midwestern cuisine

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I loved living in England.  It was in England that I FINALLY realized what a very cultural being I am.  So much of what we do/think and how we do/think it has to do with the culture we grew up in.  Until you have lived for an extended period of time in a foreign country you probably can't begin to fully realize how PROFOUNDLY culture affects everything in our lives.  I loved that military life gave us the opportunity to experience British and European culture (two seperate but often overlapping things btw. . .)

What I also love about the military is learning about how VASTLY different cultures are w/in the US.  [I still maintain that living in the South would be a bigger adjustment for me than living in England].  I love that we have friends that grew up across the country.  You learn a lot about different regions this way.  Especially at functions where people bring food. . . . 

I was reminded of this the other night when we had dinner w M&J and their extended family.  I learned yet again something new about my cultural heritage. . .

I was at their house in the morning for bible study and briefly mentined to J. that I could bring Snicker salad to go w/ the taco meal we were having.  I didn't think much of it.  Until I got a call from her later asking if it was a dessert salad or a main course thing.  I still was not picking up on the fact that she had NO CLUE what I was talking about.  I explained that it's kind of dessertish but it can be served alongside the main meal.  I got to their house that night and started constructing the salad (chopped apples, cut up snickers and cool whip) and I kept getting kind of weird looks and was asked "what is that?"

Turns out the rest of the world DOESN'T HAVE SNICKER SALAD.  I just figured "how can you not know what snicker salad is?"  Well, apparently it's a thing from the midwest that no one knows about (but let me tell you this crowd FELL IN LOVE with it).  Here I thought everyone had it at every birthday party and family reunion growing up (and YES even thought it is really a dessert you still serve it before the actual dessert course (cake) along with all of the main meal components).  Finally I understood why J was so perplexed by by contribution to the meal.  I had to laugh when she looked at the final product and was like, "yeah, THAT is dessert!" - so I didn't push the cultural norm that it is okay to serve it with the main course ;)

A week or two ago I was reading a friend Pat's blog (long story but Pat married my RA, Molly from my 2nd year at NWC.  Molly & I went to Focus together.  Molly is also friends with Jenny who lived in our same hall that year).  He's a total foodie and a great writer so I usually go to his blog and leave having got a really good laugh.  On this blog he was talking about tapioca.  He decided it was love it/hate it and asked for comments weighing in.  I posted that I was a hate it but added a qualifier that it was kind of like my grandma's "glorified rice" that I ate when I was little (now the thought of sweet, creamy white rice just doesn't do it for me).  I then realized I needed to explain glorified rice but struggled to know how to do that exactly.  So I went to trusty old wikipedia and found this.  My grandma's rice isn't like the rice listed on wikipedia (perhaps that's why we call it "grandma rice"  - though I am familiar with the wiki dish. . . our family made it sans rice w/ pistachio pudding and called it "pistachio salad") but it's the same general sweet rice idea.  I laughed and laughed and laughed when I read the list of Minnesotan dishes listed in the article (kind of a "if you like this, you might also be interested in. . ." type deal):  Jello salad (jello & cool whip), pistachio salad (explained above - usually pineapple, fruit cocktail, cool whip and pistachio pudding), *snickers salad*,  cookie salad (vanilla pudding, cool whip, fruit cocktail w/ crushed Keeblers fudge rounds cookies on top - yummo), hotdish (what MNians call casserole), lutefisk (which I've never actually had ), lefse (which was a family tradition - we'd make it fresh and eat it hot w/ butter + sugar on it - we would have people over every friday night in the winter to do this - very happy memories I loved "having people over for lefse")

So there you  have it.  Midwestern cuisine.