Cultural myopia at law school.

:hi:

I've been a bit scarce around this forum--I'm halfway through law school now, so I'm busy (but OLL, if you're lurking: I have a 3.875 and I cook a few times a week. And I've gone to several museums and movies and my relationship is just fine. Anyhow).

Tomorrow, my school is hosting "Taste of the World," a dinner and career panel sponsored by the International Law Society. I was asked to contribute something representative of my ethnicity, so I am making a noodle kugel.

Several restaurants are contributing items, too...Korean, Mexican, Italian, Chinese, Indian at last count. Students are making pierogis, peanut stew, South African sweets, Irish soda bread, and so forth.

So far, 17 people out of a student body of 700 have signed up. (It's $10.) And most of them did so in response to the announcement...

...that Buca di Beppo was supplying fried cheese. :banghead:

This is the same law school where I brought some homemade biscotti and someone refused them, not because he was allergic to the ingredients or preferred softer cookies or didn't eat sweets but because it seemed so "ethnic."

I realize this is law school and not cooking school but dear god...I'm traveling to Europe with a class this March and I've already sort of been designated the food nerd, and I saw a visible shudder in the room when I mentioned a Strasbourg specialty was pig knuckles with fois gras.

Oh well.

your eyesroll. :eyes: Sounds like that means there will be more for you too enjoy.

Congrats on the great GPA! :thumbsup:

I was told by someone on this forum (who is no longer with us) that my entire life will be spent in the law library, and if I'm concerned with anything else I'm obviously doing it wrong. This was in response to an inquiry about cheap, fast, and healthy cooking, when you're a full-time student on a budget. It was an amusing discussion.

I miss her too....

I feel your pain around the food fears. I have two friends who I no longer go out to eat with as they will sit there for twenty minutes checking each little morsel for bits of onions. (Very annoying)

I'm someone who will try most anything and enjoy trying new and different things so it's hard sometimes for me to understand why some folks just get so entrenched in their own little preferences.

It's just food for goodness sake!

I know she meant well. But nothing has been nearly as bad as anyone predicted/warned. It's been no worse than a job, really, and at times it's been a heck of a lot of fun. (And if I'm doing it wrong, the error's been harmless.)

I remember last year someone expressing relief that the pizza ordered for a meeting was from (Domino's? Pizza Hut?) because at the last meeting, someone ordered from a local place and it was weird.


And gaaah...the onion people drive me nuts as well. They're not allergic. They don't have religious objections. What then?

I must be allergic to raw onions. I love the flavoring they provide, but I cannot eat them or I get horrifically sick.

I try not to make a big deal out of it, but if I get tabbouleh or tuna salad or something, I have to do a lot of picking.

Sorry you're encountering such pejudices. I used to be like that when I was little, up to about 14 but most people grow out of it!

My boss at my old job used to bring the SAME Stouffers TV dinner every freaking day. Roasted chicken with mashed potatoes. How freaking sad is it that you will not eat anything else? And every time our department went out to lunch we had to go to the same fucking restaurant (Tia's, a stupid Mexican chain restaurant) because that's where SHE wanted to go. After awhile, when she said we were going out to lunch, people started to find reasons not to go. I think she finally figured out what was up, because at long last, she would say we were going to go somewhere different.

home of meatloaf and mashed 'taters. You're in WI, right?

I'm sure to some of those folks ketchup is exotic. :D

You can be the bon vivant among the cretins, eyesroll.

Great to see you and glad LS is going so well for you. :thumbsup:

...and Milwaukee does have its share of good restaurants and is pretty ethnically diverse. But yeah.

been there.

But I have to admit, their main strength is in Central European-leaning places and their offspring, the brew pubs.

(I visit family in Whitefish Bay every Christmas....)

Shiraz was SO wonderful, but I drove by it about 3 weeks ago, and it's closed. :-(

I thought it was excellent, but since I LIVE in "Little Tehran", it's not like I don't eat Middle Eastern food of all stripes on a regular basis, lol.

We have falafal joints and hookah clubs like other cities have burger joints.

I liked hibernating in their dark little booths. I went there a few weeks ago before reprehensor got here. The job sucked, Christmas was over, and I needed some downtime, some Middle Eastern, and a big glass of red wine. I was so bummed that they were closed.

And I'm STILL trying to find a decent Greek RESTAURANT here. Not like the cheap little gyro shops, but a sit down nice place that serves moussaka, pastitsio, dolmas, avgolemono...the works.

The one that sounds decent is all the way over on the east side.

People diss Texas, but MAN do I miss Kosta's, my favorite Greek place. They had the most AMAZING avgolemono soup EVER. And their tzatziki and pitas hot out of the oven were to die for.

Plus, I miss Chuy's, my main Tex Mex source.

difficulty since I relocated. There are still so many things that I miss but I've been able to overcome much of it by learning to cook many of the things I love for myself. Oklahoma isn't exactly a cornucopia of diversity in many ways.

I thought I was going to die from missing Pizza, Deli, & Chinese Food (not the same) Things have changed over the many years here and now the PNW is a foodie paradise. (Though I still can't get Deli or find a "real" bakery). It is tough when you can't find what you want.

Share some of your replacement ideas for the foods you miss. I still order Taylor Ham on line when I get my yearly craving but somethings don't travel well. I'd kill for a Cheesecake from the Diner in NJ that I frequented when I was a teen. I've yet to find a replica of it though there are many great Cheesecakes out there.

alone in Ohio. Not that I didn't know how, but you know how it is to try to cook for one. Just went out to eat with friends a lot and had the occasional dinner party so I could cook something I really wanted.

