Did you grow up thinking Spaghetti was "ethnic" food? I did -

[Rabrrrrrr]

I didn't have Chinese food until I was in college. I was out of college before I had Indian and Mediterranean and Mideastern foods. I was almost 30 before I had Japanese food.

I grew up in a Wisconsin German family, Lutheran background on both sides, both parents also grew up very poor, and our only foray into the mysterious world of "foreign" or "ethic" cuisine was spaghetti with Ragu sauce. That is, until Taco Bell arrived in town when I was in third grade - sometimes we'd eat there. But Mom never cooked Mexican at home because it was too bizarrely foreign.

And of course, "spaghetti" was the entirety of Italian cuisine to my mind. All I knew of Italian food was spaghetti with tomato sauce, and maybe some ground beef or meatballs in it.

The house up in which I grew existed in a pretty narrow world.

Any other German Midwesterners have the same experience? Or maybe Italian background ones, for whom the occasional bratwurst was "ethnic" eating?

[supernova]

1. No, we ate spaghetti when I was a kid

Since we had large gardens and lots of fresh tomatoes, making spaghetti sauce was a good way to use them up. I was vaguely aware that it came from Italy, though ours was a very Americanized version, not what you'd call a traditional marinara. Beefsteak tomatoes make a rather watery sauce. But it did taste pretty good. No sugar.

But I think I was in high school before I went to a Japanese steak house. That was my first experience with "non-American food.

Oh, and we still didn't belch at the table. :P

edit: I've been eating at ethnic restaurants for so long, I have a hard time enjoying a strictly American restaurant. It seems boring to me now.

[Rabrrrrrr]

4. It's funny, but my Mom did a lot of from-scratch cooking, but never tomato sauce.

And so I grew up thinking that making a tomato sauce for spaghetti was something that was so wildly outlandishly difficult, that no human could possibly do it. I mean, wow, if *my mom* couldn't do it, it must be something.

When I was in college, I had a fraternity brother of Italian descent and he talked about his mom making tomato sauces from scratch, and I thought she must be the most incredible cook I've ever heard of.

Until I finally read a recipe on how to make tomato sauce, and I was like, "What the fuck?!?!?!?! All those years of Ragu crap?"

Oh, well.

My parents also had the idea that "ethnic" food wasn't real food - wasn't really good for you, and that it's impossible to live on such things. Nice for a once-in-a-while treat, but YOU'LL DIE IF YOU EAT IT TOO MUCH because it has no nutritional value.

Like I said, my parents grew up poor and isolated.

[supernova]

6. My dad was like your mom

Strictly meat and potatoes. Anything that veered from that was "interesting." and "an experience." :rofl:

My mom was the one with the more adventurous palate.

No wonder you start so many gourmet food threads. :D

[JVS]

2. Ethnic food night was last night. We had Lutfisk, Akavit, sausage, lingonberries, knackebrod

and pickled herring.

[crim son]

3. I did, but I think it was because of the television commercial where the Italian mother

is making spaghetti and then calls her son from the streets of the town for dinner. Was it Chef Boyardee? Probably; I was that dumb.

[yewberry]

5. "Hey Anthony!"

You must have grown up in New England, too.

(Wednesday is Prince spaghetti day.)

[bicentennial_baby]

8. ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tJUNlZF7Sw

[yewberry]

13. Oh, there it is!

Unbelieveable, the stuff that makes it onto youtube.

While I was there, I had to watch those Whalom Park commercials, too.

Thanks!

[crim son]

11. OMG, you remember his name!

I've lived all over the place but I think I was in Toronto, Ontario when I heard that commercial; sorta the same thing as New England (now, don't flame me, Canadians. I'm Canadian too).

[bicentennial_baby]

12. I posted it above

:D

[crim son]

26. So you did.

Wow, it takes me back!

[AlCzervik]

9. it was Prince spaghetti.

set the way back machine.

[poiuytsister]

7. You mean it isn't?

Also a cheesehead, NEVER having anything ethnic so I guess I thought since it was being served in our house it must be generic.

