As part of our special series on food and families, LWC Studios' managing producer Paulina shared her concerns that hosting and cooking for the holidays is taking a toll on her aging Mexican mom. And culinary educator and hospitality expert Trisha Pérez Kennealy offers practical tips for maintaining family traditions while transitioning the related responsibilities.
Featured Expert:
Trisha Pérez Kennealy is the owner of the Inn at Hastings Park in historic Lexington, MA. A proud Puerto Rican-Jewish woman, Trisha grew up in Puerto Rico (before moving to Lexington as a teen) & spent much of her childhood with her multi-generational family sitting around the table. A graduate of Harvard College & Harvard Business School, Trisha went on to a successful finance career. While working as an investment banker in London, she realized that cooking is truly where her heart was. She earned both her Diplôme de Cuisine & Diplôme de Pâtisserie from Le Cordon Bleu and went on to open her dream hospitality concept upon returning stateside, The Inn at Hastings Park in 2014. Today, Trisha shares her passion for teaching in her role as Culinary Educator, offering cooking classes for hotel and day guests where she shares her culture through her food with her community. Learn more about her work and business here.
If you loved this episode, listen to Feeling Pressured to Eat What Loved Ones Cook and Cooking for a Loved One with Special Dietary Needs.
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Juleyka Lantigua:
Hi everybody. I'm so excited about today's episode. It's a continuation of our holiday series where we explore the intergenerational and cultural tensions around food, family, and the holidays. As you know, and as you've heard, in the series we've been talking to some of our colleagues at LWC Studios about the challenges and the triumphs that they've experienced. And today I'm so excited to welcome our managing producer, Paulina. Paulina's mom has always loved hosting. She loves having her family over for the holidays, the celebrations, the cooking, the whole thing. But now that she's getting a bit older, Paulina is concerned that all of this planning, cooking, and entertaining might be a lot of work for someone her age, especially as their family continues to grow. Let's get into it.
Paulina: I'm Paulina Velasco. I'm the youngest of four siblings. My parents are originally from Mexico and my three siblings actually also were born in Mexico. I was the only one born here in the US. And growing up I called my parents ma y pa. My family has always gotten together with as many of us as we could gather for Christmas, Easter. We get together for birthdays. But yeah, food I think always gathers everybody at the abuela's house, which is now my parents' house in San Diego. I think my parents have always enjoyed having everyone over for the holidays. My mother in particular is a pretty practicing Catholic. Christmas is really important to her. And my dad is like a bon vivant. My dad loves people. He loves drinking and eating, and he definitely always enjoyed all the gatherings. Partly also because I think he never did any of the work.
So my mom, every Christmas, has cooked bacalao, which her mother used to make in Mexico, which is codfish, I think, in a red tomato sauce. And she's very proud of her bacalao and will make it months in advance and then freeze it in these huge gallon freezer bags so she has that ready. And then a couple of years ago, she decided she wanted to feed us french onion soup. And the same thing, she preps way ahead of time. She has bags of onions cut up already. So she works pretty hard I think for several weeks before with my parents hosting us for big holidays. It's like one after the other. It feels like there's Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then New Year's, and then Santo Reyes, a lot. Lately I've been more and more concerned about the toll it takes on my parents. They're in their seventies. My mom gets really tired.
She'll complain a lot about her hands hurting because she's got a little bit of arthritis. She's like a little older. It's also feels like it's more work because there's three grandchildren and there's kids and husbands and it just feels like we've multiplied, which is a really lovely feeling. But I can also sort of notice that my mom's stress about it is multiplied. She'll talk about it months ahead of time. I have to make the bacalao but I have to make twice as much. And then also, my father recently got diagnosed with dementia. So he was never as involved in the preparation, but he was definitely involved in hosting us all and he can't really do that role anymore. And it almost feels like we have to watch him a little too and make sure that he's okay in these kinds of gatherings.
I'm trying to work on it with my siblings, what can we do to help mom out? I've been sort of pushing my siblings a little more to be like, well, maybe everyone does Thanksgiving in their own nuclear families and we spare my mom one of the holidays. None of us has as comfortable or as big a house. So for the holidays it feels, I mean, we want to be there. It's comfortable. It's where we all grew up. It's big. It has a big yard for the kids. It is really tempting to want to go to their house. A micro version of the holidays happens every Sunday at my mom's house where people show up for dinner. When I am there, I try to help my mom doing all the extra stuff. She wants to kind of manage the cooking, but maybe I can do her dishes while she's cooking and I can clean her counters and kind of help her with some of things.
Paulina: But it's hard in part because I don't know that she's very used to relinquishing that role either. And then I also think that she really loves her house. She loves her kitchen. She knows where everything is, she knows where the salt and pepper is, and she knows where the spatulas are. And we have tried before to show up with food or show up and be like, we'll cook the food in your kitchen. And it just ends up annoying her because she's like, stop asking me where the spoons are. If the idea is to relieve some of the pressure, it doesn't seem like she feels pressure relieved just because we're doing the work, because we're still in her kitchen.
