what I eat. You what you eat or what?
I’ve been thinking about food lately. Not like, what will I eat or cook, but really thinking about the ways people view food. It started when I joined Facebook!. There is an application titled “Ghetto snacks“. Eye roll, grimace. Now, I’m all for having fun and was thrilled to receive several other less…uh what word am I looking for [insert] applications, but this one stuck in my craw. Many of the items are candy, but a few stood out to me as regional/ethnic foods (plantain chips, pork rinds, Malta etc.) and, that sorta saddened me.
I grew up in a GeeChee/Gullah home for the most part. Sure, my grandmother-in her quest for ultimate northern exposure made pasta and potatoes; which my resistant grandfather would eat in addition to rice. We ate rice everyday, and I still do. It is a part of the coastal Carolinian culture, it is part of who I am.
As a Native New Yorker and a vegetarian, rice and the West African peoples’ rice history has been one of very few cultural items I’ve been able to incorporate and pass on to my own children. Rice as it may, also conjoins the Carolinian and Caribbean cultures Favorite Guy and I share. Rice though, is not served at high holidays, weddings, graduations et al.; rice is low brow, rice isn’t classy-rice is ghetto.
“Low-brow, ghetto food”?! This didn’t make sense growing up, but now at 36 I’m tainted enough to understand and have even partaken in the food caste system. Perhaps, seeing the Facebook! application opened my eyes to just how ignorant (that’s the word) this practice is. I have to say, I was flooded by thoughts of all the ways in which the things we eat define us. From Ernest J. Gaines’ salt meat reference in The Sky is Gray, Jill Scott’s, “rice and gravy, biscuits baby and black-eyed peas”, Machito’s Sopa de Pichon and many others. Yet, this tale and songs of which I speak aren’t tales of poverty and despair, but rather comeuppance, joyous occasions, kinship and love even. Attaching caste and class to foods and the people who eat them-food shaming, if you will, is the antithesis of the true meaning of food and dining, of culture, of civilization.
So, let’s dish-Who are you? What are some of your regional/cultural/childhood food favorites?
This post was originally published [here] in April of this year. With the holidays fast approaching, I thought it a fine time to revisit the ways food has enriched our lives and the lives of those around us.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I too think alot about the foods that I consume. I feel that I have a pretty balanced diet (mostly vegetables, fruit & natural foods), although at times I miss some of the “soul food” that I was raised on. I have never been a fan of sweets or desserts that my mom still makes, thankfully, but I am definitely a fan of starchy foods! I love rice, potatoes, bread and go weeks on end eating these things because of the gratifying taste, these foods also put on weight if you don’t exercise regularly! I’m not much of a meat eater either – only seafood or fish on occasion. The way I eat now is MUCH different from the way my parents cooked for us. As a child, our diet consisted of soul food: greens, pork chops, ribs, etc. foods laden with grease and butter! If I would have continued eating this way into adulthood, I would have been 300 pounds by now! I eat the way I do now for health reasons more so than culturally, besides a diet rich in natural foods makes me feel better.
I’m a cultural food girl all the way. My favs would have to be soul food, of course, and Mexican and Italian cuisines. I love the comfort they bring, much of which is derived from the memories of great times and love that the foods bring, and the ways in which families are centered around these cuisines. You would NEVER have any of these without involving family and friends.
I’ve never been ashamed of loving or eating soul food, and would be pretty heartbroken if I were ever stripped of it. I feel what Gina was saying about the added fat that our grands and great-grands use to make soul food dishes, but there is always more than one way to skin a cat (sorry Tameka, that was said with love). The butter and the grease don’t have to be added. I substitute a lot. Instead of frying, I bake. Instead of butter, I use olive oil. Instead of breading, I brown, lol. Still just as yummy and just as down home.
Barbara´s last blog ..It Can’t Be the End
I really don’t like to hear people say things like “ghetto food”, because really, food is food and we like what we like. I think it’s perhaps narrow minded not to try new foods, but it doesn’t make you ghetto if you like to eat the foods you were raised on. That’s your background and culture, nothing diminish or be ashamed of.
I like Barbara am a big cultural food person. Having been raised in New Jersey and lived and worked in New York I’ve tried some of everything. I love Italian, Chinese, Thai, Creole and Jamaican. I enjoy some soul food too. Yummy, I’m getting hungry just thinking about it.
I also agree there are lots of changes you can make that cut the grease and fat in soul food. Just this summer my aunt made collard greens with coconut milk. I’ll have to get the recipe. It was delicious. My mother who is a die hard pork in the greens cooker loved them. I was so glad she did, because I’ve been trying to introduce her to different ways to cook her food. My little one is allergic to pork and we’ve cut it out of our diets. She honestly got the revelation that change could be good and heart healthy.
These foods are as ghetto as you let them get stigmatized. When my husband and I were married we chose to get married on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. We wanted the Tico typical dish of rice and beans made for our reception and we had to talk our wedding planner into it since it was not considered classy enough for our wedding, a Norte Americano wedding. Whatever, we insisted and it was really good. We make it a few times/month at home and it takes us back to our wedding.
Food is food and where I live if you can adhere to Slow Food ideals it is praised. When looking at typically poor peoples’ food there are all kinds of ways to enjoy it without making it as unhealthy as some of our ancestors had to eat it. For example for all the Soul Food lovers out there that eat more nutrient-dense food and get away from pork look at Bryant Terry’s Vegan Soul Kitchen. Modify between your family’s recipe and this book, or just go straight with the book. Take your food back so you can be proud of it.
kia´s last blog ..holiday parties