My mother is Thai, my father is American . I was raised on a mixture of Thai food and bad American food. Not that American food is bad, my grandmother wasn't a very good cook. Lots of cans and mushy veggies. She tried to teach my mom to cook American. Mom thought the food was bland, so she made "typical" American dishes like meatloaf- but with fish sauce added for flavor.
I generally eat whole grain, lots of Lebanese, Indian and Provencal type stuff. But when I'm feeling really home sick, I have to break out the rice porridge with salty fish and preserved vegetables. The breakfast mainstay of Asia. Except I usually do this for dinner.

mmm... how far back do i go? eastern denmark and irish...

brought up in a solid workingclass background. father a butcher. so it was all about very good meat decorated with "other stuff" you know vegi's that have had the life boiled out of them!

my mums signature dish was yorkshire pudding... with a crust that rose at least 10cm! filled with a stew of braized beef and dumplings! even after 15yrs of being vegan i still drool over the memories of that!:)

hehe

i am descended from people from all over western and eastern europe who tried desperately to cast off any ethnic whiff about them. now we try desperately to bring the ethnicity back by raosting a lamb on a spit and then running around the backyard carrying it over our shoulders shouting "Hrvastska, Hrvatska". go figure... our main family ethnic dish is probably from a 1952 copy of a Family Circle magazine and is called "Bavarian Cream": 1 part orange jello, one part red yellow and one part whipped cream. no one else seems to eat this.

Japanese ...

main ingredients are fish, soy ( fermented ), seaweed and veggie ... we have much more variety now from all over the world, ... but I believe those are the basic of Japanese food.

this link has the basic idea for Japanese food.
www.japanese-food-for-health.com/

by the way, ... I like veggie bibimbap ( korean dish ) ... yummy ~
reference of korean food I found is
www.japanvisitor.com/index.php

I hope anyone can refer any link to introduce here about the food they are talking about ... that would be helpful ... no ?

My immediate background is All American. Mom didn't cook, so I learned as a survival skill. One grandmother made what I call "blue collar" food - hamburger helper, meatloaf, etc. Whatever was cheap and could feed an army. My grandfather was the cook on the other side of the family. Lots of Northern Italian - meats with sauce. He had a red wine roast that is still the pride of my recipe book.

I cook historic British food as a hobby (Tudor and Victorian), so I eat quite a bit of that.

I went to a high school where most of the kids were Philipino. Their moms made lumpia. I will be your best friend for really good lumpia.

lessa - haggis looks rather disgusting doesn't it?
i've just moved to scotland and my husband made me haggis as one of our first meals together when i got here.. it is awesome! i swear to god! you say that you will try anything once..

i've (in the nicest way possible) forced haggis on all of my american visitors, and they have all liked it... its funny to see their faces as they see the haggis, and then again as they take their first bite.. its totally yummy!

..culture...hmmm...let's go with my heritage of Northern Italian and Swedish....passionate mix (thanks to my parents)...I was born in Canada......indigenous?....these days...SUSHI!!!...no lie...in my neck of the woods...seems to be the fare,,,,but seriously folks....here are some indigenous Canadian foods (since most of us are imports here)....salmon...fiddlehead greens...bannock (now there's a multicultural history)...moose meat...cariboo...wild mushrooms...blueberries...cranberries...blackberries....wild rice......to name a few...Oh, yeah...lest I forget...the infamous 'Buffalo burger'....

