Kitchen Cultures!

One of my very good friends lives down the street I spend a lot of time at her house where she lives with her mom. Both she and her mom are Chinese and I notice many cultural differences between her family and mine. The most significant differences are about food - my favorite topic! One of the more obvious differences is that we often eat with chopsticks (and I must say that I am becoming quite skilled at the art of using that particular utensil!), but, I have used chopsticks many times before and we even have a drawer of chopsticks at my house. Another difference is that, while each of us have our own bowl, we all eat from the same platters and dishes, sometimes putting food into our own bowl, and sometimes eating the food straight from the platters. I like eating from one big dish but I know that if my sister or I tried to eat straight from platters and plates at our table we'd get fussed at because it spreads germs and it's rude! Another difference is that they always have food lying around the kitchen that they pick at throughout the day. My mom NEVER leaves food out (except cookies...) because she is afraid of getting food poisoning and attracting bugs. Also, when I visit my friend's house, I am always urged to eat everything I want, whereas in my house, my family always offers food and drinks to guests but doesn't push them to eat it.

I spent some time thinking about some reasons that there are these differences between my families food habits and my friend's family's food habits and it came down to this theory: my family's lifestyle is very American and is always concerned about cleanliness, saving, and instant gratification, whereas my friend's culture, while influenced significantly by American culture, is also influenced by her Chinese culture and is concerned with not wasting anything and using what you have. This is why my family worries about germs, bugs, and saving what food we have, and her family leaves food out so that they can finish it by the end of the day, offer lots of food to me when I visit, and they also eat from platters of the main dish so as not to take too much of a serving and waste what they didn't eat. This is all just a theory but I would love to here other interpretations as well!