Essay on Food, Sex, Love in Like Water for Chocolate

“Like Water for Chocolate” by Laura Esquivel, is a beautiful romantic tale of an impossible passionate love during the revolution in Mexico. The romance is followed by the sweet aroma of kitchen secrets and cooking, with a lot of imagination and creativity. The story is that of Tita De La Garza, the youngest of all daughters in Mama Elena’s house. According to the family tradition she is to watch after her mother till the day she does, and therefore cannot marry any men. Tita finds her comfort in cooking, and soon the kitchen becomes her world, affecting every emotion she experiences to the people who taste her food. Esquivel tells Titas story as she grows to be a mature, blooming women who eventually rebels

It is a known fact that every human being communicates through language, but perhaps a little known fact that we communicate even through the food we eat. We communicate through food all the meanings that we assign and attribute to our culture, and consequently to our identity as well. Food is not only nourishment for our bodies, but a symbol of where we come from. In order to understand the basic function of food as a necessity not only for our survival, we must look to politics, power, identity, and culture.

For a guest to make such a statement about a meal prepared for him in the presence of his hostess shows such a breach of etiquette that even Wangero should have reprimanded him. Wangero, however, chooses to ignore the insult and instead shows through her healthy appetite that her newfound convictions do not extend as far as the dinner table.

The speaker watches his grandmother prepare the green chili con carne in awe, knowing all along that she wants to please him, even if it means sacrificing her true love in order to take care of her family. Sexual metaphors aside, it is clear that the speaker loves his grandmother immensely and offers a sacrifice of his own. Even though red chiles are clearly his favorite, he is willing to clean his plate of green chili con carne, all the way down to the "last bit of tortilla". He needs to a tall glass of water to fight off the intense spiciness of the dish. He even hisses from the heat, but masks his pain in order to not upset his grandmother. In the end, the grandmothers slaving away in front of the stove allowed her to vent her repressed sexual feelings and desire to be young again. She relishes in the fact that cooking will always be her escapism from the sad truth of growing old.

In Jessica Harris’s “The Culinary Season of my Childhood” she peels away at the layers of how food and a food based atmosphere affected her life in a positive way. Food to her represented an extension of culture along with gatherings of family which built the basis for her cultural identity throughout her life. Harris shares various anecdotes that exemplify how certain memories regarding food as well as the varied characteristics of her cultures’ cuisine left a lasting imprint on how she began to view food and continued to proceeding forward. she stats “My family, like many others long separated from the south, raised me in ways that continued their eating traditions, so now I can head south and sop biscuits in gravy, suck chewy bits of fat from a pigs foot spattered with hot sauce, and yes’m and no’m with the best of ‘em,.” (Pg. 109 Para). Similarly, since I am Jamaican, food remains something that holds high importance in my life due to how my family prepared, flavored, and built a food-based atmosphere. They extended the same traditions from their country of origin within the new society they were thrusted into. The impact of food and how it has factors to comfort, heal, and bring people together holds high relevance in how my self-identity was shaped regarding food.

Both Riccardo’s parents are from Mexico in the city of Puebla. Matilda, Riccardo 's mother, is very fluent in English. Upon her arrival in the USA, she was encouraged to take ESL classes, which she did twice a week. Matilda and Antonio both have a history of diabetes and hypertension in their families. One grandma 76 years of age is alive and living in Mexico with chronic hypertension. Matilda is very concerned for herself and Riccardo as she is overweight; she monitors Riccardo’s sweet intake and only allows sweet treats on occasions. Matilda tries to prepare cultural foods using more healthy alternatives avoiding fats and sweets and reducing carbohydrates. This is challenging as it alters the taste of many of the meals that originate from her childhood home in Mexico, but she knows it is well worth it.

wrote the article “My Mom Couldn’t Cook”, argues that point by being the sole cook for his wife and daughter. Junod was inspired to cook for his family, by growing up eating the food prepared by a mother who he realized hated to cook and a later understanding that led him to the realization that she did not know how to cook. Tom Junod writes an entertaining piece, his credibility is built through the personal stories he shares and his emotional appeals have a way of keeping the audience interested, but his language becomes distracting and overall it takes away from his argument.

