Cultural eating habits - tell us about yours

Options
13567

Replies

  • joolywooly33
    joolywooly33 Posts: 421 Member
    Options
    Howdy from Scotland,

    In a word haggis.....

    J x
  • astartig
    astartig Posts: 549 Member
    Options
    on sweet bread, yeah I haven't bought standard store brand style wonder bread type stuff in years. I buy whole grain bread without added sugar. oat and sunflower seed bread is my favorite. we also buy a variety of seed breads. most of the people I know also eat a higher quality bread than the super sweetened kind.
  • AeonAi
    AeonAi Posts: 60
    Options
    Fruit, fruit and more fruit! I spent half my life in Barbados and growing up it was lots of fruits and rice because we didn't have much growing up. Fish was a couple nights a week. I'm in Canada now and still can't get enough fruit (natures candy) I eat lots of veggies too now. I'm not big on meat so I eat pasta to get that good ol protein I need. I was surprised when I first got here how small the fruit in the stores was lol.
  • ercaface
    ercaface Posts: 45 Member
    Options
    Balmos
    Stuffed cabbage (or grape) leaves
    Pickled anything
    Pork or turkey jelly
    Cozonac
    Mititei

    Guess the country :)

    Hungary (maybe Romania, but you would have said 'mici")
  • jagi410
    jagi410 Posts: 97 Member
    Options
    This thread is fascinating, and now I'm hungry!!

    Midwest US here...

    Weekday Breakfast: Oatmeal or cereal
    Weekend breakfast: Pancakes, french toast, eggs, bacon, sausage

    Weekday lunch: Soup, sandwich, frozen meal, fast food burger and fries
    Weekend lunch: Leftovers or sandwiches/burgers

    Weekday Dinner: Chicken or fish with a carb and a veggie (steamed)
    Weekend dinner: Same as weekday, but in larger portions and with beer!
  • ercaface
    ercaface Posts: 45 Member
    Options
    Funny, I just saw this article, and it about sums it up! Green Chile is a staple here. We even have a state question: 'Red or Green" and it refers to the chile that your food (enchiladas, etc) is smothered with. An no, red chile is not the same as Texas chili.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/06/new-mexican-food_n_4391381.html
  • snowflake954
    snowflake954 Posts: 8,399 Member
    Options
    bump
  • jbee27
    jbee27 Posts: 356 Member
    Options
    This thread is fascinating, and now I'm hungry!!

    Midwest US here...

    Weekday Breakfast: Oatmeal or cereal
    Weekend breakfast: Pancakes, french toast, eggs, bacon, sausage

    Weekday lunch: Soup, sandwich, frozen meal, fast food burger and fries
    Weekend lunch: Leftovers or sandwiches/burgers

    Weekday Dinner: Chicken or fish with a carb and a veggie (steamed)
    Weekend dinner: Same as weekday, but in larger portions and with beer!

    Also a Midwesterner. We had a lot of casseroles and meat-and-potato type dinners when I was growing up.
  • J72FIT
    J72FIT Posts: 5,948 Member
    Options
    Greek yogurt is more of a sandwich spread or a breakfast dip (with olive oil). Always plain, always full fat and always savory.

    Love the idea of greek yogurt as a sandwich spread. Lately I have been using hummus.
  • yasoyyo
    yasoyyo Posts: 15
    Options
    I'm from Norway. While growing up, I'd say I ate more or less a "traditional" Norwegian diet, which would consist of:
    Breakfast(7-8 am): Slices of wholegrain bread with butter and something like cold cuts or cheese.
    Lunch (at school, 11-12 am): Same as breakfast, brought from home.
    (If I got hungry again before dinner I would sometimes have another slice of bread at home after school)
    Dinner (5 pm): Usually meat or fish, boiled potatoes and vegetables. My sisters and I started making dinner once a week from we were 10 or so, so that meant we'd have soups, pancakes (well, somewhere in between pancakes and crepes, always served with blueberries) and other easy-to-make or half-fabricated dinners more often.
    Evening meal (7-9 pm): Typically another couple of slices of bread (sometimes with chocolate spread), or müsli with milk.

    So as you can see, very bread-based! Traditionally, Norwegians will eat every meal at home, and when they can't, they'll bring some open-faced sandwiches with them. Things are changing, though, and more and more people are having other things (sometimes hot meals) for lunch. Eggs in whatever form is also a pretty common thing to have for breakfast. Going out to eat is still very rare and typically a special occasion sort of thing, but people might order home pizza or sushi (though I'd guess no more than every 2-3 weeks).

    I'd say the main differences I find when I go to other countries are meal times, the kind of bread eaten (white bread is hardly ever eaten in Norway), and the fact that a lot of sweet things we'd consider dessert/a treat seem to be considered food in other countries (Italy, the US).

