls, the family

gathering and the holiday meal couldn’t happen. She feels both privileged and obligated to

produce them, like her mother and her mother’s mother before her.

Homemade food traditions are a pervasive theme, and are part of the meaning derived

from the food, as indicated by Roxane, in response to a follow-up query about why homemade

food is special,

I think just the fact that the recipe has been handed down for a couple of generations, I
think that that adds to it, whatever you’re making. And I think that’s always something
that you think about. You know like whenever my mom makes it I always think about,
you know, well this is something that her mom probably made for her family and now
my mom’s making it for her family. And so, I guess in my mind I wonder will I make it
for my family. Will this recipe continue to be passed down through generations?
(female, age 20-25, single, living at home with parents)

Ruptures with the Past. Despite consistent references to the continuity of homemade

food with past generations of the family, there is also an acknowledgement of loss, a sense that

traditions of the past are not produced quite the same way or quite as often as they used to be.

Again, this sense of loss is independent of cohort—informants in their 20’s, 40’s or 70’s reflect

in nostalgic ways on the “homemade food” of days gone by. Ann, a divorced woman in her

50s with three grown children, reflects

Bread for our Mothers 10/09/01 21


My grandmother always made homemade wheat bread but they ground their wheat to
make their bread; they had a grinder, and that was always so good, and you, you just
you don’t find that anymore because you don’t find the, um, you buy wheat flour in the
store and its not the dark wheat like grandma used to make.

Ann goes on to observe that for holiday meals “I try to make it the old fashioned way.”

However, her 27 year-old daughter Megan is reconciled to a “more realistic” definition of

homemade food.

For example, I made chicken lasagna last night. I used to think homemade would be
like if I bought the tomatoes, and chopped them or squished them to make a paste or
whatever I had to do. But to me what I did was homemade, and I bought canned
tomatoes, I added, you know, I cooked the chicken myself, I put the spices in, I chopped
up the onion, I added the garlic. To me what I did was homemade. Because of time,
it’s not realistic to make everything from scratch.

The distinction between homemade then and now is more pronounced in another informant’s

interview.

I consider when I cook at home and make fresh potatoes and fresh vegetables that is
homemade food. But I also separate that from my mom when she makes homemade
breads and does her own dough. Colochies and homemade pies. Her cakes are
“homemade” (female, 51-55).

A gap between the past and present producer is a common feature of narratives about

homemade food. Informants describe with pride their rendering of a family recipe to produce

homemade food, only to conclude “they cheated a little” or “even though they prepared them

the way grandma did, they’ll never taste quite like grandmas”. A women in her 40’s describes:

I cheated a little bit on those. Um, I bought the frozen noodles. And they’re just as
good as the homemade noodle but I just don’t, (long pause) I don’t have time to make
homemade noodles myself, so I use the frozen ones. They’re pretty good.

Another woman in her 30s, Gretchen describes:

My other grandma makes homemade noodles. Everybody in the family loves


grandma’s homemade noodles…Grandma taught us all how to make ‘em and we all
know how to make ‘em. We just, for some reason can’t make ‘em as good as grandma
does.

Bread for our Mothers 10/09/01 22


This young woman notes that these noodles have been made by generations of her

family from Germany, and constitute a family tradition, that is consistently passed forward to

the next generation, representing the continuity of the family, but she still notes a rupture

between the past and present rendering of this tradition. Arlene, is in her late 60’s, and talks at

length about homemade food and family traditions. She thinks of her mother when she thinks

of good food, which to her is homemade:

Oh, I always associated good food with my mother because she was a good cook and
that’s where you try to learn her cooking. But it seems like every time you want to be
like that other person you never can be. I don’t now, I don’t know what they ever did
but they always had some little thing they used to put in the food that was better than
yours. But that, I suppose my food is better maybe than maybe my daughter’s would
be, you know. It just keeps going down the line, I don’t know.

