This piece was recorded in a single morning, but it was a long time in the making. I first arrived at Aamaa's house in Kaskikot back in the fall of 2002, with the intention of staying there for two months while I taught English at a nearby school. Since then, I've been back five more times, including a nine-month stay beginning in August 2003. During that year, I became engaged in all household activities — except for milking the temperamental buffalo — from cutting grass to carrying water.

Aamaa is a rarity in rural Nepal: a single mother, whose husband was killed by lightning when her two infant daughters were still nursing. Those girls, Bishnu and Malika, are now in their mid-twenties (my age), and living in this household of women in a male-dominated, manual-labor based society has been an incredible experience.

The reporter, Laura Spero, enjoying a picnic in Nepal.

Churning milk was one of the most colorful and awkward adventures of my immersion in rural Nepali labor. I used to make Bishnu and Aamaa wait for an hour and a half or more while I fruitlessly pulled that rope back and forth, peering every so often into the teko to look for that resistant disk of giu, and most importantly, refusing any aid or input. After a year I was able to set up the entire operation myself, churn the milk, extract the giu, put everything away, and offer Aamaa a glass of mui.

Aamaa, Didi and Bishnu opened their door, kitchen, beds, and small rice pot to me with no questions or conditions when I was 22 years old. We have shared countless adventures and trials together, and for me, recording this story with Aamaa was an opportunity not only to offer a pinhole peek at her life, but to share a little bit our unique mother-daughter relationship, which spans about as great a cultural distance as possible, but remains as simple as a cup of fermented milk.

Pulling this piece together, I found myself searching for similar cultural metaphors in the U.S. The best I could come up with was apple pie, which apparently contains a warmth and feel-good value far beyond its ingredients, and also roughly of symbolizes the fruit of honest labor, or an entire household system that is in good health. Are there other culturally specific foods out there that transcend their ingredients in this way, that reach both deep inside a home and outside of it to the community, with the message: "Another day's work, another day's lovin', still going strong and don't this taste good?"