    Now that I'm older I eat a lot less bread than before - for the most part, I've replaced it with eggs, cottage cheese, oats, fruit and the occasional treat (the pastries over here in Austria are just too good and cheap :( ).
  • fbmandy55
    fbmandy55 Posts: 5,263 Member
    Options
    I'm in the midwest. Does steak and corn count as a cultural eating habit?
  • seltzermint555
    seltzermint555 Posts: 10,742 Member
    Options
    I'm American and in my 30's. When I was growing up in the Midwest basically everyone I knew ate like this, except for a handful of people I knew who ate "weird healthy food" and that really just meant a lot more variety in their salads and huge glasses of whole milk for children & preteens at dinnertime.

    Breakfast:
    Pop Tarts, Toaster Strudel (frozen pastry with a packet of frosting to squeeze on top after toasting), or sugary breakfast cereal with milk.
    For "health nuts", a less sugary cereal (Cheerio's or Kix for example) with skim or lowfat milk.

    Lunch:
    School lunch like turkey & noodles, canned peas, a huge yeast roll, and strawberry gelatin with bits of canned pineapple inside, and a carton of chocolate 2% milk.
    OR
    Wonder (white) bread with bologna, cheese & mustard, small bag of Doritos, and a Kudos bar (glorified chocolate bar) and a juice box

    Dinner:
    Hamburger Helper, salad of iceberg lettuce with chopped tomato and ranch dressing, slice of cake (from a mix) for dessert
    OR
    3-4 slices of pepperoni pizza from Pizza Hut
    OR
    chili on top of spaghetti, frozen peas, big slice of garlic bread and a Dr. Pepper

    Pretty horrendous.
  • jlahorn
    jlahorn Posts: 377 Member
    Options
    I grew up in the Northeast US and my family was all mixed European (Polish, English, German, etc) but any cultural identity had been largely bred out of us by my parents generation, except for special occasions :) These eating patterns were common among all of my friends, who largely shared the same heritage.

    6 AM: Breakfast was usually cold cereal with milk. If the cereal wasn't sweetened, then we dumped enough sugar on our Cheerios to make the milk gritty. Makes my teeth hurt now just thinking about it.

    10 AM: School snack was a soft pretzel (yes, specifically Philadelphia :) and orange-flavored sugar water labeled "juice".

    Noon: Lunch was deli meat and cheese with Mircale Whip (blergh) on bland/sweet bread with a plastic baggie of potato chips or pretzels.

    3 PM: After-school snack was more potato chips or pretzels.

    5:30 PM Dinner was a protein (hot dogs, fish sticks, breaded chicken with butter, breaded pork chops, meatloaf etc) with a side of mashed potatoes reconstituted from a boxed powder, smothered in margarine, and boiled frozen vegetables also smothered in margarine. Alternately, there might just be giant plates of spaghetti with meat sauce and a ton of "parmesan" from a green shaker can.

    Dessert was cookies or ice cream every night.

    Everything was chased down with gallons of sugary iced tea (from a powder) or soda.

    I am amazed I lived to adulthood without getting diabetes or some kind of vitamin deficiency.

    On holidays like Christmas and Easter, breakfast would be either donuts, waffles with margarine and fake maple syrup (really corn syrup dyed brown with some maple flavor), or pancakes prepared the same way. There were usually treats in the middle of the day, like krushchiki, pizzelles, and other cookies. Then dinner was at 3PM and was a crazy amount of food, but still very little of it was good (delicious or healthy).

    There'd be canned ham baked with pineapples and maraschino cherries or turkey, boiled vegetables, Pillsbury rolls (which I still love :), canned black olives and green olives, cranberry sauce in its original can shape (should sauce be able to be sliced? ;), reconstituted mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, pasta salad that was really just pasta swimming in Miracle Whip with peas.

    Holiday dessert was really stunningly good homemade pies doused in Kool Whip.

    Most of my family still eats like this, even in adulthood. We have all struggled with our weight our whole lives. The entire neighborhood was/is overweight.
  • WJS_jeepster
    WJS_jeepster Posts: 224 Member
    Options
    I'm in Minnesota - lots of potato, meat, casseroles (we call them Hotdishes). Cereal standing over the sink for breakfast. Sandwich for lunch (noon). Meat and starch for supper (called dinner if fancier). Lots of fish too. My mother grew up in the Phillipines, so we ate way more rice/soy sauce/vegetable dishes than everyone else. She'd also cook the occasional roast beef/mashed potatos/gravy for my dad, who is from Omaha. Lots of strong coffee (at least from the Swedish relative side)

    We had to have perfect table manners too - no elbows on the table, hand not being used on lap, etc. When I lived in France I broke the hand on lap habit and picked up the way more logical European fork thing.
  • honsi
    honsi Posts: 210 Member
    Options
    I'm from the UK and traditional British food is actually delicious amazing- rich meat and veg dishes , amazing puddings ( sticky toffee pudding anyone?) perfect for our cold, rainy days but we have been so busy enthusiastically trying and adopting other cuisines (me included) that we have neglected and forgotten about a lot of our own dishes.

