I’ve gotten a lot of great suggestions from a bunch of people I’ve invited to my Facebook event. They’re varied, interesting, and, well, complicated. Looks like I’ve got my work cut out for me.
Here’s a bunch of them:
-Comfort foods – where they originated and why we eat them
-Pennsylvania Dutch New Year’s – the PA Dutch eat pork & sauerkraut for good luck on New Year’s
-British food – why beans and toast? where did the reputation for being bad cooks come from?
-Purim – quote: “How can it be important to get so drunk you dont know the difference between Blessed be Mordechai and Cursed be Haman?”
-Southern (American) food – why do southern people (like those from Louisiana) like their food so spicy?
-Staples – such as bread, apples, milk, and eggs
-Indian food and Korean food
-Pancakes on Mardi Gras
-Welsh food – Welsh cakes, cawl, the truth about pasties (yum)
-Mac & Cheese – when was it invented? quote: “Because on President’s Day Panera Bread emailed me that Thomas Jefferson loved mac & cheese and I was all ‘Did they even eat mac & cheese back then?'”
-Variants on particular foods in different regions – example: borscht is eaten cold by Russians/Ukrainians/Romanians and warm by the Polish
-Similarities between foods in very different cultures, like Pakistani and Indian
-Bacon
-Differences in food names (pop vs soda, hoagies vs subs)
-Unpasteurized/raw cheeses that are banned from import into the US
-How Slavic food has evolved.
Remember, keep sending me your suggestions. It’s a lot, but I’m going to tackle them all. In time…
Esther