I'm a French native, my grandma was asked to be a chef at a French restaurant in Washington back in the days, my mom was a really good cook as well.
I grew up with such diversity cause I was born in the Basque county of France (very colorful, pretty meaty, saucy, veggy and so on, hearthy) then grew up in Lyons when all our neighbors were from Africa (Northern, mostly) and Asia, my mom was a karate student and her teacher was from Laos, at an early age I ate amazing couscous, and wonderful dishes from Laos and other Vietnamese ones that I actually don't recall, too bad, all this mixed with my mom's very French cuisine, simple for the most part cause we were 4 siblings, but delicious, very influenced by Spain as well, like tortillas as in Spain they are potatoes omelettes that look like a cake, really, with a fresh green salad or potato salad with eggs and simple vinaigrette (with Djion mustard of course), some flans (actually I might start a thread but I've been looking at the origins of flan? since for us in France it seems a French thing...??), etc etc...
Lots of cheese, Basque people love their sheep cheese, yummy, and all the other ones France has to offer (over 400)...
I am not talking about delicacies like chocolate croissants and croissants and brioches etc...eclairs, real ones, I mean, ahhhhh
At some point I dated an Italian, so I dated his family, his mama taught me so much in the kitchen every weekends, plus I worked in one of his friends' italian restaurant for a while, real 3 ingredients yummy thin crust pizzas have no secret for me, a marinara is easy, my tiramisu is to die for...
Anyway, today I mostly eat foods that have very little extra to it, I like adding some shoyu, some garam masala, herbs (thyme, oregano, etc) I love olives, and again basically simple foods with lots of veggies and no sauces, no added things mostly...
Whole grains, etc.
Fruits are a big part of my diet as well, including coconut...
I am drooling reading Libanese and Thai foods here...
LOVE those!
Isn't food fascinating, you all come such different backgrounds!
Oh one more thing, I once had the chance to eat "real" grits and oh my!!!!!!
It was amazingly good and not as heavy as everybody said it would be, but the cook was awesome and she knew how to "cook"...
I love coleslaw, one thing from the Brits I really love.
I love my tarte tatin with creme fraiche.
Ahhhhh foooooood
S.

Quel....This is a recipefrom my grandmother. It might not be your grannie's but it might be close enough that you can make what ever changes need to be made.

For the dough:
2 1/8 cups self-rising flour (300g)
3/4 cup butter or margarine (180g)
1/2 cup brown sugar (150g)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or 1 (8 g) packet vanilla sugar
1 pinch salt

For the filling:
2 1/4 lbs apples (1kg)
3/4 cup raisins (washed and dried, 100g)
1/4 cup granulated sugar (40g)
3 teaspoons cinnamon (or more to taste)
2 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice (or more to taste)
1 egg
3 tablespoons semolina (to absorb the juices)

Put together:
Sieve the flour, brown suger, and the salt into a bowl.
Cut the butter or margarine into small cubes and add these to the flour mixture.
Beat the egg with the vanilla and add 3/4 of it to the flour mixture (you will need the rest for the top).
Using two knives, mix the butter/margarine and the flour mixture.
Kneed it to form the dough - you should be able to form it into a ball (this may take awhile).
Put the ball of dough in the fridge for about an hour, in the meantime, make the filling.
for the filling:.
Peel the apples and cut them in cubes (allow the sizes to vary - it'll taste better).
In a large bowl, combine apple, raisins, sugar, cinnamon, the lemon juice and half of the semolina.
Mix well and allow the flavors to blend, stirring occasionally.

Butter a 9" round springform cake pan, or spray it with a non-stick spray.
Line the pan (bottom and sides) with about 3/4 of the dough - as long as the pan is covered, the layer need not be very thick.
Cover the bottom with the remaining semolina.
Add the filling, but try to leave the juices out.
On a lighly floured surface, roll out the remaining dough untill it's less than 1/4 inch (1/2 cm) thick.
Cut the dough into strips and layer them over the apple pie to form a latice, covering no more than one third of the surface - you should be able to see quite a bit of the apple pieces
If necessary, use the remaining dough to make the edges a bit higher.
Use the remaining egg to coat the dough strips.
Bake the pie at 175 C / 340 F, just below the middle of your oven, for about 75 minutes.
Remove the springform *after* the pie has cooled.
Serve warm with whipped cream or ice cream

Please tell me more about sassafras tea. I heard it was eventually outlawed by the FDA for some silly reason. I grew up with it (in northern Michigan, even!) and loved it. We had a small sassafras tree on our property and we cultivated the leaves.

