By: Rosie Y.
Today’s sermon topic at church was about privilege and entitlement. The speaker explained that one sign of privilege is that you don’t even realize you’re privileged – for example, living in a world where things are mostly designed for right-handed people. That’s great for right-handed people, not so great for left-handed people – but unless you’re left-handed, you don’t see all the benefits provided to the right-handed people, i.e. the people in the majority.
There were a lot of great examples given of how we are privileged in everyday things, and now that I’m doing the GLC, I can add one more to the list – seasoning! In yesterday’s blog I talked about how I followed online recipes and added onion and garlic to the beans & rice dish, thinking nothing of it, that it must be how it’s always cooked. Cause what else will add flavour to the beans? Just salt?
Barb from PILAS emailed me back and said, “They MAY use these ingredients, but I am thinking most days, they don’t.” Oops. I keep forgetting also that food in Guatemalan villages is not necessarily the same as food in Guatemalan cities, which are more affluent. And guess which group is more likely to be sharing recipes online?! Guess the next round of beans & rice will just be beans & rice! (Plus a little salt. That should be OK, right? I’m afraid to even ask!)
Just goes to show how little thought I give to what goes in my food. Onions to me aren’t even real vegetables, since they soften and caramelize to almost nothing when you cook them. And garlic is just for flavour, no? Both these ingredients are so cheap here that I assumed they must be readily available in the Guatemalan villages, too. And yet, as little as I respect these ingredients – I would really rather not give them up. I value taste and deliciousness in my food as much as I value the food itself, which just goes to show how privileged I am. If it doesn’t taste good, I’d rather not eat it at all – and I have the luxury of being able to make that choice, to say, “Waiter, send it back, I want something tastier instead”.
A tough lesson to learn, but an important one. We’ll see how I react to plain ol’ beans & rice!
PS – Another irony – I was watching Master Chef as I ate my first GLC meal…