We're still using her space and we're still asking her to host us. It's been an adjustment in the last year and I think we've all gotten a bit better at maybe popping in just for dessert or maybe offering to host more or being a little more conscientious of my mom's time and energy. I just wonder what ways I could maybe keep opening the door for her to ask for help or just more ways for her to feel like we're there to support her and to make her happy and comfortable now that we're the adults and maybe we can take care of her a little bit.
Lantigua: I was not at all surprised by the tenderness and the loving concern that Paulina feels towards her parents. Passing on holiday traditions from one generation to the next is so important for so many of us, especially those who still have close ties to our immigrant roots. So Paulina's story made me think a lot about how hard this cultural transition can be. The passing of the baton. It can be logistically challenging and deeply emotional. So what can we as first gens do to make it smoother for our families? What should we be prepared to learn, to teach and to negotiate as our loved ones pass on these beautiful traditions? To help us figure it out, I called in an expert.
Pérez Kennealy:
My name is Trisha Pérez Kennealy. I am the owner of The Inn at Hastings Park in Lexington, Massachusetts. I am a trained chef. I am a Puerto Rican Jew. There are not many of us, but I am a very orgullosa BoricuaI'm Boricua pura, and I'm happy to be here.
Lantigua: I'm going to start with the easiest question that you're going to get. Which is what did you hear as you listened to Paulina's story?
Pérez Kennealy:
I heard a wonderful story about a family that really enjoys spending time together around the table. And it reminds me so much of my own family. And it's actually really related to what I do professionally in terms of running a hotel in a restaurant, because food is meant to nourish. It is meant to bring us together. And I think that there's some things that we might be able to do to help them come to a compromise so that mom is a little bit less stressed.
Lantigua: So let's talk strategy. What can Paulina and her siblings actually do without offending mom?
Pérez Kennealy:
So I think the most important thing is let's celebrate Paulina's mother for some of the things that she already does. She is organized and she plans ahead, okay? She's also able to cook in bulk. And if Paulina's family is anything, probably what my family are like, you have to have food for casts of hundreds, even if there's only 50 people coming. So I think the important thing is I think that they shouldn't pull back from having these events. And what I would recommend is, we know when these holidays are, her mother likes to plan ahead. You have four siblings. Get everyone involved with doing a part of it. And so it's not as overwhelming for mom, let's plan ahead. Oh, you're going to make the bacalao. Okay, I'm coming, my sister's coming and this is the day that we're going to do it and we're going to break it down.
The other thing is too often we forget about taking the time to learn about these recipes. So we have to think about that this is a very important part of their family history and tradition. We need to keep it going. And the way you keep it going is you get other people involved. Another thing that she said about her mother that is very impressive, her mother has a very organized kitchen, right? Her mother knows where everything is. I'm like that. I actually got really aggravated, people were trying to help me in my kitchen, but they kept putting things in the wrong places.
Lantigua: That's the worst.
Pérez Kennealy:
I labeled everything. So in my drawers, I actually, I worked with an organizer, but it was money well spent. Now people can help me wash dishes and put stuff away.
Lantigua: Where you want it.
Pérez Kennealy:
And the other thing is that it could also be very helpful with her father with the memory loss, right? Because it helps provide structure and order. And you can take it a step further. If you want your cabinet to look a certain way, take a picture of it, print it out, put it inside the cupboard and tell your family, this is what I want it to look like.
Lantigua: That is so next level.
Pérez Kennealy:
I'm Puerto Rican, I'm bossy. So I always tell people I'm going to get a little bit bossy right now because when you're a chef, there's a way we do things. And Paulina's mother, she knows how she wants it when she wants it. So let's build on that and use it to our advantage. And the other thing is too, I remember, I have a very dear friend. When my kids, I have three children, when they were little, I didn't always let them open their birthday presents at a party because little kids have no filter. And this is a dear friend of mine, she's 10 years older than I am, so she's like one step ahead of me.
And she said to me, you're depriving the gift giver of the joy of having given a present. And so what we need to remember is that we still need Paulina's parents to have the joy of being the patriarch and the matriarch of this incredible family. And they have so much to celebrate. It made me sad when she said, well, maybe we'll just come by for dessert. Take advantage of the moment. Because guess what? They're not going to be here forever. But it also should be a shared responsibility amongst the siblings.
Lantigua: Let's talk about this because one of the things, so Paulina, she is the youngest in her family. And sometimes youngest siblings have a tough time bossing their older siblings around and delegating. So for someone like Paulina, whether they're the youngest or not, who is in a sibling cohort where maybe they haven't traditionally exerted that type of leadership, how can a sibling who wants to take the lead in saying, hey everybody, we've all got to pitch in.
Pérez Kennealy:
I think you kind of need to come at it from the joy. We have all enjoyed sitting around mami and papi or abuelo and abuelas table for so long. And as long as mami and papi are in their house and are able to do it, we really need to work together to continue this tradition, but make it less stressful for mami and papi. And instead of being like, la que manda, right? Something tells me that Paulina is a lot like her mother. A lot of times when people are good cooks and love having their family around them, they're nurturers, right? They're nurturers.
Lantigua: Oh, totally. A hundred percent Paulina.
