Assignment 1-Culture & Food

My family has so many different cultures combined, Irish, Ukrainian, Swedish, German, Native American, Norwegian, Scottish, and more, that when it all comes together, I feel like we are probably just mainstream American culture now. We do not really gravitate to any of them specifically, and we are just typical Christians so there aren’t really too many rules on eating that go with that.

 Although we are just mainstream American culture my parents have made sure to make us try foods from all different cultures. My mom growing up lived in many different countries because her father was in the air force.  Also my dad is a pilot, so my parent’s home schooled all five of us so we could travel around with my Dad.

I was always kind of a picky eater, but my mom made me try everything So over the years we have traveled starting at about age eight I traveled to Poland and worked at a camp teaching English, where we ate things like cereal with warm milk, and meat sliced out of a can, meat dumplings, and strange soups, and lot of bread. Then to Russia we worked in orphanages there for a while, staying with Russian families eating lots of borsch (beet soup) and cabbage and tomatoes and cucumbers and bread and no just normal water all carbonated things and barely anything cold. Then came Germany where I stayed with my moms German friends from her childhood and worked on their farm, and ate lots of potatoes and bread and marmalade and fruit and sausage and chocolate and they rarely drink water, mostly juice and carbonated things, or alcohol. Then there was Australia camping the whole time there on the beach and surfing, food wasn’t too different but all the portion sizes were way smaller and overall it just seemed healthier. Next I spent time in China on a swim team, and we got to try so many types of food, everything from like normal things like fried rice, to weird things like chicken feet, lots of tea, and tons of unrecognizable food. Next was Taiwan and this was somewhat similar to China, but instead of being on a swim team I was a kindergarten teacher and lived with an exchange student we had, had stay with us many years before. So here I actually lived with a family and made food with them and here the food was so different for me, lots of root type foods, bamboo, lots of rice and just really weird combinations of food. Like a desert was shaved ice with like a sweet purple type bean on it.  Also lots of soups, most of the time I didn’t recognize what I was eating and everything was just served and eaten in such a different manor. They also drink mainly tea, rarely cold water, where I stayed all the water had to be boiled, so if I just wanted plain water they gave it to me hot. Or there was like soda. They had tons of great fresh fruit and vegetables. Also every year my family used to go down to Mexico on a missions trip with our church to build houses and we always eat traditional food there, so over the years I’ve spent quite a bit of time there. These are just the places we stayed for long periods of time, but we drove through France and stopped for a meal, stayed in Austria for a while and layovers in London, and Korea.

            Also over the years we have had exchange students come and stay with us when we were at home, and we learned a lot from them too.

            I think all these things have really affected my eating habits because I’ve spent time in each of these cultures and I think I just kind of pick and choose the things I like best about each

The books I looked at had to do with Taiwanese cooking and one on what American food Culture is.

Mei-Li Liu. Skipping Stones, Nov/Dec2000, Vol. 12 Issue 5, p19, 1p; Reading Level (Lexile):(AN 3819485).Print

Long, Lucy M. Regional American Food culture. N.p.: Greenwood Press, 2009. Feb2010, Vol. 25 Issue 1, p294-304, 11p.Print