How did you learn to eat other foods beyond what your immediate family served you? Through extended family, friends...

[electric_blue68]

colleagues, your own curiosity?

So my immediate family was a 2nd Gen Greek-American my mom, and my dad a 2nd Gen Ukrainian-American. As I'm guessing many near to start of their line here in the USA kept some to much of their heritage cuisine, and also adopted American foods.

My dad was an only child so we didn't have much of other contact except friends of my dad's dad on occasion. We ate Ukrainian foods around Easter - farmer's cheese, kielbasa (sausage), special Ukraine bread which my mom learned to wonderfully bake!

OTOH my mom was Greek-American with 1 sister, and 3 brothers (one brother lived in Boston, then DC, then Switzerland for job when I was a teen) so the 2 here in nearby NJ, and 1 in NYC we had lots of Greek foods to continue traditions.

I loved most of all those foods, although I was a fairly picky eater till my later teens. We had pizza, and Chinese food esp both on Catholic meat free Fridays ('60s).
Well, Chinese restaurant food back in the day the food was often overly slathered with soy sauce. There are meals that do that but not that many.

My first Chinese friend - her mom occasionally made meals. That's where I was surprised to learn they didn't slather the food in soy sauce. I also got introduced to sticky rice in banana leaves. It can be tied with string if you are taking it with you. Chicken, pork, beef, mushrooms, sausage, eggs, peanuts, are many of the items added in. Waaaay later I started eating them at restaurants though they were wrapped in lotus leaves. Very tasty!

Later in College my new Chinese friends we went to a Shezuan restaurant where I tried new things.

One of my first bosses was Hispanic. I learned to eat rice & beans when we occasionally went to lunch. Plus the plantain chips from Chieftos.

Back to my relatives. As a picky eater I avoided lamb (a Greek favorite), and lots of vegetables. Finally, in my 20's I finally tried lamb sheks kabobs, with onions, red, and green peppers. Ohhhh, yum! A life long favorite, the peppers were new to me.

Somewhere in there my later 20's I started trying more Middle Eastern foods. Some Greeks foods were the same, or similar I figured an easy way in.

I tried milder chilies when I went on vacation to the Southwest. Bought my first chilli powder when I got back. In fact the first time I opened a jar I practically had a vision of the Arizona high desert in front of me. Wow!

One of my biggest food adventures was eating Indian foods in my 20's. I started with a friend who's friend introduced her to Northern Indian foods. Later I found my first Southern Indian restaurant near the
U.N. in my 30's. Luckily a few friends from different parts of my life liked both, too, so I had different dining partners. I'd go alone, too.

Southern Indian as you may know has a lot of vegetarian, vegan foods. I've eaten a lot of those as I found a bunch of Sourh Indian restaurants along lower Park Ave. I still enjoy eating out when I can. Luckily Trader Joe's also has a few Indian meals I can get.

So these are my major food adventures. And I've cooked some of them as well.

For those who've gone beyond your original growing up cuisines What have been your adventures?
🍽 🙂 👍

[Demobrat]

1. I grew up in Chicago eating hot dogs, polish sausage,

and barbecue beef. The first taco I ever ate came from Jack in the box. Pasta was spaghetti Os out of a can. We did have pizza, but that’s it as far as ethnic food.

When I was 22 I ran away to California with a friend. My first day in Los Angeles I ate real Mexican food. After that, I would and will try anything, and I am grateful for the variety of ethnic foods here in San Francisco where I ended up. I love all of it.

[electric_blue68]

4. TY. I loved visiting San Fransico. Ate in their Chinatown.

There some things I won't try, but I'm pretty open.

[jmowreader]

16. If the first taco you ever ate was from Jack in the Box...

...I'm surprised you had the courage to have a second one. Jack in the Box tacos are considered an act of war south of the border.

[woodsprite]

2. Friends, relatives, pot lucks, and restaurants

I also used to like watching cooking shows and I would see something I wanted to try. As long as mom agreed that I could try it, she’d buy the groceries and let me loose in the kitchen.

[electric_blue68]

6. Ty. How cool of your mom! My mom was a great cook so I partly learned from her.

[House of Roberts]

3. Buffets, baby. Buffets.

[electric_blue68]

7. Ty. Ah, yeah - another option! I have a Chinese Buffet that's a modest bus ride away. It has some of my favorites plus

a couple of things that were new to me. 👍


Although I don't think I'll ever try the soft shell crabs.

