I hate foie gras. It tastes so metallic and repulsive to me. Every “starred” restaurant I go to has a foie course and every time I take a small bite and regret it.
I saw kale listed in combo with romaine in a “Caesar salad”. NO. That’s just wrong.
As for me, coconut doesn’t belong in chocolate. Or on cakes. The only way I’ve been able to tolerate it is in ANZAC biscuits…the dried/desiccated coconut used is tolerable. But otherwise, no.
I’ve had raw oysters and but I really don’t like them and wouldn’t voluntarily go to a raw bar to eat.
Fois gras? No. Same for liver and onions.
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Otoh, I’m very fond of collard greens, well-stewed collard greens that is, and while I’m not as fond of (cooked) “regular” kale, that too is “fine” in a rotation of leafy greens. It’s the singularly fetishistic status of kale (and especially raw kale), that drives me bonkers. And yeah, I’m convinced that its extreme popularity is 80-90% “fad” and 10-20% “novelty” for the many Americans of post-Boomer age that apparently had never even heard of the stuff growing up, much less ate it as kids. I mean, I realize it’s very nutritious, but so are other non-lettuce “greens”, and spinach in particular is virtually identical when you compare their nutritional stats side-by-side (each has a bit more of some things than the other, but they’re mostly neck-and-neck…)
“American” isn’t easy to define in a few words, especially these days when everyone and their third cousins are “embracing their unique cultures” (real, “redefined”, and sometimes imagined), but I don’t think it’s any less definite than “British”, “French”, “Italian”, etc., despite equally significant differences among people from different parts of those countries. (And in that regard, it’s worth noting that Italy and Germany in particular have been singular “unified” countries for not much longer the US, and their language, much less their regional food and customs, didn’t become really “standardized” until the 1930s or even later…)
Basically, what I mean it what was, until a generation or so ago (partially) a pretty typical, “assimilated-to-a-more-or-less-DAR/waspish norm” (even in the relatively few places that weren’t actually WASP-dominated at local levels…) Think, Hollywood/TV sitcom/chain supermarket/suburban norms… I was born, and have lived most of my life, in NYC (mostly in Brooklyn, geographically, but with parents born and raised in Manhattan, and cousins, and plenty of friends, from Queens, and later from Long Island, the northern NY suburbs, and NJ), but I lived in Eastern Mass for elementary and middle school, went to school in Philly (and lived there full-time from my sophomore year until graduation), and while I’ve never lived anywhere else, I visited Chicago quite a few times (for a week at a time) when a friend was in grad school there and have spent at least a few solid weeks in a number of other cities for work, which meant not “seeing” a whole lot of those places, but getting to know regular-people residents more than many tourists do in the places they visit, and have always found there to be a pretty clear, identifiable commonality among people at least one (and certainly) more generation(s) from their immigrant ancestors. Sure, there were noticeable differences, but mostly those stood out against a background of commonality…
Difficult to discuss the issue without having a political slant to it. So, here’s my political slant. I think it becomes less easy to define when people choose to add “qualifications” to the description as, for example, “German Americans” or “British Asian”. No reason why they sholdnt, of course, but I think it does complicate the matter. I have it in mind (and am happy to be corrected) that, say, in France and Spain, you are simply French or Spanish regardless of background. In the latter case, though, it is not “simple” if you are Basque or Catalan.
By the by, there seems to be a decreasing use of “British” in the UK. To a large extent, the Scots and Welsh have always defined themselves by their national names but the increase seems to be in people defining themselves as English, rather than British. There was a survey not so long back that produced evidence that people from England who define themselves as English, tend to have one set of political beliefs, whilst people from England who define as British tend to have different beliefs. Personally I define myself in different ways depending on circumstances - European, British, English, Cestrian, Mancumian and, always, a Manchester City FC fan.
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Okay. My initial thought was South American? Central American? Then I started thinking southern? California? Brooklyn? Manhattan? It seemed to me each might have very different perspectives on what “good for you” means. I also figured many didn’t know what UK means, and and even more had never been there.
I was wondering if you might have meant something like…
“a pretty typical, “assimilated-to-a-more-or-less-DAR/waspish norm” (even in the relatively few places that weren’t actually WASP-dominated at local levels…) Think, Hollywood/TV sitcom/chain supermarket/suburban norms…”
…but having spent my childhood in the outer boroughs, I never knew anybody like that in real life. I did not think of “Americans” as having a singular perspective.
I read your point about "and have always found there to be a pretty clear, identifiable commonality among people at least one (and certainly) more generation(s) from their immigrant ancestors. ", and figure the commonality was the idea that things that are good for you taste bad. Is that right?
A few days ago I was meeting with a man and his son, presumably the man was from some place in Mexico, and his son born here, and the man was concerned that his son was refusing to eat at McDonald’s. He felt it was better to eat “everything”. I worried that the young man was too preoccupied with what he was eating, but dad was concerned about it being a detriment to son"s physical health.
Hey…what are those little pictures next to my name ?
The 1st picture on the left means that you have contributed at least 500 posts to the forum, and the one next to it means that you were in the top 20% of posters for the month. I just noticed the little pictures next to mine this morning as well.
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While Americans certainly do have similarities across the country - I wish when people talk about us as a monolith that they would keep in mind that a drive from NYC to San Francisco is roughly the same as driving from Madrid to Moscow. We are a big country …
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You can throw sea urchins in with that bunch.
