Lost in Translation

My stepdad is from Mexico City and when I was about seven he promised me som Mexican chocolate for dinner, I thought I had the coolest dad on the planet!! For the first time I was actually looking forward to dinner and when we sat down to eat I was completely....confused. Why would my Mexican chocolate be mixed with chicken?!? Chicken and chocolate, that was just too weird so I moved the sauce off of the chicken and took in a huge spoonful.....YUCK!! Whatever this brown sauce was it certainly was NOT chocolate. My dad explained to me Mole IS Mexican chocolate and it is a bitter spicy sauce that is made with chocolate but not sweetened and definately not what I was used to. That was my first lesson in cultural differences in food, but not that last.
I grew up in Los Angeles, California where living so close to the U.S/Mexican border clearly has an influence on the So Cal culture. You can see influence everywhere from art and music to architectural designs and restaurants. The restaurants vary in degrees of authenticity from the restaurants using the Mexican culture as a gimmick (El Pollo Loco and Baja Fresh) to the restaurants that can boast of real Mexican salsas and guacomole made in front of you (El Presidente). On a recent trip to Mexico with my boyfriend I learned that even the most "authentic" Mexican restaurant here in the states may lack certain...delicacies' reserved for south of the border.
Some friends my boyfriend grew up with in Mexico took us out to a restaurant and insisted on ordering for us. We declined and the guys settled on ordering the appetizer but refused to tell us what it was. Figuring it was something I wouldn't eat regularly I passed, but with a little teasing my boyfriend gave in and had a few peices of the strange looking meat. His friends burst out laughing and finally revealed the mystery meat to be bull's penis, which they eat often as a fancy appetizer but knowing out culture differences thought it would be funny to get us to do the same.
As an adult I find it hard to go an entire week without at least one Mexican meal,and have even come to love Mole, knowing what to expect helped with that. Although I am a huge fan of Mexican foods, there are some that I am no willing to even attempt to eat. I found two books in the library that reflect some of the ways food influences society...one that reflects the importance of flavors to sell food and another that focuses more specifically on how food is viewed by both Mexican and Mexican American women.

Abarca, Meredith E. Voices in the Kitchen: Views of Food and the World from Working-Class Mexican and Mexican American Women. College Station; Texas A&M University Press,
2006. Print

Belasco, Warren., & Scranton, Philip., ed. Food Nations: Selling Taste in Consumer Societies. New York: Routledge, 2002.