Why We Like What We Like

 

NaBloPoMo Post #18

On the Topic of Food, Part One

 

A general topic that I've wanted to write about for a while now is "food," but in particular how the ingredients in and preparations of certain dishes that are thought of as basic "plain," "ordinary," or "country" dishes can vary so much between different regions of the United States, and even between different families of the same region.

I was born and raised in Kentucky, and my family on both my mother's and father's sides had been in Kentucky for generations. Not only had they lived in Kentucky for generations, but they had stayed in the same relatively small area of Kentucky. So there weren't a lot of outside influences coming in from other cultures or regions to shake up family recipes and ways of doing things. 

Therefore, dishes that I grew up eating, with only a few exceptions, were the same dishes that most people who lived in and near my county were eating, prepared basically the same way. I think it was only a few years ago that I realized that there were some favorite meals of my father's that didn't quite fit in with the ordinary fare we usually had. It hit me that he probably had never had oysters until he joined the navy, and I probably would not have been one of those rare children who LOVED rolled oysters, if he hadn't brought that taste home with him. And there were a few simple dishes that my mother prepared a certain way to please my father, even though her mother had taught her a different way to prepare them, and their families had never lived more than a few miles from one another. This seemed very interesting to me, and I wanted to write about it in a way that might be interesting to other people. 

So that's what I'm going to attempt to do. I hope that what I end up putting down on paper turns out to be as interesting as it seemed to be when I wrote it in my head. The introduction might be a bit jumbled, and I don't expect it to flow correctly. But later posts in the series should be more cohesive.

So I hope you'll return to read future posts about food and the things that influence our tastes. I'll write about my parents and how they were raised; how my husband and I learned to like each other's favorite foods and how we learned to cook for one another; how where I was raised, there were NO fast food or ethnic restaurants and what it was like the first times I got to experience those things; how some people honestly have never given any thought to the fact that things can be cooked and served differently from the way they were brought up, and; other things regarding food and family that have popped into my head over the years, demanding to be written about.

So, until next time...

~ ~ Lori   

The Dumpling Dilemma