[Rabrrrrrr]

10. Spaghetti was specifically pointed out as being ethnic in my home -

when we had it, we were eating EYE-talian. Mom always made a big deal that we weren't eating normal food, but were being adventurous by having EYE-talian food.

[krispos42]

22. Ah, EYE-talian food from EYE-taly?

:rofl:

You crazy Grrr-mans, you, using the short vowel sound instead of the long one!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

(speaking as an It-alian/Jerman from Connecticut...)

[Rabrrrrrr]

23. No, EYE-talian from Italy - for some reason, Italy was pronounced correctly.

But Italian became EYE-talian.

And Japan is pronounced JAAAAA-pan.

[krispos42]

27. I dated a girl from Wisconsin

EYE-talian, and stop-and-go lights... :-)

Ah, those crazy Grrrmans... :-)

[poiuytsister]

33. And we drink water from bubblers

Water fountains are for tossing pennies into

[Heidi]

14. Nah. I grew up knowing it was what my parents ate to get through university.

I didn't really recognize its Italian-ness until _I_ got to university. :shrug:

[datasuspect]

15. german is an ethnicity

we were pretty much swarthy ethnics, with the exception of my mother, who was the blond haired, blue eyed briton of the household.

[Heidi]

17. I guess most people don't think of their own ethnicity as "an ethnicity."

:shrug:

[supernova]

24. That's so true

:D

I'm a southern WASP which here is pretty boring. But elsewhere on the planet, I'd be considered exotic.

Funny world. :crazy:

[JVS]

18. Ethnic cooking: The perfect bratwurst parts 1 and 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfLAiCSyiaM

In part 2 they seem to deviate a bit from normal proceedure
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwdmA6KpSIQ

[Pierre.Suave]

16. I would be happy never again having spaghetti...

I ate way too much during undergrad because it was cheap.

[yewberry]

19. The food you grew up with might've seemed 'ethnic' to me.

What do midwestern German Lutherans eat?

[CreekDog]

20. i grew up thinking as an italian i was ethnic and that real white people ate bland food

regarding spaghetti, i always remember when said "white" people...northern europeans actually made it, it was so plain or bland, it was a totally different animal than i was used to.

and i was white in skin color and blonde haired, but the food, our spaghetti was ethnic, the non ethnic spaghetti, that was the stuff that people ate with knives and forks.

[Ellen Forradalom]

21. The opposite, actually

My father was raised in England, France and Argentina, and came to the US at age 18. He tended towards Latin epicurianism, so he knew his food and drink.

He was accustomed to the South American dinner hour of 10:00. We had dinner at eight, which was considered exotically late by the other kids in the neighborhood, who had their dinners at six.

On special occasions, he would try his hand at recipes from the Escoffier cookbook, with varying degrees of success. That vol-au-vent might've made a nice foundation for a model yurt. Then there was the Christmas he served salmon aspic. Just what a six-year-old wants on Christmas morning: fish jello.

He also kept a pretty nice wine cellar until my parents went sober. Where a particularly nice wine was served, all the children got a tiny sample to have with the meal.

We went as a family to various ethnic places, including Chicago's only Thai restaurant before the explosion of the 80s (yuck, peanut sauce all over the streets, what a mess that was.)

Then my parents retired and moved to Wisconsin!

[hippywife]

25. Spaghetti was Sunday dinner...every Sunday.

But then I grew up in an Italian family. I didn't like Mexican food then but do now and never had Chinese until I was 18 and a friend talked me into it. Didn't try Thai or Mediterranean until I was in my 30's. Now I could eat Mediterranean, Thai and Chinese every day. I would if the husband would let me get away with it. ;)

[Left Is Write]

28. No. We ate spaghetti a lot.

However, my paternal grandmother did have the opinion that ketchup was too "spicy."

