After a recent trip to the grocery store (a very rare one during these days of COVID-19), I unpacked my plastic bags and noticed an interesting assortment of items that I’d picked up and set aside to put in the pantry.
How funny that my week’s menu represented four different cultures! I had the refried black beans for our weekly Taco Night (which really could mean tacos, fajitas, or enchiladas), water chestnuts for our almost weekly Asian Food Night, Prego for an Italian Food Night, and falafel mix for Greek Food Night. Falafel is a treat; I don’t make it often, but I do make something Greek almost every week. Seeing the foods sitting so sweetly side by side struck me as somehow ironic. Is it just the Southern cook who melds such different cultures together in a weekly menu? Do Northern cooks do that, too? How about home cooks in other nations? Do they stick to one culture’s flavors exclusively, or do they add an All-American burger night to their weekly menus?
Through the years, my dedication to cooking dinner for my family has become something of a wonder to friends and neighbors. I remember my next-door neighbor coming over to sit on the porch after work as I watched my young children play in the front yard. She would sometimes ask with an elbow nudging my arm, “What’s for dinner?”
Our neighbor at our farm asked me with a sort of astonishment in our first conversation, “Do you cook dinner for your family every night?” I do cook every weeknight.
A fellow Texas transplant was visiting me one day and stuck her head into my pantry. She leaned out again with a sigh of relief and said, “[The stuff in] Your pantry looks a lot like mine.” I found that statement so amusing! I guess we all wonder, “What do people eat?” It is reassuring to see that people eat the same thing as I do. I wonder if a home-grown Mississippian has a pantry filled with similar items as my pantry?
Of course, this thought process also begs the question: are we as accepting of the people of other cultures as we are of their foods? I certainly hope so! I believe that my children are going to grow up accepting, and possibly demanding, a weekly menu of variety because it’s what they’ve grown up experiencing at the family table. As a result of eating at this same family table, I hope that they also grow up color blind, realizing that God made variety! It is the spice of life!
