Tag Archives: Material Lore

Entrée: Steamed Whole Fish

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General Information about Item:

  • Genre: Material Lore – food, Customary Lore – celebration, superstition
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: US
  • Informant: M.W.
  • Date Collected: November 13, 2020

Informant Data:

  • M.W. was born in New York in 2001. He grew up in Long Island with his parents and older brother. Currently, he attends University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he studies microbiology. He is fully Chinese as his parents are both from Fuzhou, China. He would celebrate Chinese New Year each year with his family. However, regarding the family feast, his family would typically go to a restaurant for the meal rather than prepare the food themselves. 

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: Fish is a commonly eaten food in Chinese culture as the fishing industry in China is among the largest in the world. There is a large emphasis on sharing food in Chinese culture as meals are often eaten “family style.” While fish can be prepared in many ways, a whole fish serves as a great family style dish as its large size allows all members of the meal to have some.
  • Social Context: While Chinese New Year feasts are typically prepared and enjoyed at home, it is also common for families that celebrate to have a meal at a Chinese restaurant, instead.

Item:

  • A whole fish is a very common dish in a Chinese New Year dinner. This whole fish, which includes the skin, bones, head and tail, is usually steamed with ginger, scallions, soy sauce and other herbs. As for the type of fish, there’s no specific fish that must be used. The reason why all parts of the fish are included in the dish is because the whole fish represents the whole family being together to enjoy a big feast for the new year. It symbolizes unity, connectedness and the strength of familial bonds, which are all important features of Chinese culture.

Audio Clip:

 

Transcript:

C.C. (collector): What’s one dish that you and your family typically eat for Chinese New Year?

M.W. (informant): What we eat for Chinese New Year is a whole fish. This fish is prepared by steaming it with gingers scallions, soy sauce and other assorted herbs. The reason we eat the whole fish, including the head and tail is because it represents the whole family being together on new years. by having the whole fish it shows how it brings the whole family together to enjoy a big feast.

Informant Comments:

  • This is his favorite way fish can be prepared because of how simple the ingredients are and how clean the dish tastes.

Collector Comments:

  • A steamed whole fish is a part of my family’s Chinese New Year meal as well, and since it is one of the main dishes of the meal, we have a certain tradition with it. The younger members of the family must serve pieces of the fish to the adults first before eating themselves, and this demonstrates the idea of respecting elders in Chinese culture.

Collector’s Name: Chris Chao

Tags/Keywords:

  • Chinese New Year
  • Material Lore
  • Customary Lore
  • Food
  • Entrée

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Salad: Ensalada de Noche Buena

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General Information about Item:

  • Genre: Material Lore – dish; Customary Lore – celebration
  • Language: Spanish
  • Country of Origin: Mexico
  • Informant: G.P.
  • Date Collected: November 7, 2020

Informant Data:

  • G.P. is a ~60 year old woman living in New Jersey. She was born in Tlaxcala, Mexico and has spent over 20 years in the United States, where she lives with two of her siblings and her two nephews and niece, up until they started university. In the US, her family usually celebrates Christmas by inviting over more family members, preparing food, and partaking in some religious traditions.

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: Salads in general are popular in Mexico since most of the population cannot afford certain items on a daily basis. This leads to many families depending on their crops and fruit trees for both food and supplemental income. Luckily, since it doesn’t get cold, crops can be grown year round.
  • Social Context: Many families eat this dish during the midnight dinner on Christmas Eve into Christmas day, and, while the orange makes it a bit more tedious to prepare, a sufficient amount is always made. It is mainly eaten after the main dish, almost as a dessert, but with the main purpose to balance the spicy main meal with something cool and sweet.

Item:

  • The “Christmas Eve Salad”, as it would be known in English, is a sweet fruit salad typically composed of beets, bananas, lettuce, and oranges. It is mainly served at Christmas time due to its festive, flashy, purple color, as well as its cool refreshing taste since it is typically served chilled and with peanuts. The most common procedure involves peeling and boiling beets in about a liter and a half of water, then cutting it into cubes and placing back into the water it was boiled in. While it is boiling, you cut bananas in slices, cut lettuce, and peel oranges so only the juice sacs cut into cubes remain. Once the beets are ready, you wait until its room temperature and then add honey and sugar, cool it, then add the rest of the ingredients. It is typically served in clear glass to complement the colors, as well as with optional peanuts.