Here is a listing of the recipes in the "Foreign Foods" chapter of my church's cookbook, published in 1975:

Hunan Style Chinese Recipe Beans With Pork
Beef Teriyaki
Bok Choy And Beef
Broccoli Steak
Kuchen (German Coffee Cake)
Pfeffernussen
Roulade Of Beef
Spatzle
Mexican Chicken
Mexican Spoon Bread
Enchilada Torte
Danish Apple Pancake Balls
Flat Bread
Rosettes
Norwegian Cookies
Fruit Soup
Potato Dumplings
Krum Kake
Lefse
Baked Lutefisk
Sandbakkelse
Swedish Coffee Bread
Swedish Hard Tack
Swedish Kringler
Swedish Meatballs
Swedish Pepparkakor
Swedish Apple Pie
Swedish Rice Pudding
Swedish Potato Sausage
Borsch
Swedish Smorgasbord Dish
Almond Wafers

It absolutely cracks me up that all these Scandinavian dishes are listed as "foreign" foods among a population of people of mostly Scandinavian extraction!

[hedgehog]

29. Until I was 49 years old, I considered that any meal that didn't include

potatoes was cheating, since I had to peel potatoes and didn't have to peel pasta or rice!

[Rabrrrrrr]

36. I have a number of relatives who still feel that unless they've had potato and meat,

they haven't really eaten, even if they've packed away more pounds of food than they might otherwise eat and are still bloated to the point of uncomfortable and/or sick.

[leeroysphitz]

30. Do you mean like tacos?

[alarimer]

31. Not really.

My family was not very adventurous in terms of ethnic food, mainly because we kids or my dad would complain. My little sister refused to eat anything but cottage cheese for a long time. Well my mom could not get her to eat much else. Although i guess she must have eaten other things because she managed to survive without any major vitamin deficiencies. She's still a very picky eater in her 20's. My dad, who WAS a mean and potatoes guy, is now much more adventurous.

I used to be a picky eater too. I used to hate chicken. I don't really know why. I am still not hugely crazy about it but I eat it. Not a huge beef eater either but I will make the occasional steak. I like a lot of ethnic food and I will try a lot of things. I do tend to eat things that are familiar. For example, if I have never eaten Vietnamese cuisine before, I will order something with shrimp in it, say, rather than some of the things I am not familiar with. So I am adventurous but in a limited way, if that makes any sense.

[bridgit]

32. Wow! Talk about a sheltered existence...

My mother is Scots/German, and my dad was Scandinavian. But we've been in this country for hundreds of years, as has hubby's family.

I am aware of certain self-imposed limitations groups put upon themselves i.e. Amish, Shakers, etc, 1st Gen *wherever* (as they learn, or learnt their way about and such), still, in spite, or perhaps a function of being raised in California (which many people pooh-pooh), I was exposed to a rather more expansive cultural diversity. And I am often thankful for that.

Though to answer your question; we never considered the foods we ate 'ethnic' nor referred to them as such, in that, as a practical matter, we ate from the plates of the world HOWEVER!!

I tend to draw the line at Ti ki Room Temperature monkey brains, and tentacles w/suction cups that stick to my cheeks going down its just too much work x(

[Rabrrrrrr]

38. Well, my parents were the first generation not to speak German. And they were dirt poor,

and - to give you an indication - my mom didn't live in a house with electricity or indoor plumbing until she was 16, and dad's family were still taking the horse and wagon into "town" when he was a teenager.

PLUS they were in an area of Wisconsin in which Catholics were seen as suspicious and not quite right in the head. And those were German Catholics. Dad probably didn't see an Italian until he was in the army, and Mom not until after she was married.

The most bizarre ethnic in my parents' upbringing would have been the few Norwegians and Swedes.

[bridgit]

40. Friend, I do completely hear you. Our SIL's folks are 1st Gen German...

not so dirt poor as his dad was a master carpenter/craftsman, his mom a homemaker/fiddle player (and you & I know the dif twixt fiddle & violin so there's that but she's good), and so they built a modest little home and kept adding on, room after room, as their family got bigger and boy did it!! Like 8 kids big.

They still say Grace in German round their supper table

hubby's Aunt Pearl made tortilla' by hand and cooked them on a wood stove in LA up until 1954-55, but we're all here now, yes? :hi: :hug:

[Rabrrrrrr]

41. Wow - tortillas! The closest we got to wildly foreign stuff like a tortilla was lefse.

:rofl:

[bridgit]

42. hahahahaha, now *that's* phunny!!

