Short Essay 1

            While some may cite a specific personal cultural background in the selection of their culinary palette, I have never felt that my own was influenced by any one particular traditional system. If anything, my diet is based on that of the country in which I live, one that has few culinary staples of its own, but which borrows heavily on those of others, “Americanizing” them in the process. I am equally likely to enjoy a slice of pizza or a cheeseburger as I am fish and chips, tamales, gyros, Italian pastas, sushi, corned beef, or Swedish meatballs. So long as I can recognize the various components of what I’m eating, and it isn’t anything I have an allergy or personal aversion to, I have no problem with consuming it.

It is true that, as is the case for many people, this likely stemmed from the foods that my parents prepared for me when I was a child. While my mother is half Norwegian, virtually nothing that she prepared for the table would suggest the fact. The only part of my diet that I believe may have originated from her is a preference for potato bread over regular white bread. She grew up in North Dakota, an area heavily concentrated with people of Scandinavian descent, and often had lefse when she was young. It’s a potato based flatbread that I’ve only ever had a few times myself, perhaps every other Christmas or so. My father, by his own admission, could not cook to save his life, and has only a small smattering of various Western European cultural backgrounds to draw on in the first place. He refers to himself as a “Heinz 57”, which I suppose is appropriate, given his penchant to apply ketchup to almost anything (a habit that I never shared).

Much my diet, however, stems from things that I discovered for myself. My parents never cared much for tea, for instance. They were always coffee drinkers, and had a pot prepared every morning. I never took to the stuff. Instead, I found the single aging pack of Earl Grey that had been sitting in the back of the cupboard for years and tried it. I’ve been drinking tea ever since. It is possible that this sort of dietary choice has something to do with my own self-image. I’ve always thought of myself as an intellectual, a pensive man who reads books and likes cats and tea over dogs or coffee. It is possible that I came to enjoy tea purely out of the idea that it seemed appropriate to who I am as a person. This does not explain, however, how I came to enjoy seafood and sushi so much. I have lived in Denver for my entire life, half a world away from Japan and one thousand miles away from the nearest ocean. My parents hardly ever prepared seafood, simply out of practicality. The closest we came usually involved salmon or a fake crab mix made from some other sort of freshwater fish. Yet, for as much as I enjoy living in Denver, I also love seafood of almost any variety, especially shrimp. The only theory that I have is that its status as a rarity, almost a delicacy in my house as a child fueled my taste for it.

There is also the tactile nature of food to consider. Aside from the taste and traditional background of food, I’ve always liked foods that are rich and go down smoothly. My family has always enjoyed ribs. I can’t stand them. It’s not the taste I mind, it’s working away at a bone for 15 minutes just to get at the one tiny chunk of lean meat I can find, and having to leave the rest while I go get all the barbecue sauce off of my hands. I have a great (my family would say paranoid) dislike of fat or gristle on meat, mostly because of the way it feels in my mouth. I also don’t enjoy getting myself dirty simply in order to eat. While this may be a function of the fact that I’ve never had to work (directly) for my dinner, I much prefer to simply eat what I need to and get on with my day.

I suppose my diet is generally pretty average considering the country I live in. I don’t really put too much thought into what I eat on a daily basis, so I’ve picked up the usual set of dishes that are common in America. I might have some difficulty should I suddenly be placed in another country and be expected to eat all of my meals there, but I think I could handle a few dishes from just about anywhere.