Pérez Kennealy:
And so she needs to use that. She needs to say, we really need to recognize that this time is precious. And yes, maybe it can be a little bit stressful when mami is a little bit stressed when we're having people together. But there are things that if we sort of plan ahead and make ourselves available to her, that we might make this easier for her. And I think the big thing is we want to help you do it your way, letting mami still mandar a little bit, but you're actually doing a lot of scaffolding under it to make sure that it's still happening.
Lantigua: All right, so let's talk about the scaffolding. Because you are a professional chef. You cook in bulk, you entertain en masse. For novices, for home cooks, for people who don't have the decade of experience that someone like Paulina's mom has throwing effect, what are some things that we can do really early to help us break it down into smaller, more manageable tasks?
Pérez Kennealy:
My mantra is sort of keep it simply elegant. Stick to recipes that you're pretty comfortable with. When you're having everyone over, the family over, it is not the time. You can try a new recipe, but make sure that you've tried it out before. It's also a good idea, write down how long it takes to make everything. And then you need to work backwards to make your work plan. Anything that you can do ahead of time, do it ahead of time. Because the reason why we bring people together with food is so that we can actually spend time with those people.
Lantigua: With them.
Pérez Kennealy:
And unfortunately, in our culture, there was a very long tradition of like, las mujeres, you're in the other room and we're together. We really should be moving towards really focusing on enjoying this beautiful meal and preparing this beautiful meal together. Be very organized about your shopping list. I have spreadsheets. I call it my food matrix. I have very detailed lists of what's happening where.
Lantigua: Paulina would totally have spreadsheets.
Pérez Kennealy:
Right? But I'm very clear about how am I breaking this recipe down and who can do what? Who's going to chop the onions? Who's going to rinse the lettuce? Who are the people that I can't stand cooking, but I love washing dishes, right?
Lantigua: Or I can set a beautiful table, but don't ask me to season anything.
Pérez Kennealy:
Know your audience. So that's the other thing too that Paulina should do. She should do a skill assessments of the family. You think I'm joking? I do this all the time.
Lantigua: She would be so good at that though. I'm laughing because she would be so good at that. Okay. Okay. So let's actually transition from that to the politics of food. Our own internal family politics.
Pérez Kennealy:
Of course.
Lantigua: So what are some words of wisdom you might impart around the issue of food, politics and family, especially when we are trying to elegantly transition a matriarchal tradition, I would say, that has really sat with the head of the family for many reasons, including their health, including capacity, including ability for the family to get together. There's so many complexities now.
Pérez Kennealy:
It has to be done con mucho amor, with lots of love. There has to be respect, there has to be love. But there also has to be humor. And I also think that for a lot of immigrant families, this idea of responsibility, we've worked so hard to get here and making mami and papi understand that part of the reason you worked so hard is so that when you were getting to this point in your life, that we could step in and begin to assume these traditions and responsibility with all of the love, honor, and respect that you deserve for having been so courageous to bring our family to this place. I don't believe in sugarcoating. And I think it's important to just be honest. Because if Paulina is noticing that her mother is tired, and especially as her father, dementia, my grandmother had dementia, my mother has something called mild cognitive impairment, which is the early stages. It's hard.
And we talk a lot in our Hispanic families, in our Latina families, but sometimes we don't always talk about the hard stuff. And so I think being direct and just saying, “Mira, mamí, I know that this is harder, we want to keep doing it, but we need you to kind of lead the way. You need to be a leader. And part of being a leader is knowing when it's time to teach the next generation to assume that responsibility.” And it's a gift, right? It is a gift for a patriarch or a matriarch to be able to pass along that tradition and to be able to see that your children are soaring and that they actually really did pay attention and they valued all of those lessons that you weren't sure if they were listening. Here's the test. They actually were, and they're so grateful for all that you've done so those traditions stay alive.
Lantigua: That's so beautiful. What a blessing to have you on the show.
Pérez Kennealy:
Muchísimas gracias, iIt was my pleasure.
Lantigua: All right, let's recap what we learned from Trisha. Make a work plan. Bring out the spreadsheets, set deadlines, create a strategy and delegate. You can be fun, loving and organized all at the same time. Gather your team. Review and evaluate the skills of every single family member, regardless of their age. Listen, the little ones can put napkins on the table. There is a task for everyone. So assign these tasks and play to everyone's strengths. Remind them that the shared goal is to support and to celebrate your elders. And remember, do it their way. Observe how your older relatives host, how they cook, how they entertain, and build on their tactics. Honor them by encouraging them to take the lead and show you their ways. Happy New Year everyone. See you on the other side. Thank you for listening and for sharing us.
How to Talk to Mami and Papi about Anything is an original production of LWC Studios. Virginia Lora is the show's producer. Tren Lightburn mixed this episode. I'm the creator and host, Juleyka Lantigua. On Twitter and Instagram, we're @TalkToMamiPapi.
Bye everybody. Same place next year!
CITATION:
Lantigua, Juleyka, host. “Stepping Up from Guest to Host at Family Gatherings ”
How to Talk to [Mamí & Papí] about Anything,
LWC Studios., December 26, 2022. TalkToMamiPapi.com.