An interview with Arlene’s daughter Pat, a retired teacher in her late 40’s, helps explain some

of the generational slippage Arlene refers to. Pat loves to cook, trying new recipes, and feels a

pride in knowing she made it special for her family. Late in the interview, she talks about

recipes passed down from one generation to the next.

Well, the interesting thing about them, there isn’t a, a real complete recipe, it’s more
how to put it together. As far as back then, they didn’t use a lot of measurements, they
just, so much of, a little bit of this, a little bit of that so it’s kind of a combination of
different foods…Just like my grandmother on my dad’s side used to make kolaches.
We used to love them but boy every time we tried to make the recipe it just never turns
out quite the same way.

This section showed that many families reproduce homemade food practices from

generation to generation, but that each generation sees their efforts as somehow falling short of

previous generations. This generational drift might be explained in various ways. For

example, producer and consumer roles, when reversed, have different meanings. A mother

delights in preparing food for her children as her gift of love and support, but is saddened that

she can no longer consume her own mother’s food gift of love. Although this explanation has

Bread for our Mothers 10/09/01 23


some merit, it is certainly not the whole story. For example, Jenny, loved by both her

grandmother and mother, gifted by their food, with many specific fond memories of homemade

food associated with both nevertheless reflects:

Whenever we went to grandma’s house, she made the best of everything. She must
have special grandma powers because everything tasted better than my mom’s cooking.
I might have hurt my mom’s feelings a couple of times when I would ask her why she
couldn’t cook like grandma. My grandma’s cooking always made me feel like I was at
home and safe and that nothing could be better than her cooking.

Of course, changes in resources might account for generational slippage. Perhaps, each
generation’s cinnamon rolls really are worse, compromised by bad recipes, poor
training, overscheduled lives, or the encroachment of the marketplace. For example,
Jenny fondly recalls her mother’s homemade chili accompanied by Pillsbury’s
premixed cinnamon rolls.

In the next section, we explore in more detail the way homemade food practices

negotiate the boundary between production and the marketplace.

4. Producing Homemade Meals Negotiates Boundaries Between Home And Market

As social scientists increasingly recognize, even in advanced consumer cultures,

consumers are not passive in response to the efforts of marketers to penetrate every sphere of

life with commodified offerings (Arnould and Price 2000). Our informants use the idea of

homemade food to trace some of the boundaries between market and non-market domains of

activity. For example, the informant quoted below rejects the very idea of value in mass

merchandised baked goods:

I: ...are there certain foods that you feel are best if they are homemade?
R: Oh yeah. Definitely. Well, any baked goods I would think. In my experience I just
can't even stand to buy packaged mixes for anything--for cakes or cookies. I don't even
know what all they have nowadays. I just prefer to do them from scratch.
I: Are there some special homemade foods that you prepare?
R: Yeah. I like to make my own cookies and banana bread, soup, pies. My husband's
favorite is pumpkin pie, so I make a lot of pumpkin pies and I always make the crust
from scratch. I don't purchase it 'cause I just, I don't like the taste of packaged things. I
think they have an artificial taste.

Bread for our Mothers 10/09/01 24


Consistent with much recent social scientific writing on the food system (Wallace 1998), this

informant introduces the theme of risk, and implicitly of danger into the discussion. Packaged

foods have uncertain contents.

The tension between references to a non-commodified past and commodified present is

apparent in many informant interview excerpts about food production. For example, another

woman in her 50s, with her children away at college, says of homemade food,

It’s more like the old fashioned cooking before people had you know they had to grind
their own flour and the chickens laid the eggs, they had to go out and milk the cow. It’s
not that extreme for us, but we have many processed foods now that, that cut out so
many of the steps. And it does not have the same flavor when you get done. I don’t
care. You know even though I can go buy the biscuits in that little refrigerator thing
and they’re good. I like the taste of them. They still don’t taste like homemade from
scratch. Separate flour, separate eggs.

