Finding Your Roots

If any of you actually know me in person, you may already know that I have somewhat of an obsession about genealogy. Tracing my origins back through time, generation after generation, isn't an easy task, and often the discoveries made lead to more questions than answers.

When I entered culinary training, a good amount of the work would follow along either a technique, building skills, or it would be a grouping of dishes from one country and then another. I was surprised to learn that several of the dishes I grew up eating were cultural invites into other worlds that my family were not apart of to my knowledge. I remember learning that the oxtails my Grandmother cooked were not like the ones other blacks cooked that had come to Chicago from the Southern states, but much more in the style of Italian migrants, for example. We ate smoked sausages with sauerkraut, and I haven't found much in the way of German ancestry. As neighbors tend to do, Grandmother shared recipes with neighbors and friends.

Sharing food culture with others and the history of foods, their origins, and development, became a fascination for me. I once took a class at Roosevelt University all about the history of food. In that exploration, we ventured back in time to the cavemen days, and viewed history and archaeology of food, how food procurement is at the very beginnings of civilization itself. Farming changed us from strictly hunter-gatherers of nomadic origins to settlers and villagers. Yogurt changed trade routes and therefore economy. I will share more of this in later posts.

Even before Henry Louis Gates Jr. began televising episodes of his award winning show, I had a curiosity for this type of exploration. My companion podcast is a type of this kind of exploration as they are conversations with people about their relationships with food and by extension culture.

Chefs, foodies, critics, writers, culinarians, educators, artist, and any sort of people who eat have some type of connection with food. I am loving talking with my guests about the subject. Just in the first few broadcast, we have seen how the conversations have taken us into conversations about social unrest, cultural and religious rebirths, and dietary changes for religious and health reasons. These are all just breadcrumbs along the pathways of creation and generational growth.

I have a small collection of older cookbooks because I like to compare what was popular 20,40,60 years ago to what is consumed now. The techniques used, the flavor pallet, the available food stuffs, and the changes in the social norms of dinning etiquette and social graces, all change and as they change so does the preferred foods. The modern mothers of today, often can't imagine hosting a dinner party that consist of 9 or 10 courses of foods, let alone design, produce, and prepare such an culinary experience but it isn't so unusual for the cultured society women of the turn of the century.

No matter the era of your birth, your place in society, your ethic makeup, for country of origin, your immigrated home, your racial background, your chosen profession, your political background, or any other thing in which we classify ourselves, we all eat and we all have a love/hate/health relationship with food.

If you are interested in taking part in our weekly discussions, please leave me a comment with your contact information, and I will love to schedule a broadcast to explore your food history.

Listen in to our discussions both live and archived: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/giantforkandspoon
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