Like eating snot and paying for the privilege.
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Yes, not a fan myself, but the people who love them, really love them. Think certain types of food are polarizing. A lot of love it or hate it items, which for me comes comes down to texture mostly.
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Yeaaaaah. Also, they’re apparently invasive and overpopulated on the west coast, so why are they still priced as a rare ingredient?
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“Badges” you have earned here at HO.
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Yes. But.
Speaking as a foreigner, I accept I may not spot the nuanced differences when I visit America. But it seems to be it is much more homogeneous a community than if I was going to make a long trip across Europe - generally the same language is spoken, same TV, same major retail brands, same politics, etc. I only need to travel 22 miles from the UK before I get to a very different language and culture. And then, within 30 minutes drive further on, I find yet another language.
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You’d be mistaken. The spots immigrants migrated towards generally mirrored where they were coming from and so being “American” is a complex endeavor, not a tidy absolute.
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This is an argument that no one will ever win - in my opinion I think it is the common language that masks the differences here in the US while different languages highlights differences in Europe.
To bring it back to food - New York City (Manhattan) dining habits are very diverse, immigrant food driven, eating later at night. You can drive 30 miles north into NY State - no “immigrant” food, dinner is at 6-7pm, rural community. A few hours from NYC you can reach Amish country - horse buggies, we’ll call it Swiss German, cheese, very rural. Cross the Mason-Dixon line to the south - you can argue a different language (wink), historically heavily African influenced cuisine with US crops - you’ll be hard pressed to find grits in NYC (especially in home cooking - restaurants occasionally).
We are also a young country and given that we have been one country, I’m not sure we hold onto regional traditions as tightly as European countries do. But we have a few - New Orleans has, arguably, our most recognizable regional dishes - beignet, gumbo . . . but the south will lay claim to grits, within the south there are clear preferences say for corn bread. Maine will fight fiercely for claims to Lobster. California cuisine is still very recognizable (though has spread throughout the country), San Francisco will fight for sourdough . . . Amish cheese versus Wisconsin cheese . . . . . Tex Mex food . . . .
I think our lack of a need to fight for local identity from shifting borders/changing occupancy makes these delineations less distinct (though we still do stake claims for sure). We see what we want to see - most people see differences within their “group”, while outsiders see similarities. And if you look at our politics you can see some clear lines - just a common language.
Anyway - we are far away from food again . . . . .
I’m adding to my feeling that foie gras ruins everything it touches . . .
I don’t like cardamom, it tastes horrible - like lavender - I don’t think it belongs in food.
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Yes, I understand that. German immigrants, say, intent on farming will have moved to areas where the land was familiar for growing the crops they intended to grow. And later German immigrants will have often moved to where there were already German immigrants. Both of these are the nature of immigration. But, surely, then is then and now is now - obviously with the exceptions of fairly newly arrived immigrant groups and those where numbers mean original cultures and language are preserved. Again, surely, that’s the nature of immigration?
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We were in Portsmouth, NH, last year and did a little boat tour. The guide mentioned that the waters are well stocked with lobster. The New Hampshire boats which fish the waters call their catch “lobster” whilst the Maine boats fishing the same waters call them “Maine lobster”. Nothing like a bit of marketing?
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I don’t think we’re far away from food and I certainly don’t mean to argue.
Food and the geography of America are intertwined to me, who for instance, hasn’t been East of the Mississippi since the ‘70’s.
We’re too sprawling and disjointed to be connected in a unified way.
At least that’s what’s appealing about food today everywhere for me.
So much about that article made me chuckle.
I am in the kale fan camp but I get that it isn’t a vegetable for everyone.
Here are things that really grind my gears:
- hidden candied fruit in cannolis. PUT A SIGN ON THAT! What an awful surprise!!!
- COKE AND PEPSI ARE NOT THE SAME. I rarely drink soda, but when I do, that better be a Coke. I’m prepared to fight anyone on this.
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Interesting. But that’s basically “backlash”, isn’t it? I have no British family connections at all so I have no personal or even close-vicarious experience of this sort of thing, but it seems to me I remember a big push for “multiculturalism” starting (slowly) in the 70s and then gaining real momentum in the 80s, when a big push to reducing at least the perception of English social and political hegemony in the UK… (And yes, I realize that maybe a little more in the UK than here, because they had more solidly rooted regional history, those “other” groups have also historically harbored their own prejudices against The English (especially southern English), but by sheer dint of political (and financial) centralization in London and the Home Counties, wasn’t it true that the latter dominated “British” Culture for at least the last couple of centuries?)
In the US, we’ve had a analogous “reaction”, with descendants of immigrants from the nationalities/cultures that were previously fell within the umbrella of the Western/Northern European, Protestant Idealized Norm (many of whose families have lived here, with little if any connection to their ancestral homelands, for many generations) now tending to assert their own “unique” cultural identities, with there being not much real doubt that it’s a reaction to the anti-assimilationist push to “celebrate” the unique cultural identities of previously culturally-submerged groups, and more recent immigrant populations. In other words, if they’re/we’re supposed to celebrate “others’” “unique differentness”, they’re damned well going to do so, too, even if it means digging up traditions that died out with their great-grandparents, or adopting newly “discovered” ones…
(In a nutshell, anyway. That’s obviously an oversimplification of a lot of post 1960s social, cultural, and political trends, but I think a reasonably fair and accurate one…)
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