This informant recognizes a trade-off between the flavor of homemade food, and the prepared

biscuits that you open and bake, but seems comfortable with that tradeoff.

The boundaries between commodity food and homemade food are not fixed and stable.

Consumers work out compromises as suggested by the following excerpt. Max thinks

everything is better if it is homemade, but he elaborates on a memory of purchasing food that

almost tasted homemade observing,

R: There’s a Caribbean shop in Atlanta that has the best cocoa bread I’ve ever tasted.
You’ve had cocoa bread before haven’t you? Well you’ve never had any like this. It
melts in your mouth like homemade bread especially if you get it right out of the oven.
Excellent you have to try it whenever you go back. It’s in the West End area called
Taste Of The Caribbean you would love it.
I: What makes this product seem “homemade”?
R: Because it’s so soft, and each batch is different. You get that feeling, or at least I do,
that I would get walking into my grandmother’s kitchen. The aroma, the taste, the heat.
They have people working in the back that prepare it by hand so that gives it that
authentic taste. An old lady works the cash register and you just get the feeling like
that’s her kitchen but she’s passed on the recipe and that touch to her kids who now run
the business. Oh boy its like it melts in your mouth. You taste the butter on top and it’s
like ummm. It actually has you salivating before you even bite into it. Just the smell

Bread for our Mothers 10/09/01 25


itself will have your mouth watering. I usually have a bite before I even get out of the
store it’s that good (male, 41, married, 2 daughters).

Purchased but like homemade is not quite an oxymoron as long as consumers can

associate some of the criteria they associate with homemade food with store-bought goods. In

addition to sensory qualities, such criteria include simplicity, hand labor, and intergenerational

depth. This excerpt is quite rich. For example, our informant associates an “exotic” Third

World context with the cocoa bread. There is a literature on the imputation of authenticity to

Third World peoples, cultures, and products in Western consumer culture as part of Othering

processes. Hence, Third World authenticity and the authenticity of homemade food resonate.

Slippage and ruptures in homemade traditions are in evidence even when discussion

turns to the holidays—where homemade traditions are guarded and prized. Kay is in her fifties,

the mother of 5 children and 3 grandchildren. She observes,

I mean it’s funny at work we’ll talk about the holidays. For example, we’ll say what do
you have to bring? You know? And one will say well I have to bring pumpkin pie and
this one will say I’ve got to bring cranberry sauce or whatever and wait when we get
back to work after the holiday is over with then we’ll say, Oh I didn’t have time to, I
had to buy a, a whatever brand of pie it was or some cranberries out of a can and you
know it was pretty good, it wasn’t so bad, it wasn’t the best you know like homemade
but it still wasn’t too bad so word gets around you find out oh, you don’t want to buy
that one, that one’s bad.

Kaye has no illusions that the purchased pie is as good as homemade, but recognizes that

although she and her office associates aspire to make homemade, even at holidays they settle

for something that’s “not too bad.” However, Peg only a few years older than Kaye remarks “ I

mean people say, ‘Oh well buy a Mrs. Smith’s cherry pie or apple pie, it tastes just like

homemade.’ Well some of these people don’t know what homemade is.” A much younger

informant talks about her high school work experience.

Bread for our Mothers 10/09/01 26


I worked at Runza who slogan is “Food just like grandma’s,” insinuating the homemade
feel. But after working there, it is not food just like grandma makes (not that it is bad
food).

One way in which homemade meals negotiate the boundary between market and non-

market is through their connection with the sacred. One of the surprising themes in our data is

the connection between homemade foods and the church. Homemade foods are often made for

church functions, as these excerpts indicate:

R: Well, we’ll get your dad involved in this. We have a every end of September there’s
a spaghetti feed at a little country church and he found the recipe for their homemade
sauce in a newspaper that we had cut out and he sent me to the store with a list and like
tomatoes, and tomato paste, and basil, parsley, Uhm, hamburger, and pork and bread
crumbs like for the meatballs and Italian cheese and so we, he came home and he, he
cooked it all up.