[claudette]

5. Funny thing is

having been raised in an Italian family with delicious food at meal times, I NEVER ate cauliflower until I started dating my husband. His mother was German and served it a LOT of times! Of course, when I married, I cooked it for my husband and really grew to like it very much. I was surprised that we never had it at our meals growing up.

Also, my mother-in-law always added a "touch" of sugar to her salads to quiet the vinegar. A habit I picked up and still use many years later.

[electric_blue68]

8. Ty. Cauliflower was something I particularly ate in Indian food....

Never added a bit of sugar to salads. My Favorite dressing are extra virgin olive oil, and vinegar with garlic.
Blue cheese dressing.

[claudette]

12. Sounds good

Honey mustard is my favorite dressing so I guess that’s why I like a bit of sugar sprinkled on my oil and vinegar dressing!!😊

[sdfernando]

9. I don't see how you "learn" to eat other foods.

You try things and if you like it, great, if not, move on.

[electric_blue68]

15. It was late when I posted it. I guess I could have used the word - try - instead...

although sometimes I've tried a food several times before I really got to like it.
So that could be a type of learning.

[Deep13]

10. I really didn't...

I lived in the Worcester, MA area with a lot of Euro immigrant culture as well as Chinese-American, so we weren't pigeon-holed. Occasionally, I had the need or inclination to try something new, like when I ate a lot of falafel in Jordan and there wasn't much Euro-American food (besides crappy snack products from the USA and UK). I also had really nice flat bread (Hubz), not the rubbery stuff we get in America. And more hummus that you ever want to see again. ("Hummus" means "chickpea" in Arabic. They are actual peas, grown single and in pairs in pods, are light green when fresh, and taste like peas).

[HeartsCanHope]

11. My husband and his family introduced me to other foods.

My father and mother were pretty bland eaters. Mostly casseroles or meat and potatoes. My husband took me out for Japanese Ramen for one of our first dates. We both got tickled when the dish I chose seemed to be one long noodle! After watching me struggle for a couple of minutes he rescued me by getting silverware so I could cut it into manageable pieces. (My chopstick skills were and still are ridiculously bad!) My husband and his family introduced me to many other foods--Greek, Thai, Cuban, French, Italian, Cajun, Chinese--anything different or tasty we tried it! I tried Arabic food in Israel, and love it. Hummus is a staple in our house. My son has grown up eating all kinds of foods, and we try new restaurants whenever we can. Variety is the spice of life!

[EverHopeful]

13. I was lucky in that, with all the Italian and Polish Aunties and Uncles

(who, it turned out, weren't actually related, but I didn't find that out until long after I should have realized it) our family gatherings always had lots of foods my Mother never would have made.

All the Spanish dishes from my Father's side of the family hadn't prepared me for the joy of Mexican food that I discovered when we moved to LA (although getting it without cilantro was/is an ongoing challenge).

[catbyte]

14. I grew up in the middle of nowhere northern Lower Michigan so as a kid, my idea of pizza

was the boxed stuff from the grocery store. I think it was Chef Boyardee. You know, the "pizza dough" you add water to, canned "pizza sauce" and a little can of "parmesan cheese." You couldn't get an actual pizza. I don't think there were any frozen pizzas back then except for "Appian Way" little pizzas that had the same things on them as the boxed pizza except for a few shreds of "mozzarella cheese." Then, when I was a teenager, Little Caesars opened a place in Petoskey and it was a revelation. Either Litle Caesars was way better back then or it was such an upgrade from Chef Boyardee that I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.

Then a Chinese restaurant opened up in Kalkaska and we'd drive down for "exotic" chow mein, egg foo young, and sweet and sour whatever.

My diet growing up was the standard Midwest meat and potatoes, along with fresh-caught lake perch, pike, bluegills, and whitefish from Lake Charlevoix, Lake Michigan, and Lake Superior. My Nana made wicked pasties and my dad was a wizard at making bread. We had a garden, so lots of fresh vegetables if the deer didn't eat them, lol. My mom was more adventurous than my dad so on nights he'd work, we'd eat artichokes or lobster tails while watching "One Step Beyond." It was a great childhood.

[beaglelover]

17. My 2nd long term partner introduced me to various foods. Some I loved.....Indian food......some I did not like.....

Sushi.