Translation of Interview Clip:

C.Y.(collector): Do you make this salad every Christmas?

G.P.(informant): Yea when a lot of family comes over. Due to Covid though, I don’t think I’ll be making it this year. It’s only going to be my close family and I, so I think we’ll probably stick to something simpler and smaller.

C.Y.: What about making a smaller portion?

G.P.: Come on, you should know this. We don’t scale things down. Not in this house. If we do it, we go big. So unless you want to drive a two hour round trip to drop some off to your cousins…?

C.Y.: Haha, I’ll err, get back to you on that.

Collector’s Comments:

  • My family tends to eat this both during the holiday and outside the holiday during the warm months. We typically don’t tie much traditional value to it, aside from the light homeopathic magic belief that something cool will also help cool the stomach down to prevent stomachaches and indigestion since, once accustomed to it, its quite easy to go overboard on spicy foods.

Collector’s Name: Carlos Yepes

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Entrée: Catfish

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General Information about Item:

  • Genre: Material Lore – dish; Customary Lore – celebration, belief, superstition
  • Language: English with some Chinese (Mandarin)
  • Country of Origin: China
  • Informant: R.J.
  • Date Collected: November 4, 2020

Informant Data:

  • R.J. is a 21-year-old senior studying Economics at UC Berkeley. He was born in Houston, Texas but grew up in Shanghai, China. While living in China, he celebrated Chinese New Year every year with his family, participating in a variety of traditional festivities.

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: Fish is an essential dish for Chinese New Year across most, if not all, regions in China due to its association with wealth and prosperity. Although fish can be cooked in many ways, it is usually steamed with a mixture of traditional ingredients like ginger, scallion, and soy sauce. Certain types of fish, like catfish, are sometimes chosen over others because their names have additional symbolic meaning. Many households impose their own rules regarding how the fish is served, e.g., the fish head must be oriented towards guests or elders.
  • Social Context: During Chinese New Year’s Eve, it is customary for an extended family to hold a large dinner gathering either at home or at a fancy restaurant, to share an assortment of traditional dishes including fish. Usually, the dinner gathering also features other activities such as toasting to the elders’ health and giving red envelopes which contain allowance money to the children.

Item:

  • Catfish is commonly eaten for Chinese New Year because of its auspicious name “nián yú” (鲶鱼), which is a homophone for the characters that mean “surplus year over year” (年余). Typically, catfish is cooked with the body, head, and bones intact as a symbol for the preservation of wealth. After all, people want to receive the entirety of next year’s surplus rather than just a fraction.

Audio Clip:

 

Transcript:

W.W. (collector): Right. Thank you so much. Um, so as I told you earlier, for this project, we’ll be talking about Chinese New Year, specifically, a special festival dish that’s eaten during Chinese New Year. Uh, yeah so, can you describe the name of your item?

R.J. (informant): Yeah, absolutely. So the dish I’ll be talking about today would be catfish. Um, yeah.

W.W.: Cool. Yeah. So um, go ahead and tell us about catfish.

R.J.: Yeah, sure. Um, so before I dive into, like catfish, specifically, I would first like to talk about why Chinese people like to eat fish in general. And the reason is because the word fish in Chinese sounds a lot like the word surplus in Chinese. So in Chinese, fish is pronounced “yú” (鱼). And in, um, the … yeah basically, surplus is also pronounced “yú” (余). So, Chinese people really like surplus because they believe that if you’re able to save up a lot of money, um, in the current year, then in the next year, uh, it’s a pretty good sign, and you’ll have more to work around with because he had that savings from the previous year, right. So at the end of the year, during Chinese New Year, when people eat fish in general, they’re basically praying that this year, they got surplus, and that that surplus will carry forward to, um, the next year. So specifically, with regards to catfish, people eat catfish, because catfish in Chinese is pronounced as “nián yú” (鲶鱼). Now “nián” (年) in Chinese means year. So basically, when you combine those two terms, it means, uh, yearly fish. So basically, going back to what I said earlier of how, like, fish means surplus, it basically means having surplus year over year. So that’s the particular reason for why Chinese people like to eat catfish. Um, and specifically with regards to how they make it, I think one common thing, I’m not too sure about it, is that they always ensure that the fish is whole, so they never cut up the fish into parts. And the main reason is because they want to like have all of the surplus and not have like just parts of it right? When you divide it up, it becomes less than the whole, so that’s why they tend to, um, you know, cook it whole, like head, body all in one, uh, for … yeah.