R:… at the church dinner and we had a Swedish meatball casserole and it was really
good and they had two homemade pies and pop and rice and there was all kinds of stuff
there.

Homemade foods are often prepared in devotional contexts, or received from church members

in devotional contexts and life transitions.

R: Oh, ya. Like, for instance, the waffles. Um, there a homemade recipe that came
from my grandmother and my mom would make those for us kids every Sunday after
church…

R:… on Sunday nights I go to Bible study and the church ladies make us a home
cooked meal and so every Sunday night I get a home cooked meal from the Church
ladies. So that’s probably at least once a week and then the

R - Well, my sister. She’ s a very wonderful lady. She talks all the time, more than I
do. She loves, always loves to cook. She’ s good-hearted, she’ s making pies and
goodies for all her church, whenever they have a birthday or something, she’s always
bringing something.

R: That reminds me after the funeral, Marvin’ s funeral that day, the church sent up
stuff that was left over, there was a gelatin salad with vegetables in it, everything. I
never heard of it before, but it made sense. Don was not here for that. I think Roger
was here, you were not here.

Bread for our Mothers 10/09/01 27


Homemade foods sometimes derive from recipe books compiled by church members.

R: Actually, the cookie recipe I use I got out of a cookbook from my grandmother's
church that a friend of hers used a recipe for that's a really quick and easy recipe. I just
kinda use that one from my little church cookbook.

R: I did a lot of cooking when I was growing up and so I probably learned most of my
cooking when I was growing up, but I have a lot of cookbooks, church cookbooks,
community cookbooks that I’ve found recipes in.

Sometimes this connection between homemade, the sacred and the family is strongly marked

symbolically in other ways.

I: Are there, there’ s not chairs then?


R: No. Church pews.

I: Where did you get that idea?


R: (pause) I really don’ t remember. No, I do. My wife had some friends that had a
bigger family and they had pews and she liked that so then we built a new church
around the time we built our house, and they were selling pews, so I bought a set of
pews with the idea of building this booth, so it’ s kind of an unique thing.

I: What do you guys do during this family meal? Where do you sit?
R: We sit at our bench, church pew table, and we just talk about the day’ s activities and
things we have going on in the future.

In this example (and the one that inspired it), church pews have been installed in the kitchen

where the family usually dines.

This section shows a complex, negotiated boundary between homemade food

production and the encroachment of market substitutes. In general, homemade food is held out

as singular, superior, and sacred. Nevertheless, purchased food can be imbued with qualities

that make it seem “almost homemade.” In addition, there’s a sense that compromises can be

made, “cheating a little” that still retain the label “homemade”. In addition, there is a sense that

the producer may abandon certain homemade food practices, while continuing to observe

others. A final quote from, Betty, a 79 year old woman helps to illustrate several of these

points.

Bread for our Mothers 10/09/01 28


I grew up as a girl without knowing anything about boughten bread cause we never had
boughten bread we always had homemade bread that my mother made and nowadays,
you just don’t think about, you just buy your bread and you don’t think about having
homemade bread and things like that… Well, I think nowadays even your homemade
food is more, isn’t as, hard to prepare, its still homemade but it is, you buy different
ingredients that go into it. You have more choice of ingredients. Well when I prepared
this spaghetti the other night, well of course your spaghetti’s always boughten and you
just cook that but uh, in your spaghetti sauce you have your home-canned tomatoes that
you use, and then you have a package of spaghetti sauce that you buy in the store.