    I eat egg on buttered toast for breakfast or porridge, I live in Scotland where you eat it with salt ,its a savoury dish ( sweet porridge is considered to be the English version)
    I'll have something like a baked jacket potato with cheese /tuna/coleslaw and salad for lunch
    and maybe spag bol ( spaghetti bolognese), curry or meat and two veg for dinner.
    I like coffee with milk and two sugars or old fashioned style pop(soda) like dandelion and burdock or cream soda or Irn Bru which is the drink of Scotland ( if you thought it was whisky you where wrong) Irn Bru is esp good if you are hungover accompanied by a greasy fry up.
    In the UK we really really really love chips ( like fries but bigger) and curry is pretty much the national dish.
  • freckledjezebel
    freckledjezebel Posts: 65 Member
    Options
    I love this thread!

    I grew up in the American South, so a lot of fried foods, big farm breakfasts with eggs, sausage or bacon, pancakes, fruit, and oatmeal or buttered toast, light lunches (usually sandwiches) and big dinners of meat, potatoes, and veggies.

    Food as an occasion was big where I grew up. Coffee socials with pastries before church every Sunday, big potlucks after church. Pig Pickins every weekend during the summer (roast a whole pig, pick off what you want- families in the neighborhood took turns hosting) with baked beans, collard greens with fatback or ham hocks, mashed potatoes and homemade gravy, potato salad, coleslaw, hush puppies (fried savory cornmeal balls).

    Food was the cure for every ill- you celebrated with food, you commiserated with someone going through a tough time by bringing them food (usually pies or casseroles), if you were sad people forced food on you. Led to me having an unhealthy relationship with food quite frankly.

    My mom's family were poor and from Michigan and they put ketchup on every meat- fried chicken, pork chops, even STEAK (gross).
  • honsi
    honsi Posts: 210 Member
    Options
    I love this thread!

    I'm originally from the South, so a lot of fried foods, big farm breakfasts with eggs, sausage or bacon, pancakes, fruit, and oatmeal or buttered toast, light lunches (usually sandwiches) and big dinners of meat, potatoes, and veggies.

    Food as an occasion was big where I grew up. Coffee socials with pastries before church every Sunday, big potlucks after church. Pig Pickins every weekend during the summer (roast a whole pig, pick off what you want- families in the neighborhood took turns hosting) with baked beans, collard greens with fatback or ham hocks, mashed potatoes and homemade gravy, potato salad, coleslaw, hush puppies (fried savory cornmeal balls).

    Food was the cure for every ill- you celebrated with food, you commiserated with someone going through a tough time by bringing them food (usually pies or casseroles), if you were sad people forced food on you. Led to me having an unhealthy relationship with food quite frankly.

    My mom's family were poor and from Michigan and they put ketchup on every meat- fried chicken, pork chops, even STEAK (gross).
    Pig Pickins sounds amazing!
  • seltzermint555
    seltzermint555 Posts: 10,742 Member
    Options

    Food was the cure for every ill- you celebrated with food, you commiserated with someone going through a tough time by bringing them food (usually pies or casseroles), if you were sad people forced food on you. Led to me having an unhealthy relationship with food quite frankly.

    My mom's family were poor and from Michigan and they put ketchup on every meat- fried chicken, pork chops, even STEAK (gross).

    I'm from Missouri so not Southern or Northern...but I can definitely relate to the attitude about food! Very similar here.

    And ketchup is a big thing in my circle of family/friends as well. They put it on meat, eggs, slather it on burgers and even some sandwiches. I am not a huge ketchup fan but I do actually love it in my brown bean "soup" and on green beans.
  • LozPenguin
    LozPenguin Posts: 139 Member
    Options
    This thread has been pretty interesting; have to say though its making me feel a bit sorry for the Americans :( bread that's extra sweet? That would drive me nuts. I've been told America has a lot more sugar in most of their cereals, but didn't realise it extended to things like bread. I have enough trouble with sugar here; it must be an extra challenge for you guys over there!

    I remember the popcorn at the cinema here used to be really nice, salty and savory. (Australia.) A few years ago though it tasted like it had been mixed up with powdered sugar! Tasted all sweet, it was not what I was expecting and was just nasty. I had hoped it was just a one off accident, but a few months later tried again; nope, still sweet. Recently my friend bought some so I tried it; not as sweet as previous occasions but still, you can taste it in there. Makes me sad that they've ruined something good just to make it more addictive & sell more product. :frown: PLUS ITS ALWAYS STALE NOW! :explode:
  • ingredsmith
    Options
    Portuguese!

    I ate rabbit for breakfast this morning.
    Meat is the star at meal times weather its beef,chicken, pork, octopus, squid, sardines. Meat of all sorts, fish from all seas, and any cut will suffice. Rice, potatoes, taro root-any starch-is its companion. For vegetables is kale, carrots, peppers, beans, onions, garlic. And the classic wine, olive oil, paprika, garlic,salt, and portuguese hot sauce. The spicier the better.

    Its not always the healthiest though. Can be pretty oily, meat can be fatty. ANd dessert is malasadas, (dough boys), quejadas (bean custard with flakey crust), or something white with loads of flour and sugar. Very tastey but not healthy.

    Dont let me forget the espresso's. My absolute favorite thing is a strong,portuguese espresso. The tea is also a staple. Tea everyday-twice a day. afternoon and night time.

    Family style.