W.W.: Cool. Um, thanks for sharing. Um, so, catfish, is this something that you eat with your family members or your friends during Chinese New Year?

R.J.: Yeah, definitely. So, um, pretty much every single year, we try to get at least one fish dish, um, on the table, basically the day before the New Year’s. Um, so yeah, catfish is probably the most common one that I eat. Um, we’ve also had like, other fishes, um, just sort of like, depending on what we’re feeling like. But I’ll say that catfish is probably the most common fish I’ve had on Chinese New Year’s Eve for like the past, say 20 years of my life.

Informant’s Comments:

  • An additional tradition that may be unique to my family is that we always try to go for the fish eye. Because apparently, from my parents, they’ve told me that eating the fish eye is a good symbol of prosperity in the next year because the fish eye is kind of like the core part of the fish. It represents the spirit and the heart of the fish, I guess, so they’ve always told me that if you’re able to get the fish eye really quickly, then, uh, next year, you’ll have good fortune. So, you know, one thing that we would do at the dinner table would be to fight over the fish eye. Uh, sometimes it gets pretty ugly, but other times, it’s usually pretty fun. Yep.

Collector’s Comments:

  • For Chinese New Year, my family also eats fish but not catfish specifically. In my family, the fish eye is viewed as the most nutritious part of the fish and a symbol of wisdom. It is usually given to one of the younger children to help them grow smart and strong. This is an example of homeopathic magic.

Collector’s Name: Winston Wang

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Dessert: 8 Treasure Rice

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General Information about Item:

  • Genre: Material Lore – food, Customary Lore – celebration
  • Language: English, Chinese
  • Country of Origin: China/Canada
  • Informant: A.Z.
  • Date Collected: November 7, 2020

Informant Data:

  • A.Z was born in China and spent half her life there before moving to Canada. As far as she knows, she is full Chinese. She has strong ties to her family as her mother and grandmother have passed down many recipes to her. She always spends Chinese New Year with family. Currently, she is a second year student at Dartmouth College studying computer science.

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: Rice is a staple food in China as it is an ingredient found in countless dishes. In its purest form, rice can just be steamed and used eaten as a side to other meats and vegetables, rice can be fried, rice can be used in congee or porridge. However, rice can also be used to make noodles and cakes. Because of its versatility, rice can be eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and can even be used in various desserts.
  • Social Context: Chinese New Year is a widely celebrated festival by Chinese people around the world, and it typically includes a large meal with family and many other festivities.

Item:

  • 8 treasure rice (八宝饭) is a Chinese New Year dish that dates back 2000 year ago to the Zhou Dynasty and it typically eaten as a dessert. The reason why it is called 8 treasure rice is because it contains 8 fruits that are considered very therapeutic in Chinese Medicine, including Red Dates, Red Bean, Plums, Winter-melons, Nuts, Longan, Lotus Seeds, etc. There are many variations of what ingredients are added depending on who makes it as some form include canned tangerines, winter melons, and more. These “treasures” are considered the toppings to the main component being glutinous rice.

Audio Clip:

 

Transcript:

C.C. (collector): So what is one particular Chinese New Year dish that you would eat and enjoy?

A.Z. (informant):  So one of my favorites is 八宝饭, which translates in English roughly to 8 treasures rice. This is a sweet dessert we usually have during Chinese New Year after our main courses as kind of a finishing plate. And the history behind it is that this dessert has over 2000 years of history dating back to the Zhou dynasty and the reason why its still so popular and has been popular throughout these 2000 years is that it is a very beautiful looking dessert rice dish that contains 8 treasures, that’s the name, 8 treasures rice. And each of these treasures or fruits and vegetables are believed to have medicinal and therapeutic properties according to Chinese medicine. So these fruits usually vary depending on the region of China, but basic and common fruits put into 八宝饭 include red dates, lotus seeds, plums, winter-melons, longan, red bean paste, nuts, and yeah these are the common ones we put.

C.C.: Ok that’s it. Thank you.

A.Z.: You’re welcome.

Informant’s Comments:

  • She would typically eat this dessert at restaurants instead of preparing it at home, and each place she had that dish at, the 8 treasure rice would be made differently with some of the “treasures” varying.

