Your country's traditional foods

[Rebel]

haha maple syrup?

[sunshinehannah]

I live in England, not sure what the traditional foods are really. Probably yorkshire puddings and roast potatos lol :P

[PureBloodGirl]

Uh... I live and was born in America. What traditional foods do we have?

[Gaian]

Well, I was born in France, and traditional foods depend of the area of the country: bouillabaisse and batatouille in south-east, tarte flambée, choucroute in Alsace... but now we can find them anywhere in France. A very popular food is blanquette de veau, it's delicious.
Now I live in Swtzerland, rösti, fonodue and raclette are pretty traditional here, even though we can eat raclette and fondue in french alpine areas too.

[Montse]

I live in Guatemala and there are loads of traditional foods . Many for every Holiday, for instance for easter week we like to eat Mole de platano. Which is bananas fried with a hot chilli chocolate topping. It is simply delicious!!!

[Wab]

Originally Posted by saz

Now I haven't been to a kids party for about 10 years but the foods I remember are fairy bread, chips (crisps), butterfly buns or cupcakes and cherios.

*Don't forget to let us know what part of the world your from.

It's not an Australian kid's party without chocolate crackles and Cheezels.

Originally Posted by bloodtraitor13

I do not include kangaroo meat-i think eating one of our national emblems is awful

It's overrated. Crocodile is nice though.

[arithmancer]

Originally Posted by PureBloodGirl

Uh... I live and was born in America. What traditional foods do we have?

Burgers and hot dogs, fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, pizza, toll house cookies, apple pie, milkshakes ... There's also regional stuff (like lobster rolls and clam chowder in New England, where I grew up). That, and every imaginable ethnic cuisine.

(Yeah, I know, pizza is Italian. But if you've had both versions, you'd have to agree they are different foods. )

[Green_Arrow]

So I'm not Italian, but does "home-made pizza from scratch" counts as traditional for me!

The traditional food for my 'culture' (I use this term lightly) would typically be curries and rice.

[MC2456]

In Singapore, we are a mix of different races, so obviously our foods has influences from different races. Even Chinese food here is a world apart from the authentic Chinese food. My Mandarin teacher, who is a mainlander, feels Chinese food here is too sweet. She had to add soy sauce to her noodles the first time she came here, much to the surprise of the service staff. Even I was surprised, because that kind of noodles are more saltish than a bag of potato chips.

[Falllon]

Well I'm Canadian, so... maple syrup, back bacon, and butter tarts.

[APolaris]

... Let's see, does the USA even HAVE "traditional" foods?

Hmm... hamburger and hot dog... nope, both of those were born in central Europe.

Apple pie... nope, that's a French invention.

Macaroni & cheese... I'm pretty sure the French had this before our country even existed.

I guess you could say, in New York at least, EVERY country's traditional foods are "our foods." It's probably due to our status as a world immigrant capitol. There is literally no nationality that isn't heavily represented in New York. We have Jamaican, Hawaiian, Indian, Israeli, Thai, Barbecue pits (not as many as in the South, but we do have them and beef brisket is quite popular), Chinese (both Chinese-American AND authentic Chinese), Japanese (again, both types), Korean, Polish, French, Italian, Middle-Eastern, Russian, Puerto Rican... the list goes on and on. All of these also have at least two major festivals per year with street stands selling authentic foods from their homelands.

What's more is that I've traveled to many American cities, and not only does New York have the best or second-best of every type on that list, it's not even a close call. The biggest gap is in the Italian/pizza; its closest competitor is Chicago in the pizza department, but I'd say Chicago's pizza is at most 30% as good as NY's. One pizzeria in Washington was so bad by comparison that two of my relatives literally fell ill by tasting it. The only two places I've ever eaten where I would ever admit the tomato or alfredo sauces taste better than mine are also both in New York, one in the city and one on Long Island. This may be because New York invented the American pizza (pizza in Italy is actually much closer to what Americans serve as "pizza Margherita"). It may also be because New York's legendary for its unique capacity to produce the crustiest Italian bread/pizza crusts, as well as having a tremendous assortment of deli meats.

It happens that I know how to make at least a few dishes from nearly all of these departments, so even though I can't afford to go to the city so often, I can buy the ingredients and make them at home.