Thanks, Britt! Very helpful info. I figured as much about the FDA stuff--you know, if you feed 100 pounds of it to rats, they die. Big surprise.

I think I'll be procuring some sassafras in the near future and reliving my happy childhood memories of this. I'll let y'all know how it goes.

Very strange that we knew about this stuff in northern Michigan, no? Then again, my parents are from Missouri. :)

Im a New England French Canadian("j'sui Arcaydjian",as mon Grampere would say,phonetically, as I have no idea how Canuck is spelt...)
For the most part i my diet was standard 1970s American redneck foods,such as meat and potatoes,mac and cheese and hotdogs,and only a little "rabbit food".However there were quite a few little differences from the non French canadians.

My Grampere would make us all fry bread for breakfast,white flour,eggs, salt,sugar,maybe some leavening , i cant remember.It was fried in ALOT of oil and afterwards slathered either in sugar or molasses.He said that that was one of his traditional breakfasts, being born in Canada in 1909.

He also touted molasses as a cure all "tonic",as he'd call it, especially mixed with whole milk and a raw egg and drunk daily.

Being French Canadian we drank alot of tea.It was always "Red rose" brand, loose tea(all of the other Canuck families did too,and it was always this particular brand).My Grandpere would make tea "the old way" as a DECOCTION, slow boiled for hours in the big enamel pot on the back of his stove.As the tea ran out, hed just add another fistful of fresh leaves ,without taking the old ones out,and top it off with fresh water.this would be drunk in huge mugs, and very very sweet.To this day I seem to have an exaggerated notion of what a "average sized" cup or glass is,or how strong tea should be....

There would also always be these mints,called by everybody else"Canada mints",which were white,an inch across, 1/2 wide and pasty,and very minty tasting.There was also a pink wintergreen version.These were endemic in every French Canadian household in the area, to the point of being an inside joke if you were Canadian or not.

Finally ,there was the Hard cider.My Grampere taught me at the tender age of 10 or so how to make" the Recipie" which was the hard cider he made during the Prohibition to keep our family financially afloat.It was made the following way.

After the cider was pressed, take it and put it in a large bucket with a lid,and add yeast . Once it starts going, add sugar to feed the yeasts more. After the fermentation was complete, the cider would be placed in an old horse watering trough and left to freeze outside.This would freeze the water, but leave the alcohol unfrozen ,due to its lower freezing temperature.You then poor off the unfrozen bit into another trough and repeat until nothing left freezes anymore.It is wonderful,and STRONG.(I just realized that it isnt even cold enough in the winter to do this anymore....)
.I have preserved this little bit of my family history for many years,and used it as a teenager to get around those silly drinking age laws......without the freeze distilling part.

Im feeling nostalgic now, im going to have a mug of tea.

Wow, what cool memories.

I am half French, half Irish, but I grew up eating things like stew, spaghetti, tacos, meatloaf, lots of fresh fish, (my dad fished every week), pork chops, homemade hamburgers, (my all time favorite) and roasts of beef and pork. We ate chicken, but not often. Vegetables were mainly canned corn and green beans, mashed potatoes, Ricearoni....

Don't get me wrong, I loved the food that I grew up with. My mom was a working mom when there were not many working moms. She would come home from work and go straight to the kitchen. Her food always tasted good, it just was not varied and none of it was ever served up with thought to presentation.

Now I serve my family lots of fresh vegetables. We even grow them ourselves sometimes. We eat lots of fish and chicken, very seldom beef, although my husband adores steak. I always try to arrange things nicely and add pretty touches to the table, but I have gotten into a food rut myself lately. It is easy to do.

Well the cool thing about your culture was/is Canter's Deli up in Los Angeles. They had/have many of the things that you decribe and luckily, my dad would go there about once a week to get bagels and he would always have something yummy in the restaurant section first. I loved going there, it seemed very exotic. I still have not found the equivalent here in San Diego.