[jmowreader]

18. The mess hall at Fort Devens, MA

US Army Intelligence School Devens was broken into two battalions: 1st Battalion, where all the job training was conducted, and 2d Battalion, which had training for sergeants plus all the instructors. The only one of the two that owned a mess hall was 1st Battalion.

The mess sergeant in 1st Battalion, the first time I went there (the second time was for NCO school), was this old coot who'd been in the Army about a million years and was on his last assignment before he retired. The Army has a cookbook that Thou Shalt Not Make Anything That Isn't In Here but Devens is 500 miles from the Army Culinary Board in what was then Fort Lee so they left this guy alone and since he was retiring what could they possibly do to him anyway if he got caught, so he made whatever the hell he wanted to. We had things like roast lamb, fish you won't find in the Army supply system but you will find in New England, grinders and New England Boiled Dinner. At our battalion commander's welcome briefing when we first arrived, Lieutenant Colonel Sweet (who, incidentally, both looked and sounded exactly like Andy Griffith) told us we would never eat as good anywhere else in the Army as we would do at Devens, and he wasn't kidding.

[malthaussen]

19. Various ways. Here's how I learned to love pizza:

“Pavlov’s Dog Needs Only One Iteration”


“I hate pizza,” I said, and she smiled
as she held up a wedge to my mouth.
A bite, the cheese and sauce blending
on my tongue; crunch of crust as I chew, then swallow.

A few bites more, and then with mischief in her eyes
she presses her lips to my startled mouth.
Quick flicker of tongue, as she steals a crumb,
a taste cooler than any liquid to wash down
the commingled flavors.

God, I love pizza.

I learned about a lot of foods because beautiful women showed them to me. The way to a man's heart, etc.

-- Mal

[ProfessorGAC]

20. My Parents Strongly Encouraged It

"Try it, you might like it."
So, I'd try what my dad had, or my mom had and probably liked it.
By the time I was 8, I was ordering liver & onions at a restaurant on my own.
A couple times the waitress asked "Are you sure?" & my mom would say "All his idea. I wouldn't order it, but he likes it."
So, I've always been an adventurous eater.

[wnylib]

21. My German born great aunt lived with us when

I was a child, so we had a lot of German style foods like sweet and sour beets, sweet and sour cabbage, potato pancakes, bratwurst, braunschweiger, potato salad, home made sour dough bread, ginger cake with lemon topping. Cookies and cakes always were made with lard, not shortening, oil, or butter. I remember friends saying that my birthday cake tasted "different."

My father grew up on a farm and had mixed Native ancestry on both sides of his family. We always had a vegetable garden, but especially corn (4 rows of it), squash, and green beans (the "3 sisters" of Native agriculture), plus strawberries (important among the Seneca who have a Strawberry Festival in the spring). Plus several other veggies. Also cherries, apples, and black walnuts from my grandfather's farm.

Our city neighborhood was quiet, residential, and old but well kept, with a mix of immigrant families. Most of the Germans had moved on (my parents bought our house from a German speaking Austro-Hungarian family friend), but there were older Italians and some younger ones who arrived after WWII.

So I had authentic Italian food at friends' houses - pizza, pasta, home made tomato sauce, antipasto salads, and Italian Christmas cookies, which I loved, especially the pizzelles and the chocolate spice cookies.

I didn't have Chinese food until I was an adult and went to a Chinese restaurant with friends. My first taste of prime rib was at a company event held in an upscale restaurant when I was in my early 20s. Since the food and drinks were on the company, I took advantage of the chance to try a variety of cocktails and regretted it later.

When I taught ESL to adult immigrants, most of my students were Latin American. Several former students became good friends and we got together often for dinners and picnics so I enjoyed home made Mexican and Puerto Rican foods like refried beans, tamales, empanadas filled with meat or seafood, pulled pork, rice and bean dishes, mole, tacos, burritos, and flan. I contributed "American" foods like chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies, pumpkin and apple pies, and macaroni salad.

The Greek church in my community holds a festival every summer so that was my exposure to gyro sandwiches, baklava, feta cheese, spinach pie, pastitsio, and ouzo.

Funny story about dining out on prom night with another couple, all of us dressed in formal attire. The server brought out small dishes of a very pale yellow creamy looking something. We did not know what it was and hesitated to taste it.
It looked almost like sour cream except for the yellow cast. Finally one of the guys tasted a tiny amount on his fork. "It's butter," he said. None of us had seen whipped butter or margarine yet, which was fairly new at the time.