Collector’s Comments:

  • I have never tried this dish or heard of it before this interview, however, I am familiar with rice-based desserts. I think this dish would be similar to the rice desserts I tried in the past.

Collector’s Name: Chris Chao

Tags/Keywords:

  • Chinese New Year
  • Material Lore
  • Customary Lore
  • Food
  • Dessert

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Scallop shells

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Title: Scallop shells

General information about item:

  • Material lore
  • Country: Spain
  • Informant: Tommy Botch
  • Date Collected: 11/05/19

Informant Data: 

  • Tommy Botch is a 24-year-old lab manager in the Robertson Lab in the Psychology and Brain Sciences Department at Dartmouth College, where he studies vision in virtual reality. He was born and raised in Los Angeles, California and completed his undergraduate education in psychobiology at UCLA. Tommy enjoys describing fine cheeses and baking sourdough bread in his spare time. He undertook his thru hiking journey when he was 20 years old.

Contextual Data:

  • Historical Context: The Camino de Santiago is a 1,000 year-old pilgrimage route that begins at numerous points around Europe and ends at Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain. According to Christianity, the apostle Santiago (known in English as Saint James) spread the religion around the Iberian Peninsula (which includes Spain and Portugal). Theory says that his body was put on a boat and landed on the coast of Spain, right near present-day Santiago de Compostela. King Alfonso II wanted his body to be buried in a special chapel, and ordered the building of the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral. Christians across Europe began taking this pilgrimage to worship at the Cathedral. 
  • Social Context: Recently, the route became a UNESCO World Heritage Site and was featured in the 2010 movie The Way, which helped it grow in popularity (Source). Our informant took the most popular route, the Camino Frances, which begins in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France, and over the Pyrenees. This trail spans 800 km (500 miles). 

Item:

  • The scallop shell is the symbol of the Camino de Santiago. It adorns every trail marker and hikers tie one to their backpacks as they make this arduous journey. Tommy reported two stories as to where the symbol comes from. The first is that when the apostle Santiago was pulled out of the sea by the coast of Santiago de Compostela, his body was covered in scallop shells, so the shells took on that religious connotation. The second is that since the pilgrimage has trails beginning all over Europe that converge at Santiago de Compostela, if you map all of it out, the radiating lines converging upon the one point resembles the bumps on a scallop shell.
  • The scallop shell also serves another purpose: there are points along the pilgrimage where hikers stop to replenish water. At these points, some towns and businesses leave out pumps of red wine, which hikers can drink from their scallop shells.

Informant comment:

  • “I think the story of Saint James is the official, historical significance of the scallop shell. The story about the multiple trails converging is more of the modern, more secular, pop-culture view of the scallop shell.”

 

Collector: Erica Busch

Jesus and The Plastic Bong

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Title: Jesus and the plastic bong

General information about item:

  • Tradition, Material Lore
  • Location: Appalachian Trail, United States
  • Informant: Jimmy Coleman
  • Date Collected: 11/06/19

Informant Data:

  • Jimmy Coleman, age 20, is a sophomore at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, where he is studying mathematics and computer science. He was born in Baltimore County and loves the outdoors, which he learned from his ample hiking and camping trips with his family as a child. He undertook his thru hiking adventure on the Appalachian Trail when he was 17 years old.

Contextual Data:

  • The Appalachian Trail (AT) begins in Springer Mountain in Georgia and continues north up the Eastern United States until Mount Katahdin in Maine. The trail is about 2,200 miles long and generally takes someone seven months to complete. People can hike this trail either from north to south (SOBO) or south to north (NOBO). 

Item:

  • Jimmy told us a tradition involving a man with the trail name Jesus and his plastic bong. Apparently, Jesus was a homeless man, a common demographic of people on the trail. He had been on the trail for many years, and he always had with him his plastic bong. Every time he passed through the midpoint of the trail, he carved a little notch in the bong. He would then pass it off to someone heading the opposite direction, so they could carry the bong. This created a tradition of hikers passing the bong to other hikers traveling the opposite direction, each time carving a little notch into the bong as they passed the midpoint of the trail.

Interview:

Collector notes:

  • I continued this conversation with Jimmy at a later point in order to gather additional information.

