As we wrap up Immigrant Heritage Month, we asked Food For Free Marketing & Communications Manager, Jessica Tretina, to share something from her experience as a migrant with us. Read on to see what she said!
Somerville is my home, but it wasn’t always. In fact, there were several years when I didn’t really know where to call home. In those years, as I have recently come to realize is a pretty common experience for migrants across the country and the globe, I felt at home both in several places at once and no place at all.
As a Caribbean immigrant to the US, I sometimes feel that there is something missing from my environment here in New England – a certain vibrancy, pungency, and rhythms that reverberate in your chest as you go about your day.
But a void that feels deeper than the loss of those extra pops on my olfactory system is the lack of access to certain foods that are crucial to remembering daily life in my country of origin and taking part in my own culture through eating. Think, no more mac ‘n’ cheese or pumpkin pie. Definitely no Dunkin’. No Nana’s apple cake. Not even on holidays, or when you’re in need of extra comfort. You just don’t have access to the essential ingredients you need to make them.
What I have come to realize is that the foods I miss most and can’t find here (like the milky, sticky flesh of purple star apples, for example) might be unique to me, but almost every migrant living away from their country of origin shares this experience with me. And many of us, myself included, learn to make substitutions with ingredients readily available in our new locales.
I love living and working in Somerville, a city with a diverse community of immigrants. When I walk down the street or in the park in my neighborhood, I hear several different languages being spoken around me. I pass by storefronts with items for sale that are exotic to me, but provide familiar comfort to some of my neighbors. In this patchwork community of blended cultures, I find a sense of belonging. I feel free to express my culture how I prefer to without the fear of sticking out.
I came to work at Food For Free because I wanted to give back to my community by working to bolster the food system. Shortly before sitting down to write this post, I took a walk to a nearby park. My route took me past the building that Project SOUP, one of Food For Free’s pantry partners, operates out of. When I occasionally see people walking by me with carts and bags filled with fresh produce, meats, dairy items and pantry staples (details I can visualize without seeing inside the bags due to my time volunteering at Project SOUP), I smile inwardly at the knowledge that the work I do is touching the lives of people who are quite literally my neighbors.
My loop around the park took me past a large tree, where I saw an elderly person picking fruits and putting them in a bag. My curiosity piqued, I approached them and asked what the fruit was. They didn’t speak English well, so the response was basically a demonstration that the fruits were, indeed, edible. After determining that it was a mulberry tree, I joined this neighbor in their foraging for a few minutes so I could get a taste of a few of the ripest berries before continuing on my way.
This impromptu foraging excursion reinforced my thought that immigrants are excellent at adapting to new environments. And in my family, we’re experts. I come from a long line of migrants; in fact, the other day I realized that there have been migrations in almost every generation of my family on both my parents’ sides for as far back as we are aware of. Years after I forged my own path forward in the US, my family moved from our country of origin to Canada, and when I visit them there the topic of food is ever-present as we discuss how to preserve our “Caribbean-ness” when eating in a North American environment.
Earlier this month, I attended a Food For Free School Market at the East Somerville Community School, where a large percentage of the clientele are non-native English speakers. Tasked with keeping the blood oranges restocked, I found very quickly that many of the people attending the market were unfamiliar with these vibrant citrus fruits. I love blood oranges, and spent my time between restocking trying to describe to those who had never tried one before what they were, and what they tasted like.
One of the other volunteers at the School Market was an even bigger blood orange advocate than I was, and when there was a lull towards the end of the market, she started sharing easy recipes with everyone to encourage people to try them. I still need to try one of her suggestions, which was blood oranges with a pinch of salt to enhance the flavor.
At Food For Free, it is important to us to find ways to provide people with choice when it comes to the food they will eat, because we believe that doing so helps to preserve dignity. Our School Markets program is a great example of that, where attendees can choose what food items they would like to pick up. Our Weekend Eats program uses pre-loaded debit cards, called Carrot Cards, to provide student families with funds they can use towards food purchases at their preferred grocery or bodega, which allows them to choose foods that meet their dietary needs and are culturally familiar. Our Healthy Eats home delivery program offers specialty boxes for various dietary restrictions, such as gluten-free and vegan. Our Just Eats program frequently sources key ingredients, such as masa, for community partners that serve specific cultural groups within the community, like our partners over at La Colaborativa.
While Food For Free will continue to do work to increase the variety of choices available to the people who benefit from our programs, I believe that it is important to also focus on providing nutrient-dense foods that are readily available locally as well. Speaking from my own experience, I have found that being adaptable is important to being able to thrive in a new environment.
Sometimes, having a nod to a cultural meal is sufficient to satisfy that yearning desire when key ingredients are missing from your new locale. During my time living in a small town in northern Italy for grad school, I sometimes had to visit three or four different shops and markets on foot to gather all the ingredients to make a meal from scratch at home. Where I’m from, limes are the main citrus used to add a zip of acid to a dish, but lemons are by far the ubiquitous citrus in Italy. There were many instances where I caved and bought lemons instead of walking to the Indian grocery store on the other side of town to make my dish.
While I would never do this back home, I came to learn to enjoy the new fusion Italian-Caribbean flavors I was able to create in my kitchen during that season of my life. When I could only rarely find fresh chili peppers in Italy, where palates are not as keen on spiciness as we are in the Caribbean, I learned how to preserve chilies with salt and oil, Italian style, using peppers from a potted tree my friend bought for me.
Making substitutions with locally-available ingredients when making traditional cultural meals is a way to immerse yourself in your new environment while staying true to your heritage as well. It is part of the richness of the immigrant experience that helps to expand our minds and our selves as we learn to call a new environment “home”.
My experience as a two-time immigrant has helped me to value the perspective of all immigrants, because we’ve experienced life with a new twist of flavor that many others around us can learn from.
