A Rant

So I know that I said I would try to keep rants at a minimum, but I now know that that was a very unrealistic statement. My rant has to do with food, which I take very seriously by the way. I have noticed for some time now that many non-Americans are at a complete loss when it comes to our food. Take a look on any youtube video on this subject and the standard response to the question, "what is American food?" is "hamburgers and hotdogs" and/or "McDonald's". Aggravating indeed! Aggravating but understandable. After all, they didn't grow up here, and lets face it, even Americans have to look pretty hard to find a decent restaurant these days with Applebee's and the like taking over. But what blew my mind was seeing a video where two Americans were asking what American food was! And all they could think of was hamburgers and hotdogs!!! All I can think of is that they must've had some seriously deprived childhoods.

The thing about American food is that there's a limited amount that can be considered "pan-American"(food that crosses through all regions). Lets see....apple pie, hamburgers, hotdogs, corndogs, potato chips, chocolate-chip cookies, etc. When dealing with American food, it has to be broken up. America is a vast land after all. There's the South, New England, Mid-Atlantic, Mid-West, South-West, and Pacific Northwest. And to complicate it even more, there are some significant variations within each of these regions.

I grew up in North Carolina and Virginia and my family has been in this region for a very long time. Growing up, just like any typical child of the U.S. nowadays, I was exposed to all the usual junk and fastfood. However, unlike those unfortunate two men on youtube, I was also raised on traditional fare to the Virginia/Carolina region. For breakfast there would be such dishes as biscuits and gravy, fried apples, grits, skillet cake with apples sauce and brown sugar, sausage, bacon, eggs, biscuits smothered with butter and jam, apple butter, or perhaps drizzled with honey, etc. For lunch and supper, anything from chicken and dumplings, eastern NC style pork BBQ, cornbread, spoonbread, hush puppies, Brunswick stew, Smithfield ham, greens, etc. I'm going to stop right here because I could quite literally go on and on and on.

I'm not as well-versed on the other regions of the country but I'll write a little on what I do know, or at least what I think I know....corrections are welcome. All I know about New England is that apparently they like boiled dinners, clam bakes, clam chowder, lobster, Indian pudding, lots of baked fruit pies and cobblers (?), Boston brown bread, and boston baked beans. I also know that they have more influence from the "Ellis Island immigrants" such as Italian, Irish, Polish and the like as opposed to the South which didn't get much of the later immigrants and remain more or less unchanged.....or at least less so than the Northeast. The south tends to have English, Scots-Irish, German, African, and Native-American influences with a few Swiss and French pockets. But back to the main topic, the Mid-Atlantic (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware), I seem to be even less versed in than New England. They seem to have a bigger German presence in food, especially around PA. And of course NY and NJ probably has the biggest Italian presence in the U.S. I think this region is the most diverse, ethnically speaking. I've heard there are a lot of diners and one unique thing they serve is scrapple which is some sort of mystery meat loaf (?)....never had it. The closest thing I've probably had to scrapple is liver mush which seems to be a North Carolinian specialty but also served in Virginia as well. Ok, moving onward. The Midwest seems to have plain food with delicate seasonings, or so I've heard. I tend to think of meat and potato's when I think of the Mid-West. There's a big German and Scandinavian influence, so there's hot pots, ludefisk, and some Swedish crepe thing, the name escapes me at the moment. They seem to eat a lot more beef in this region, for obvious reasons, just look at the history of the place. Ok, the Southwest has a huge Mexican influence in their food. It's like a fusion between southern and Mexican. Or maybe it's more separate, I'm not sure. They seem to love beef and chillies hence the food is more spicy. Every Texan and Californian I've ever come across takes to much whining about the lack of good Mexican food on the East coast. I find it annoying, get over it. All I know about the Pacific North West is that they like salmon and lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. Sounds very healthy. I've also heard that they have a lot of Yankee transplants, so I would expect there to be a New England-like take on food as well. California seems to be a blend of every culture known to man with strong Mexican influences, sour dough bread, cioppino (some kind of seafood soup), and sushi. This is just barely scratching the surface on American food. It would be impossible for me to write everything about American food....it would turn into a giant book. Even to take one region, say the south, would require tons of space. There are so many sub-regions of the south with different takes on food: the upper south (Virginia, parts of Maryland, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee), the deep south (South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana), Appalachia (the mountains in Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia influenced by mostly English, Scots-Irish, and some German and Native American), The Tidewater region (coasts of Virginia and North Carolina), the Northern neck (the coasts of Northern Virginia and Maryland and is most noted for blue crabs and crab cakes), the low country (coasts of South Carolina and Georgia with probably the most African influence), Cajun and Creole (concentrated in Louisiana with strong French and African influences), Florida (which is a category unto itself and includes such foods as key lime pie and swamp cabbage), etc. etc. etc.

So, here's my point. Obviously America has unique and traditional food cultures with long histories which doesn't include hotdogs, hamburgers, chicken tenders, and various other greasy mystery meats. My mother makes the same things as her mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, etc. etc. did, with a few changes here and there. Food, just like other aspects of culture is not static, but there is a definite continuation linking today's traditional foods with the foods of the past going all the way back to the colonial period. I think the U.S. along with many other countries are starting to lose a lot of this because of fastfood, pre-packaged food, long work hours, and the continuing of American's distancing themselves from the land that they live on and what grows here. The variety of our diet has gotten smaller and smaller since the 1950's. I'm going to stop here because I'm starting to get side-tracked onto another topic. I will just say to you non-Americans visiting that if you want to find good food, you've got to do a bit of research. Ask the locals where they eat out. Look for non-chain restaurants. And if someone invites you to eat at their house, accept, because that is where most of the traditional foods are still made. I invite anyone reading this to leave comments on their food culture.