Food

Essay Question:

Does food shape your family's identity?

To support your argument, collect some family stories and/or recipes. The following questions should elicit family stories that will be useful to you. Composing your own questions might be even more successful, especially if you base those questions on your knowledge of your family chronology and history.

• Does your family have signature dishes that are always served at particular occasions? Secret recipes handed down from one generation to another?
• What is your informant's favorite dish? What was his/her mother's favorite dish? father's favorite dish?
• How do people in your family drink coffee or other beverages? Do their preferences say anything about their personalities?
• What is the best meal your informant ever ate?
• Who is the best cook in your family? Is that person training anyone to follow in his/her footsteps?
  
  
• Has it ever been difficult for people in your family to change their eating habits? Do people in your family often go on diets? Has a doctor ever told someone in your family to change their eating patterns?
• Was there a particular time when people in your family got interested in nutrition and healthy foods?
  
  
• Do people in your family follow religious rules about food? If so, how important is it to them?
  
  
• What kinds of grocery stores have your family shopped at? Were they small or large? friendly or impersonal?
• Do people in your family hunt or fish or eat meat they've butchered themselves? Does that shape the way they feel about meat?
• Have there been changes in your family in the number of restaurant meals people eat? changes in the kinds of restaurants they go to?