Culture And Cuisine

Food and Identity
Upbringing so greatly influences the foods and ways we eat that any discussion about culinary habits is also a discussion about identity, culture and family history. Food culture is such a prime and primal part of us, that our eating habits reveal so much about our experiences, our geographic regions, our communities, and ancestry.
Care And Community
Belief systems are often revealed in our food choices. We assign certain favored foods to our daily events and occasions. We feed the ones we love, we feast in celebrations, and we nourish others in times of illness and loss. From the foods we choose for celebrations to the types of foods we feed our families we reveal what is important to us and for us.
Behavior Reveals Character
Manners and education are often revealed in food relationships, too. Decency and thoughtful regard for others is often expressed through meal sharing, and it is at the table where our manners and mores are most closely in view.
I am ever mindful of my grandmother’s many edicts on gracious and dignified behavior and its connection to the gift of food. It has always been through food that we give of ourselves, so the food we share represents who we are. It is an extension of us and says a lot about us, just as behavior reveals our character.
Culinary Biography
Perhaps this is a purely southern phenomenon, but I believe I come to know most about another person through food. I am interested in the different ways in which others live and eat, and I always enjoy learning about them. I am as interested in culinary heritage as I am biography.
Old Garden Culture
I am the product of my upbringing, and my own culinary habits reflect the beliefs and traditions of my ancestors. Our food traditions were established long ago, I believe I can most accurately describe our dining habits as Anglo-French/Southern Agrarian. We eat small amounts of meat a few times per week, we eat many, many herbs and vegetables, a variety of fruits, quite a bit of cultured dairy, very few grains (mostly rice), and very little bread. However, I am the product of my upbringing, and I bake. I happily uphold this very old and very dear tradition. I bake for others, and I delight in it. I like to bring others to my table.
Southern Agrarian
The reason we do not eat many grains or breads is as much due to geography as it is to culture. My family comes from three distinct agrarian traditions: English, French, and Southern. Having come from distinctly fertile regions with long-standing, varied, and rich agriculture, a reliance on grain-based products has not been necessary. My ancestors have always lived with a great variety of fruits, vegetables, meat, and dairy.
From The Garden
My ancestors were avid beekeepers and horticulturists. For centuries they collected and grew grapevines, fruit trees, flowers and herbs to greater and greater refinement to the tastes of their bees (I must remember to write about the structures they built for their bees). My family has produced many botanists, naturalists, horticulturist, gentlemen farmers, and lady rosarians, floriculturists, garden historians, heirloom gardeners, cuttings keepers, cuttings sharers, and on and on.
To this day we grow the flowers we love and the foods we eat.
To this day we bring others to our table in joy and in fellowship.
To this day we live and dine in the old garden culture.