The two things that first come to mind that I've had to learn to do on my own are Thai peanut sauce and Cincinnati Chili (I posted about the C.C. last weekend.) Pizza is a really difficult one. My husband grew up down here but I introduced him to the pizza in Ohio and he likes it so much better. He'll even tell you there isn't any good pizza in Tulsa. I hate to admit it, but for the longest time, we've just been saving money and time by eating doctored Red Baron frozen 4-cheese pizzas. (Pizza is our Friday night ritual and I like to have something quick and easy.) I'm going to start making my own soon, tho. Something else to work into the routine.

There are no Italian meat markets here. It took me a really long time to find a passable Italian sausage. Most of the groceries think if you mix a little parsley into it, that makes it Italian sausage. I actually threw some of the stuff out from a couple of places. Finally found a little deli/meat market that sells a decent Italian sausage and there is a little Italian influence farther south in the McAlester/Krebs area. I'm not even really sure how good it is because by the time I found out about it, the husband had stopped eating meat unless it was organic so... But I now make a killer eggplant parm, too.

The biggest changes have come from him stopping almost all meat and both of us trying to eliminate HFCS, enriched flour, hydrogenated anything, etc. for the most part. Eating more whole foods. It's probably a good thing I can't/don't get all the things I used to have back home. It was a real challenge to stop cooking with meat because that was basically the core of my whole repertoire! But it's gotten easier with time and practice. I've been subbing fake chicken into some of the things and replacing some meats with mushrooms, but there are really no decent replacements for some things. I still miss a good Genoa salami with whole peppercorns and capicolla. Somehow a salami made by a company named Wilson or Boar's Head doesn't whisper Italian to me, ya know?

Basically, we stopped eating out down here almost altogether, too. We like our own cooking better and it's cheaper that way, too.

because I was wondering what planet that law school was on.

The midwest is about 30 years behind the rest of the country, so the food revolution that took place in the 70s all over the rest of the country is just about to get started there. Instead of the usual casseroles at the potlucks, adventurous cooks are going to bring (gasp!) lasagna--made with bottled sauce and plain ricotta and pre grated cheese, of course. Hey, it's a start, though, and they've got a lot of catching up to do.

In the meantime, you might gently mention that unless your classmates want to stay in vanilla country for the rest of their natural lives, they're going to have to start tasting things like biscotti or they'll starve to death when they poke their noses outside the region.

They certainly won't know what to order when they go on those junkets to NYC and are expected to entertain clients on expense accounts at better restaurants.

:)

I will admit, though, that I had an unusual upbringing here in Michigan in that both of my parents are originally from California. When I went to college, not one of my friends had ever seen an artichoke before, and my husband's family had never eaten in a Chinese restaurant. I'd thought those were staples. Thankfully, Hubby's become quite the foodie and an amazing cook.

I'm a bit north of you and authentic ethnic restaurants are scarce. Luckily I work in a very diverse environment so tales of fabulous food abound.

(Although I sometimes like Emperor of China on Brady.)

Milwaukee's got some pretty good restaurants for a city its size, but so many of my classmates don't look beyond the Marquette area.

We have terrible Chinese food in this town, and when we ate in Chinatown last fall on a Chicago trip, it was like we'd died and gone to heaven. Amazing food!

I spent 20 years in Central Illinois, and this I learned:
Basking in being ignorant on purpose is a Midwest favorite pastime.

No-alarm chili makes them cry.

Hope your event went well. If you're ever in DC, let me know.
We'll go out to eat.

when I moved up to New England from the south and introduced them to food that was seasoned with something heftier than salt and pepper.

My friends and even my ex were pretty good sports about it, really.

By the time I left, they were all chile addicts. I'm feeding their habits now, sending them ground Chimayo chile from here in NM.

Um.....wow. :crazy:

us Eye-talyans, ya' know! LOL :crazy:

No matter how short the visit, it's nice to see you!

to hear how it went!

We got 35 people, so lots of walk-ins.

The crappy Chinese place by my house donated some sweet and sour chicken, which simultaneously made me grateful (for the donation) and sad (the week before, we went to Chinatown in Chicago and had real Chinese food).

There was Korean "um...I think it's beef, and I think this is rice noodles..." (my response: "Oh, that's bulgogi, and chapchae, but you've got mung bean threads there")...and Buca di Beppo pasta...and enchiladas...and venison schnitzel (shot by the chef himself)...and pierogi...and...and...

The organizers also made mashed potatoes, green beans and jello with cool whip (which, I suppose, if you need to represent "Midwest American," you've got it).

I ended up sitting at a table with three Federalist Society members who pointed out that they were all drinking root beer, and I was drinking the pinko lemonade. (My politics are pretty well known.) It was kind of amusing, actually.

:hi:

Did they overcook the green beans? I'll bet they did. *sigh* I taught with a guy once who adamantly refused to be anywhere near me if I brought asparagus in at lunch. Apparently, his mom bought canned *shudder* and then overcooked that. The poor thing had never known good asparagus.

My stepdaughter (5) will only eat canned green beans--not fresh, not even frozen, not either of those cooked to oblivion. Just canned.

But she ate homemade carrot soup today, and was fascinated by the "white carrots" (even when I told her they were called parsnips). So that's something.

I would probably just tell mine they were white carrots. :blush: Then again, both of mine (7 and 5) practically stripped my garden bare this summer before I could get to it. I'm thinking of seriously expanding it just to get them to eat more green beans and lettuce. ;)