Family Table

The United States regards itself as one of the great "Melting Pot" countries.  Its land is home to a multitude of different cultures and lifestyles.  This means a large scale integration of music, language, interaction, and of course, cuisine.  While our own classic cuisine is widely regarded as only including food like burgers, hot dogs, fries, and anything greasy or fried, we have countless establishments dedicated keeping culture alive in our country.  But that is no small task, and the responsibility lies on us, the consumers, as much as it does on the restaurants.  Both Ahn and Nicholson expressed the desire to keep their culture or tradition alive within themselves, largely through the food they choose to eat.  Ahn by continuing to serve Korean food to his son, and Nicholson through his ceremonial meal to commemorate his mother's love of white food.  My own experience with food comes from the american south.  My mother is from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and boy do they know how to cook down there.  I've grown up with the chinese food, McDonalds, grilled fish, and bagels that everybody knows, but every time I ate dinner at her house, I knew that she might serve me some crawfish gumbo, or meatloaf with collard greens and cornbread.  I still jump at the opportunity to eat anywhere cornbread will be served.  My mother also kept alive the general belief that if you love three or four different things, they will be great if you put them all in the same dish together.  So that's just what we did.  From the time that I was 2 until I left for college, I always had an interesting dish in my dinner rotation at her house.  She decided that since I loved ham, eggs, rice, and cheese so much, she ought to make them into one seamless dish.  Some of my fondest memories from my early childhood are of me opening the plastic cheese grater, putting in some monterey jack, and cranking the handle, spinning the wheel until I was satisfied with the cheese drizzling over my scrambled eggs with ham in a bowl of rice.  The southern way is to serve you food that tastes good, and fills you, and that is exactly what she did when she cooked for me.