Collector: Erica Busch

Stuffed Bear

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Title: Stuffed Bear

General information about item:

  • Legend, Material Lore
  • Country: Spain
  • Informant: Tommy Botch
  • Date Collected: 11/05/19

Informant Data: 

  • Tommy Botch is a 24-year-old lab manager in the Robertson Lab in the Psychology and Brain Sciences Department at Dartmouth College, where he studies vision in virtual reality. He was born and raised in Los Angeles, California and completed his undergraduate education in psychobiology at UCLA. Tommy enjoys describing fine cheeses and baking sourdough bread in his spare time. He undertook his thru hiking journey when he was 20 years old.

Contextual Data:

  • Historical Context: The Camino de Santiago is a 1,000 year-old pilgrimage route that begins at numerous points around Europe and ends at Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain. According to Christianity, the apostle Santiago (known in English as Saint James) spread the religion around the Iberian Peninsula (which includes Spain and Portugal). Theory says that his body was put on a boat and landed on the coast of Spain, right near present-day Santiago de Compostela. King Alfonso II wanted his body to be buried in a speciaal chapel, and ordered the building of the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral. Christians across Europe began taking this pilgrimage to worship at the Cathedral. 
  • Social Context: Recently, the route became a UNESCO World Heritage Site and was featured in the 2010 movie The Way, which helped it grow in popularity (Source). Our informant took the most popular route, the Camino Frances, which begins in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France, and over the Pyrenees. This trail spans 800 km (500 miles). 

Item: 

  • Unlike other thru hikes, people hike the Camino in order to arrive in Santiago de Compostela. However, there is one man who is notorious for hiking the trail from Santiago de Compostela towards Frances, away from the Catedral. Not only does he complete the trail backwards (and has done so several times), but he does so with a giant stuffed bear on his pack. Apparently he does this in order to bring a smile to the faces of the other hikers, who are often exhausted mentally, emotionally, and physically. Legend has it that he completes this backwards journey once a year.

Collector: Erica Busch

Water Safety (Brittany Champagne)

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General Information about Item:

  • Genre: Material Lore
  • Language: English
  • Country where Item is from: USA
  • Informant: Katie Harris
  • Date Collected: 11-2-17

Informant Data:

  • Katie Harris is a member of the class of 2019 at Dartmouth.  She is from central Illinois, specifically Lincoln.  Katie described her home as super rural and full of many families. Illonois to her is a “typical mid-west state,” the families are very close knit and tend to stay put rather than have a lot of new families moving in. She is from an area surrounded by a lot of farming and a love for the outdoors. Both her parents introduced her to hiking early on. When she was 3 years old and didn’t have a choice her parents would strap her to their back and go on hikes. A family vacation in the Harris household always seemed to involve hiking and led to Katie’s love for the activity.

Contextual Data:

  • Social Context: Clean drinking water is one of the most important parts to survival.  Learning about different techniques to clean your drinking water makes you prepared for any situation, for example if your Jetboil breaks.
  • Cultural Context:  Potable water is necessary for the survival of all people.  Water cleaning techniques are relevant to all hikers.

Item:

  • A filter pump and iodine are additional equipment capable of cleansing drinking
  • These techniques require less setting up and thus are less time consuming than boiling water

Informant’s Comments:

  • “When at the base of a mountain the water can be more polluted, so we filter our water with a filter pump and bring iodine.  Iodine is a secondary treatment that kills all the bacteria that may have been neglected by the filter pump.  Techniques for cleaning water are very important for drinking, especially when boiling techniques can take a longer time.”     

Collector’s Comments:

  • The picture depicts the filter pump used before iodine is added.

Collector’s Name: 

Brittany Champagne

Tags/Keywords:

  • material lore, water, filter pump, iodine

Female Attire Etiquette for Interviews

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General Information about Item:

  • Genre and Sub Genre
    • Material Folklore: Clothing
  • Language: English
  • Country where Item is from: US

Informant Data:

  • Informant is a Dartmouth Student in the Class of 2018. She is from Westport, CT and is studying Economics and Biology. She is involved in multiple extracurriculars on campus, including the Red Cross Club, First Year Peer Mentors and Economics Tutoring. She has gone through the corporate recruiting process Summer and Fall 2016.

Contextual Data:

  • Social Context: This folklore was collected in person on audio recording during an one-on-one interview during the Fall 2016 Dartmouth corporate recruiting season.
  • Cultural Context: Informant is a Junior studying Economics at Dartmouth – a typical participant of corporate recruiting as mostly Juniors and Seniors in Economics go through recruiting. Informant has not had any corporate experience prior to interview, but has a corporate job in Winter 2017 that was not obtained through the corporate recruiting process. She has gone through the corporate recruiting process twice.