:spray: And yeah, we love lefse & tortillas in this house :9 :headbang:

[harmonicon]

43. we had family friends growing up, and the mom of the family was mexican

(I don't know if she was an immigrant, or just mexican by heritage), but I remember being at their house, and watching her in complete awe cook tortillas on the stove..... to me as a 3 year old in the midwest it was like watching people climb trees to pick coconuts or eat with chopsticks.... something wild and foreign.

[Solon]

34. Not ethnic for me, just normal, and I come from an Irish family...

My dad also cooked homemade tacos and fajitas and a bunch of other crap that I have no clue what its "ethnicity" was other than it was good. You come from a very sheltered life.

[Gonzo Gardener]

35. I recall stories...

of my old school German grandmother's first attempt at making a pizza. It was a bread dough smashed onto a cookie sheet, smeared with ketchup, and topped with slices of knackwurst.

I was fortunate to have adventurous parents and a Dutch-Indonesian nanny who gaged the success of her cooking to how red your face became while eating her curries.

My tastes lean toward the more complex & spicy foods, like, Indian, Thai, the cuisine of Africa (Ethiopian, Moroccan, Algerian), and Middle-Eastern. I'm passing this onto my son who favors Thai, Indian, and any of the various hot curries I prepare.

[BrotherBuzz]

37. My father planted a spaghetti tree when I was a child

I spent many enjoyable childhood hours harvesting spaghetti. It was a staple of our diet, and I never thought of it as an ethnic food.

[Blue-Jay]

39. No. I just thought it was "food".

[crispini]

44. Oh, wow. My parents would drag me out for Indian when I was 14 or so.

They started off at Kebab and Kurry, and then we graduated to Kalachandi's, the local Indian / vegetarian / Hare Krishna temple. Then Korean and Thai. Then my dad took me to a sushi bar when I was 16. Wow did it make an impression when the giant clam curled up and fell off the little rice platform. I totally blame my parents for the fact that I went into Peace Corps right after college. I wanted to see what ELSE was out there to eat! :rofl:

[harmonicon]

45. not me, but for my mother, yeah

My mom's parents were English/German dairy farmers in Michigan, probably a lot like your parents. My mom has stories about the first time they made things like spaghetti and pizza.... supposedly my grandmother, at least once, made pizza with tuna on it. I remember that my Grandma would make spaghetti, and boy was it awful. She definitely thought it was an ethnic food. My mom used to make lasagna with cottage cheese instead of ricotta... oh man.... she stopped when we kids were old enough to know better. My mom also cooks "tacos", which I liked when I was a kid, but once I moved away from home (especially when I lived in LA), I found out what real tacos were and absolutely love them. Poor mom and grandma.... my mom is still the world's greatest cook for things like fried chicken, pot roast, meat loaf and apple pie - so was grandma (ok, there can't be two "world's greatest", except when talking about mothers and grandmothers).

[CTyankee]

46. Hubby is from Wisconsin, also German (and English). I'm from Texas so I ate pretty good TexMex.

And some "soul" food: fried chicken, cream gravy, boiled okra, greens, corn bread (not sweet).

Hubby introduced me to brats, which I love. We tail gate in the Yale Bowl with a big grill of brats! It's heaven for our attendees!

Now I am enjoying travel to Italy and loving all their different pastas. I'll eat any kind of red sauce that Italy makes EXCEPT the one with trippi (tripe) in it. Ugh! But my Roman friends love it. I'll be sampling Bolognese ragu on pasta during y trip to northern Italy in May and I can't wait!

[Xipe Totec]

47. To me, Van Camp's Pork & Beans was exotic food

:rofl:

It's just a matter of perspective...

[Connonym]

48. Oh hellyes, I was raised in Iowa and Wisconsin

If it wasn't immediately recognizable as corn or a cut of animal meat it was, by default, exotic. This is so sad and pathetic but I distinctly remember the first time I ate a bagel at a sleep over. I had never even seen nor heard of a bagel before. I must have been 10 or 11.