“When you got to the table you couldn 't go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn 't really anything the matter with them, -- that is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.” (Twain, 1)

A soul in distress is always looking for a mean to escape through a difficult situation. In the story Like Water For Chocolate, Tita De La Garza who suffered like no other, isn’t the exception. This young woman since birth was instilled with a very deep love for cooking. When the people who she loved most betrayed her, cooking eased her pain. All of the intense emotions that she felt while preparing food, were unknowingly added to the recipes. The author, Laura Esquivel through the use of symbolism, she demonstrates that the role of food in the story isn’t there just to sustain life, it also transmits strong emotions such as desire, sorrow and healing felt by the

meal she cooked regardless of how hungry she was. His mother also shows qualities of a

Following, we learn that Mama Elena has no milk to feed Tita, which makes Nacha, the family cook - her official caretaker as she replaces Mama Elena. This is important to point out because the initial separation of the two main characters is quite evident; there is no mother-daughter bond that should have been established, Mama Elena doesn’t have time to worry about her, “without having to worry about feeding a newborn baby on top of everything else.” (7) We grow to understand why Tita forms other vital bonds with Nacha, and of course the food that surrounds her daily, helping her not only to grow but acts as an outlet for her emotions. “From that day on, Tita’s domain was the kitchen…this explains the sixth sense Tita developed about everything concerning food.” (7) From the beginning, Tita is given barely any freedom, she is given a purpose, she will not marry anyone until Mama Elena is alive, she is to look after her, which becomes a great conflict when the love of her life, Pedro, is to marry her sister, Rosaura, and not her. Mama Elena wants to hear nothing about Tita’s frustration. Mama Elena herself has lost her true love and because of it is insensitive to Tita’s love with Pedro. The reaction of each woman to her predicament helps explain the opposite characters. Mama Elena lets the loss of her young love turn into hatred for anything but tradition, and

Mama Elena, sensing Tita's reluctance to participate in her sister's upcoming wedding, warns her, "I won't stand for disobedience... nor am I going to allow you to ruin your sister's wedding, with you acting like the victim. You're in charge of all the preparations starting now, and don't ever let me catch you with a single tear or even a long face, do you hear?" (27). At the wedding party the following day, although Tita keeps a perfectly calm demeanor, her true feelings about her sister's marriage to Pedro are revealed in the guests' first bite of the Chabela wedding cake. "The moment [the guests] took their first bite of the cake, everyone was flooded with a great wave of longing... [T]he weeping was just the first symptom of a strange intoxication that seized the guests" (39), all but Tita, on whom the cake had no effect. The author uses the cake's effect on the guests to reveal first, Tita's grief over her loss of love through the guests uncontrollable weeping and second, her disgust over her sister and Pedro's

The role of food and culinary skills is evident in the excerpt and can be connected to the overall theme of the novel. Esquivel relates food to the mood Tita is currently facing. Tita’s sorrow and hopeless love affects her cooking techniques and creates a cake that ironically is supposed to represent and symbolize love and the devotion of marriage, instead it contradicts the traditional aspects of marriage and does the complete opposite; it creates a turmoil atmosphere. Due to Tita’s bond with cooking, her emotions plays a significant role in her dishes, and also affects the people around her; whatever mood Tita is feeling, people feel it too. “The weeping” (39) of the guests at the wedding is triggered by the piece of cake they ate, Tita’s tear symbolizes dreadfulness and failure to be with her true love. In a way, Tita indirectly seeks vengeance against her mother, Mama Elena, and Rosaura, for agreeing to the wedding. Tita’s tears where a way of releasing the gloominess from her soul, and allowing it to flow to other people’s hearts. Rosaura states that Tita did “add something to the cake.” (40) Rosaura’s materialistic and shallow character doesn’t

Adrià felt like an invader at the affair , saying “artists all over battle all their lives to receive an invitation to display their work at documenta and now I, a cook, am asked to go along!” The organizer of the affair said he believed ,that to create a new cooking technique was as complicated and challenging as painting a great picture. He said that he saw the work Adria does has a new artistic discipline, that shows cuisine should be included as a new art form. Nonetheless during this exciting time there was some controversy concerning Adrià’s participation in documenta, some cross-examined the idea that cooking and art were both one in the same. Despite the fact that dishes from radical cuisines are aesthetically pleasing meaning you eat first with your eyes, one of his colleagues, Chef Blumenthal was not on the same side about the idea that he might be an artist. Even though the Chef does compare the restaurant exhibit like going to the theater, the cinema or an art gallery. Adrià himself has compared a dinner at his restaurant as evening out at the cinema. When people confer about a meal there, they usually discuss the rhythm and flow of the dishes, and that the movements of the waiters and sommeliers are unbelievably choreographed. He said he has "turned eating into an experience that supersedes

The entire De La Garza family participates in sausage making. Everyone has a job in order to complete the amount that they set forth to complete each day. One afternoon, as they are preparing the sausages, Tita tells her mother that Pedro Muzquiz would like to pay her a visit due to his interest in marrying Tita, still remembering the first time that they met. It was During Tita and Pedro’s adolescent years. Their families came together for a traditional Mexican Christmas dinner. While at dinner Tita, the youngest of her two sisters, was forced to serve candies to the attendees, like she is usually required to do in addition to cooking, cleaning and sewing. While performing this task, she came in contact with Pedro. He gazed at her like no