5. "Homemade” Meals Reproduce An Idealized Version Of The Family

The last theme we wish to introduce is that homemade” meals help informants

reproduce an idealized version of the family. Family recipes are like an "heirloom," and like

other heirlooms consumers attach narratives to them that reproduce their understandings of kin

and gender relationships, as below:

R: I like, when I made the pie crust at Christmas, it was always a big thing...my
grandma's crust and that was when she was starting [to deteriorate]...it was harder for
her to do it, so there was like this timeframe where probably about two years...kinda
like she was turning over the reins in the family. There's a real emotion...being my
part…. So there is that sort of heirloom effect of the things that I make of theirs, you
know, you kinda pass it on and the tradition of things and you know, otherwise people
wouldn't...whole recipe box of my grandma's...recipes that are like, you know, it'll be a
recipe...it's like water, sugar, butter, milk--no measurements, nothing--but you keep
them because-- (female, single 24).

Our informant has taken over the role of cooking grandmother's recipes and seems to view it as

a responsibility, part of preserving family traditions, the justification for which is presumed.

Readers will certainly have detected how a number of the excerpts already quoted imply

certain preferred modes of gender-based behavior and relationships between family members,

ranging from elements of the division of labor to same gender intergenerational transmission

patterns. Cooking homemade seems to provide informants with idealized and nostalgic images

of kin relationships as the following excerpt redolent with women's intimacy indicates:

R: They bring back childhood memories of actually making the ornament, rolling the
dough and laughing with my mom and sister as you know our teddy bears aren’t perfect

Bread for our Mothers 10/09/01 29


or proportional. Um. Painting them, cooking them in the oven and what not, giving
them away to friends as gifts. Those are the memories.

As the following excerpt indicates, not only are family recipes like an "heirloom,” but like

inalienable wealth, they sometimes capture something of the essence of their original “owner.”

The bolding indicates this text describes an idealized state of affairs.

R: I’ m, I’ m trying to think, Colby, because most of it is um, my uncle made his own
barbecue sauce. Um, so every time we’ d go see him we’ d have barbecued chicken or
barbecued pork. Um, but that’ s a recipe that he himself created. So every time I make
this barbecue sauce, of course, I think of him. Um, and of course, all the Swedish food,
every time I’ m doing that I think of my family, my, my parents. Um, I’ m trying to
think what else there. I think it’ s really hard because I think we’ re, we’ re getting
away from so much of this. Um, but usually when we would get together it would
always be around the holidays and it would always be Swedish foods with relatives.

Homemade recipes and homemade foods seem to help informants perform preferred kin

roles, and to reassure them about the stability of their own family traditions and lineage, as the

following excerpts suggests:

R: Um, my mother always prided herself in several items of food and ah, luckily for her
or fortunately for my children, ah, they seem to have grown and as we visited grandma
and Grandpa they liked these particular food items and even at this time of their lives
they will ask for her to prepare these items.

Here the informant is satisfied that her children have adopted the food preferences of their

grandparents, and ask grandparents to reproduce these preferred homemade foods whenever

they visit. In a second excerpt the role of homemade foods in fostering inter-generational

continuity is made yet more explict:

I: You mentioned cookies. Can you tell me more about the cookies that you prepared?
R: For Christmas, especially cookies. We have a special um, ah, sugar cookie that ah,
which has been in the family for, for many years and ah, we always make that ah, sugar
cookie.
I: What makes it so special?
R: Well, because um, my mother made it and ah, ah, her, her mother made it and ah, ah,
so I just naturally ah, make it myself and, and made it with my girls when, when they
were little as, as my mother made it with me when, when I was little. So that’s I guess
what makes it special (53, female, married, 2 children).

Bread for our Mothers 10/09/01 30


Of course, some of our earlier informants, suggest that homemade food practices may

not be central to a family’s identity, and that too may be reproduced. John, a man in his 40’s

who grew up on daily doses of homemade food, admits he prepares food for his family mostly

out of obligation rather than enjoyment, and goes on to reflect:

Oh, to be honest with you, I wish my spouse would cook more than she does…It’s just
I don’t think she enjoys it. No, her mother didn’t cook much either. I don’t know for
sure, she didn’t have a lot to do, and she didn’t have the recipes to pass down, and it
wasn’t important when she was growing up that her mother cooked. That wasn’t a
priority in her life.