Item:

  • Pencil skirts and blouses for women are typical attire worn during interviews. The dress code for interviews is implicitly known to be business casual even though no company explicity states it. Students participating in recruiting figure out the dress code by word-of-mouth, usually advice passed down from upperclassman or friends who have experienced recruiting interviews. Females try to avoid too many flashy colors and designs in order to maintain professional. Business casual attire during interviews are important because it demonstrates professionalism and respect.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript of Associated File:

Informant’s Comments:

  • NA

Collector’s Comments:

  • NA

Collector’s Name: Emily MA

Tags/Keywords:

  • Material Lore, Clothes, Interviews, Corporate Recruiting

“Chicory”

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Chicory
Informant info: (Left to Right) Sadhana Puri, age 20, Jessica Link, age 20, Alex Ledoux, age 21 all from New Orleans, LA.  Collected May 15, 2016 via iPhone.
Verbal Lore: Slang/ Material Lore: Drink
Language: English, French
Country of Origin: The Caribbean, France
Social / Cultural Context: This is a caffeinated root which is ground up and added to coffee for a stronger flavor and increase the amount of caffeine in the beverage.  It is one of the many French influences in New Orleans.

 

https://youtu.be/QiJy_0kqSsw

 

Transcript:

“Sadhana: Chicory

Jessoca: I was about to say Coffee and chicory.  Is a thing.

Sadhana: What exactly is chicory.

Jessica: Chicory-

Alex: Is it a root?

Sadhana: Yeah it’s like a root.

Jessica: Yeah it’s like a root.  The myth is that the reason we started using chicory is because during the civil war during the union blockade when the union soldiers came and blocked New Orleans off so we couldn’t trade or whatever anymore.  People could grow chicory in new Orleans even though we couldn’t really grow coffee beans, I guess.  So people started using chicory because it has caffeine and it kinda tastes like coffee so they use that to make coffee.  But in reality what it was, was like French people even in the 1700s and 1800s were also using chicory, like I don’t know from- it grew in the Caribbean and stuff so they brought it back to France which brought it to New Orleans.  New Orleans people were already drinking chicory with their coffee before the civil war.  But during the civil war when it was harder to get coffee they drank even more chicory with their coffee. I think that’s it, I remember reading that somewhere.  Cause that’s like a misconception.  But the point is we still make, like some places still put chicory in their coffee, like Café Dumont which is where everyone goes to get beignets.  And it’s super famous.

Sadhana: Alex you have chicory blocks in your room right.

Jessica: Well it’s coffee and chicory.  You can’t get just chicory by itself.

Alex:  Well it’s coffee.  So like the coffee from Café- Well I think maybe you can (get chicory itself), I don’t think you could just make coffee with that.

Jessica: I feel it would taste gross.

Alex:  Yeah that’d be really gross.

Sadhana: It’s pretty bitter.

Jessica:  It’s extremely bold.

Alex: It’s super strong.

Sadhana: it’s an acquired taste.

Alex:  Like for me it’s really funny because I can drink like black regular coffee, because I am so used to drinking CDM which is Café Dumont coffee with Chicory ad um it’s super strong.

Sadhana: How much chicory do they put in it, do you think?  Like probably just.

Alex: *shrugs*

Sadhana: I like it.

Alex:  I don’t know it’s just ground up, it looks like regular coffee grinds I put in my thing.

Katelyn: So you drink pure chicory?

Sadhana: Sorry I was confusing.

Alex: No, no it has coffee and chicory the chicory just makes it a stronger coffee.

Sadhana:  Yeah it give s it a slightly bitter.

Jessica: Yeah like a super strong flavor.

Alex: It’s like dark dark, like probably the darkest roast coffee you could have.

Sadhana: It’s not real coffee though.

Aex: The chicory isn’t.

Sadhana: Oh no, but the taste is of coffee”

Collector’s comments:  This word again shows off New Orleans French roots while also giving the chance to tell a myth about the origins of Chicory.  The word can be considered slang because of it’s specific use in New Orleans and this one item that is not used much elsewhere.  It is also most likely that the French pronunciation of the word is different which adds to the slang aspects of the word.

Tags/Keywords: Chicory, caffeine, food, material lore, verbal lore, café du monde, New Orleans.