Sharing Meals is one of the key practices for cultivating a permafamily, or any other healthy institution that is meant to last. The modern instinct to think of people as minds that happen to possess bodies is false. People are bodies. Shared physical experience is the key to shared identity. Sharing meals is literally a shared experience right down to the gut.
The effect deepens if the meal is synergistic with Heritage and Traditions, if the meal has Distinctive elements, if the meal is Homegrown or at least has Local ingredients, if it has Immediate Reward (i.e, its delicious and satisfying), if the meal is Healthy, and if the meal has Social Proof (i.e, it involves something that the society at large will validate). This sounds like a lot but most of this will happen naturally, and anyhow the important thing is sharing meals.
One Steaderman writes:
I made Navajo Tacos last night. Our family has links to the Four Corners area and we both have roots there. Somewhere along the way we picked up this meal. My mom made it and so did both my grandmas.
If you ever get a chance to have authentic Navajo tacos (or Hopi tacos or Pueblo tacos), do it. They are delicious. Fry bread and mutton and green chile mainly. The version that we make is the version that longtime residents in the Southwest make, it has about the same relation to the authentic stuff that southwest Mexican food has to the actual food from northern Mexico its based on. That’s what we grew up with so that’s what we make.
There is no holiday or specific time when we make Navajo tacos. It takes a lot of work, so we don’t do it very often. It always seems like a treat.
The key thing is the fry bread. Don’t be particular about it. Any bread dough recipe will work. We use one that doesn’t require vegetable oil! Pat the dough out flatbread style and about flatbread thickness. If it’s too thin the oil will break through when you fry it. The size and shape are up to you, but we usually do round and about 5” diameter.
We have cheap tallow so we use that. Tallow or good quality lard give it a great flavor. Butter would probably also work and so would olive oil. I’ve never tried those.
We normally start with about an inch of melted tallow in a cast iron frying pan on our range. Maybe around 300 degrees? If it’s smoking it’s too hot! Err on the side of having the temperature a little too low.
Carefully you slip in one of your flats of dough and then let it fry. It will usually swell up, this is ok. After a while use tongs or like me if you can’t find the tongs a pair of forks and lift the flat up a bit. If its golden to golden brown underneath, its read to turn. Carefully turn it. Let it fry some more. It doesn’t have to be quite as browned on the second side as on the first. Hold it up over the pan so it can drip dry, then put it aside. No need to squeeze the fat out or anything, having the fry bread cooked in the tallow is the point. Then cook your next one.
I added more tallow after the first couple and more tallow a couple later. I used all the tallow in my open jar. Instead of opening a new one I decided to experiment with lower levels of tallow. I got pretty much the full effect down to about 1/8”.
Fry bread fills you up. Unless you have teenage boys or hard physical laborers eating, don’t expect to need much more than 1 per person. My family of 6 ate 7 fry breads.
For toppings, I cooked Anasazi beans. (Also called Cave beans and Appaloosa beans, they are like pinto beans but less gas and better flavor). I stewed up and shredded a beef we raised. My kids picked tomatoes from the garden. Plus shredded cheese form Walmart, lol, onion and lettuce, plus green chile my wife put up.
We enjoyed the food a lot and had a great time.
Here we have a Shared Meal that is tied into the family’s roots for Heritage. They do it from time to time so it is a Tradition. It has Immediate Reward. The animal fats, the meat, and the Homegrown Local ingredients make it healthy.
We see a couple of other aspects to point out that didn’t come out in the email. First, the fact that the food has ethnic roots and is home cooked both give it Social Proof. Those are both things that have some cachet in the American context.
Second, the fact that the dad made it gives the meal Authority Proof. In sociological terms, the authority figure spending time on it and even making it himself gives it added social weight.
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Starch and saturated fat - fire in a bottle would say that's diet food.