Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
It's sad... My sister orders food through a delivery service all the time... And then complains she has no money.... And she is extremely liberal... Ironically believes in global warming but not giving crap about making it worse... Typical liberal...
The report that Americans are eating at home more is terribly misleading, they're getting finished food from the grocery or nearly prepared food.
When I lived with my parents they always home cooked meals with fresh ingredients because that is what Iranians did, but today Americans don't want to dedicate the time and energy in preparing their meals and don't care about life values.
It seems America has been on the decline for quite some time. Will it ever end? Or will America be doomed for the next 100,000 years?
Now moral value comes from getting a job at Amazon and not caring about anyone/anything else.
Liberals who are supposedly the left wing voters are incredibly ambitious people who think its a dog eat dog world.
Whoever can't compete in the job market deserves to die, and all labor most be offshore.
Isn't that right guys? You are the people that elected Paul Ryan, Barack Obama, and the entire upper-echelon of American society to lecture people about the value of a globalized society where money rules.
I hope you're happy. Congratulations you have won.
Now what are home cooked meals Americans make? Because from my understanding Americans don't have traditional recipes or meals, frying chicken or throwing a pre-made pizza or Turkey you got at the store in the oven doesn't count.
Why is fried chicken not a traditional meal? My folks come from the foot hills of the Cumberland Mountains in the Appalachian region. Traditional meals of the area, what I always called country cooking, is considered what others would call soul food. Fried chicken, lots of pork, meatloaf, okra, cornbread, turnip greens or collard green, green beans, corn, taters, biscuits, gravy, casseroles. As a southerner I have also cooked/eaten, rabbit, squirrel, groundhog, raccoon, deer, wild boar, wild boar, quail and wild turkey.
I remember grandma actually going out and killing the chicken, she canned most all the vegetables, they rendered lard from a hog they killed. All those recipes have been handed down from generation to generation. Most of us dont still kill our own chickens as times have changed, people move from farms to suburbs and urban areas, more women have full times jobs so food, as everything else has become more convenient. While some Americans eat most of their meals out, as many still cook most of their meals at home.
Remember also that America is a melting pot and with all the immigrants came their traditional recipes. So traditional American food can be a melting pot of different cultures depending on the particular region of the country.
In honor of the OP, I recreated an Iranian soup that a former professor (herself an Iranian-Mexican immigrant I met studying in Mexico) made for us. I've perfected the recipe over the years and made it my own - a ton of green onions, garlic, green peas, zucchini, lots of mint and parsley, a few bay leaves, chicken stock, and a little know how. Saute up the aromatics, blend about half of it so the texture is relatively creamy, and that's my dinner for the week.
Of course, I don't have access to kashk, but a little Greek yogurt mixed with a little good grated parm does the trick. I bet the OP doesn't approve of that kind of short cut.
Now, Iranian culture isn't my culture... but that's the funny thing about culture. Your personal culture develops based on what you're exposed to.
My heritage is mixed - my great grandparents on my mom's side immigrated from Eastern Europe in the early part of the 20th century to escape pogroms. They were all Ashkenazi Jews with that underpinning of culture, but came from 4 distinct parts of the pale of settlement and brought those aspects of their language and food with them. My great great grandfather was a rabbi who spoke 5 languages, but when he brought his family to the US he learned that all of that education meant nothing when none of those languages was English. While the families stayed within a Jewish immigrant sphere, other workers at the mills were Italian, Irish, and Greek immigrants so those cultures started seeping in. By the time my grandparents were born, it was just as likely they'd eat spinach pie (spanikopita) or a boiled dinner as it was they'd have kugel or tsimmes. I was in high school when I realized that all of the Greek food we had at home wasn't actually traditionally Jewish! By the time the 50s and 60s rolled around, those traditional meals (from all of the above cultures) was there, but so was the mac and cheese, spaghetti and meatballs, American chop suey, and franks and beans that my dad's family with their colonial American heritage ate on the other side of town.
Flash forward to my generation. We moved from New England to the South, so it was just as common that we'd eat corn or fish chowder at home as it was that we'd have collards and grits. I had the opportunity to study abroad in three countries, and you see all three cuisines regularly on my dinner table thanks to homestays where I got to spend time in the kitchen. I also spent some time in Israel and have developed an interest in both Jewish and Israeli cooking which heavily influences my food choices. Then there's all the recipes I've picked up over the years - the green soup I made earlier, the hummus my childhood bff's Palestinian dad made, the tamale recipe honed from years of my mom teaching ESL and my homestay mom teaching me about fillings I'd never think of, things I tried at restaurants and liked so much that I recreated at home...
That's all American culture to me - the opportunity to learn culinary traditions from other peoples' immigrant heritage and mix and match them to make new combinations. Contrast that with Iranian tradition where it's one of the oldest cultural territories, so of course there's a concentration of several specific regional cultures. It's not like the US, Canada or Australia where each immigrant community has made a mark. It's also not like the UK or France where the colonial history brought back new foods that have become standard. Neither is better or worse than the other, but you can't compare.
this is really say because it seems the older generations do not pass these skills down to their children. Seems the older generations are "too busy" to do so. I know of a woman I worked with who had new neighbors move in across the street from her ( in their 30's ) who did not know how to operate their oven. Neither of them cooked for their children. When asked what they do for dinner, the wife basically said they go to their in-laws every night to eat. My wife can't cook to save her life either because her mom never passed it on because of depression issues. so its basically up to me to cook dinner. I don't mind actually because I enjoy it! ( my Italian side!). I am trying to pass these skills onto my daughter so when she is old enough she can cook her own meals.
I guess we need another "adulting" class to show people how to survive on their own.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winterfall8324
The report that Americans are eating at home more is terribly misleading, they're getting finished food from the grocery or nearly prepared food.
When I lived with my parents they always home cooked meals with fresh ingredients because that is what Iranians did, but today Americans don't want to dedicate the time and energy in preparing their meals and don't care about life values.
It seems America has been on the decline for quite some time. Will it ever end? Or will America be doomed for the next 100,000 years?
Now moral value comes from getting a job at Amazon and not caring about anyone/anything else.
Liberals who are supposedly the left wing voters are incredibly ambitious people who think its a dog eat dog world.
Whoever can't compete in the job market deserves to die, and all labor most be offshore.
Isn't that right guys? You are the people that elected Paul Ryan, Barack Obama, and the entire upper-echelon of American society to lecture people about the value of a globalized society where money rules.
I hope you're happy. Congratulations you have won.
no its not. the point is, people are not teaching their children life skills.
I say bring back home economics and shop classes. They should never have removed those from school.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jencam
Iranians good/Americans bad. IS that the point here?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