Similar to an earlier conversation with Milly, John goes on to suggest that the feeling of not

wanting to cook was passed down from generation to generation.

Finally, some informants recognize that the penetration of mass merchandised foods

into the home threatens familial relationships and continuity. A woman in her 60’s who loves

to make cookies with her grandchildren laments what she sees as structural changes that

impinge on her opportunity to bequeath homemade food practices to future generations.

Um, I think a lot of times you’re, you’re not around Grandparents, ah, and I think
grandparents and parents are the ones that instill these traditions and you’re just not
around them enough to learn all the skills and I think with women working they don’t
have time to do both, to passing on this because they’re so busy. And I think the kids
are really, really busy. Um, and rarely do kids get involved with helping parents cook
anymore and usually it’s fast food stuff and, and things that ah, you couldn’t prepare
very early ah, or very quickly, so that you can go out and do other activities.

Conclusions

The illustrative data presented here shows that foods are alive with the feelings and

emotional intents of their producers and preparers. In the act of eating people connect

themselves to particular social worlds. Even in consumer culture, foods are not merely

“things” to be bought and sold. Homemade foods have distinctive properties recognized by

informants that include authenticity, spontaneity, intergenerational depth, special taste,

Bread for our Mothers 10/09/01 31


mystery, and moral qualities, and even a connection to the sacred in some instances. Although

these qualities overlap with those of good food and family meals, and Charles and Kerr’s

(1988) “proper” English meals, together they represent a distinct category. These qualities are

the antithesis of those associated with fast food and ordinary processed food.

Homemade foods show evidence of the ritualization factors that theorists argue are

conducive to continuity and social reproduction. While salience or centrality is difficult to

assess on the basis of interview data, we did find that homemade food is often bundled with

other family rituals, beliefs, and practices that cumulatively represent both homemade and

family. We find frequent reference to a number of holidays that occasion homemade meals and

family togetherness. Informants also sometimes mention multiple homemade dishes that evoke

particular producers. Thus in some families homemade food exhibits the quality of homology.

Evocations of homemade food characteristically invoke idealized themes of typicality and

repetitiveness in our informants’ texts. Finally, homemade food is always embedded in

references to the distinctive skills and characteristics of producers.

Within the household homemade foods may play a number of important reproductive

roles. Homemade food seems to affirm family continuity and communal sources of identity,

while permitting individual householders to compose homemade traditions from multiple

sources. Homemade food seems to exemplify and model gender roles within the household. It

also seems to exemplify kin relationships and dramatize boundaries of inclusion and exclusion

from the hearth. More generally, our work suggests that productive household consumption is

an important and somewhat neglected dimension of consumer behavior. Perhaps it does, as

Miller suggests bath in the sacred glow of sacrificial communion (Miller 1998).

Bread for our Mothers 10/09/01 32


Consistent with the views of some, the reproductive processes associated with

homemade food are not seamless. There is longitudinal change reflecting the impact of time

pressures on householders schedules traceable to labor market conditions. Homemade meals

are increasingly rare. Further, intergenerational slippage occurs as habits of cooking are

affected by new food technologies, and homemade recipes are disused. Discourse about

household food production and consumption practices comments on the respective roles and

boundaries between household and market. The latter encroaches repetitively on the former

and is variously accommodated and resisted.

We hope our paper will contribute to social science discourse about how contemporary

households in consumer culture are created and threatened by their social settings. As we

develop and analyze additional data collected for this project, we hope to comment more

explicitly about several topics we are unable to address in the current paper. They include:

concepts of purity and polluted in relationship to homemade foods, the role of homemade food

in repairing disjunctures in household systems and the role of brands and marketing

communication in consumer discourse about homemade (See Chang 2000).

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