My Ethnic Heritage Essay

Tacos, hot sauce, rice, and beans are all rooted in my ethnic heritage. Both my come from an extremely poor village in Mexico. In the search for better opportunities and a brighter future for their two children at the time, they decided to come over to Boston and stay with an uncle. My mother had 8 brothers and sisters which caused her to drop out at the fifth grade in order to cook, clean, and take care of her younger siblings. With years of experience in cooking, she brought with her a library of recipes she had practiced back home. Growing up, we were really close to my father’s side of the family. He had 24 brothers and sisters and many of them here in Boston it was like a constant feast. Everything was in large portions and all the

It was hard work but my dad loved plants and learned a few things working there. The conditions were terrible but he managed to get a visa and went home to visit his mom and worked the land there in order to feed his siblings. He always had a background in planting and agriculture. When he got a house in Boston he went straight to planting and taking care of his back yard. It was his escape and allowed him to plant his hot peppers in the tiny backyard that we had. My father’s love for spicy things grew on me and we shared a love for it. Now I cannot live without my bottle of hot sauce and I use it for a multitude of things like my chips and ramen noodles. Sometimes I even carry around jalapeno peppers for my dinner at the dining hall. Spicy foods have become central to my identity because it has deep roots into my ethnicity since it is common to add hot sauce in your tacos, on fish, on chicken, etc. It is sometimes even considered rude not to add any because it was made to compliment the food and it would be rude to decline something the host made for

The village they are from was based on agriculture and working the fields. The men would work all day from dawn to dusk so they had to eat at the fields which meant the most efficient was to pack everything in a tortilla so they would not use plates and utensils which they did not have the money for. Lack of utensils and plates at home meant they ate everything with a tortilla or their hands. This translated to the way I grew up because the way they ate was so ingrained in them that they passed it on to us. Most dishes were eaten with a tortilla or with my hands. It never seemed odd to me until I got older and I was part of a gala for school which meant we went to the Liberty Hotel in downtown Boston and were sitting with wealthy donors. My school was in East Boston and it is a heavily Hispanic community. Therefore, many of my peers at the gala came from the same background. As we sat at the table together the servers brought out chicken and I watched people grab their forks and knives and cut into the chicken seamlessly. My friend whispered to a few of us on the table how to cut the chicken. To this day, I have trouble cutting my food which is why I am more comfortable eating with a