Eating like an Immigrant, Part I: Out of this Kitchen

This is something that I’ve been thinking about for a long time (and been meaning to blog about for quite awhile). It’s sort of become a whole philosophy of food for me, especially through participating in the My Kitchen, My World challenges every couple of weeks. We just watched a really cool PBS series entitled The Meaning of Food, which illustrated how food helps to preserve and pass on identity (I’ll talk more of that in a later post), which sort of pushed me to go ahead and do this series. And I also know many people are trying to find creative ways to eat for less money in this economy, so maybe this could be helpful. I’ll try to include a recipe or food suggestion with each post

So, let me start out with a cookbook that I read a few years back that I think was the yeast that started fomenting these ideas in my head.

Out of this Kitchen: A History of the Ethnic Groups and Their Foods in the Steel Valley

It started when I was in Pittsburgh and one of my professors gave me a cookbook that his ethnomusicologist-turned-regional-historian wife had worked on, featuring recipes, oral histories, and newspaper clippings over the past century from the different ethnic groups who came to work in the steel mills in the Pittsburgh area.

Each immigrant group–Lithuanian, Slovakian, Italian, etc.–has navigated its own path to adapt and preserve its own native foodways to the new land and new economy. It wasn’t so much about Authenticity (like you would find in some gourmet cookbook that calls for rare and expensive ingredients so that you make it exactly right), but about adaptation–preserving a heritage within a new culture, and using your little bit of money to feed your family (probably large and/or extended).

Tim’s own family heritage is Slovokian, so it was fun reading over the foods and culture that the Slovokians brought to Western PA. My mom’s side of the family, too, has Eastern European influences, mainly Polish from my mom’s side. So reading through this cookbook brought me in touch with the immigrant history of my own family’s past. Tim’s great-grandparents (on both sides), and my great-grandparents (on my mom’s side) immigrated over from the same side of the world.

This article has several links to recipes in the cookbook.

Here’s my own Not Authentic take on pierogis, sort of continuing with the adaptation theme.

Cross-posted from In Search of Lost Time.