[Verena]

Well I'm italian and so... pasta and pizza, but ... I am not the classic “italiano-mangia-spaghetti”. Sure I love traditional foods of my country, but I also like traditional foods of other countries.

[Divvie]

Originally Posted by Verena

Well I'm italian and so... pasta and pizza,

Not meaning to sound offensive at all, but if someone asked me (formally a German) about German traditional food, I would end up saying "pasta & pizza" lol.

Ofc there are some traditional German (and Austrian) foods, but if you look at things in terms of "usability", I would argue that you find more often a (Germanised) version of pasta and pizza than, say, "Wiener Schnitzel" or "Pork with Sauerkraut" (or what people these days think of as typical German food).

I think it's the same in Britain imo - apart from Fish& Chips and perhaps some pies, the typical food Britons seem to eat is "Indian" lol (Vindaloo, anyone?) Ofc, only my personal opinion as as a (former) long-term resident in the lovely United Kingdom!

[Phiden]

I'm Swiss, so.. rösti, fondue, chocolate (), raclette.. I live in the Italian part of Switzerland, and our cooking has a lot of Italian influences.. so I often eat pasta and pizza (it's very good, just like the italian one!).

[SeverusSnapeHBP]

I'm American, and being the melting pot that the US is, it's really hard to decide on what is authentic "American Cuisine".

The only things I can really think of is:

• Macaroni and Cheese (Invented by Thomas Jefferson)
• The combination of a Hamburger/cheeseburger, Fries (with ketchup), and coke
• Maple syrup on pancakes
• Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich (Contrary to popular belief, Peanut butter was NOT invented by George Washington Carver)
• Lobster, Steamers and Corn on the cobb
• Philly Cheese steak sandwich
• Hotdog on a bun
• Fried chicken, biscuits and gravy
• Scrambled eggs, bacon and toast

Jeez, now that I think about it, it seems like all Americans like to do is take an already done recipe, combine it with another, add cheese or bread to it... and it automatically becomes "American".

[merrymarge]

go to any part of the United States and people will tell you what the country's traditional food is. It is such a conglamorate of different foods from all countries. each state has their own favorite food, each region has their own food. each neighborhood will tell you their favorite food. America doesn't have one traditional food, they have many different types.

[SeverusSnapeHBP]

Breakfast cereal, potato chips, cola, the ice cream cone (just the cone), soft ice cream, corn dogs, fried dough and the modern doughnut all were invented in the US as well.

The original doughnut was a deep fried ball of dough (and when stacked, the pieces of dough looked like nuts), but the issue was that they could never get the center to cook before the outside overcooked, so someone decided to cut out the middle, creating the classic, ring-shaped doughnut that we know today.

Breakfast cereal was invented by accident, when a doctor named John Harvey Kellogg was making cornmeal, and accidentally cooked it too long and it turned into flakes. He scraped them out of the pot, put them into a bowl and poured milk over them, creating the first "breakfast cereal".

The modern potato chip began as an insult to a customer from a chef. Fried potatoes were big in the US in the 1800s, but they weren't cooked to a crisp and were eaten with forks during that time. A customer complained that his potatoes weren't cooked all the way, and when the chef heard this, he decided to insult the customer by cooking his potatoes to the point where he couldn't eat them with a fork and he had to eat them with his hands (which was a huge insult in Victorian times). But the plan backfired, and the customer ended up loving the new cooking method for the potatoes. Thus, the "potato crisp" was born, and was later re-named the potato chip.

For the ice cream cone, a man who sold ice cream wanted to re-invent the way people ate ice-cream, so he folded a waffle into a cone shape, and sold it as an ice cream cone.

Soft ice-cream began when a ice-cream vehicle lost one of its wheels. Knowing that his ice-cream was going to melt, the driver sold the ice-cream out of the back of his truck, marketing it as soft ice-cream. Today soft ice cream is made the same way hard ice cream is, the only difference is that hard ice cream goes through an extra freezing process while soft ice cream does not.

Don't ask me about corn dogs, I have no idea how those were invented, but I do know that the term "hot dog" was originally coined in the US. Due to "frankfurters" being so cheap, even in those times, people questioned the kind of meat that was put into frankfurters since meat was so expensive back then, so they began coining the term "hot dog", believing that some of the vendors were using dog meat instead of pork.

Dr. Pepper was invented as a medicine to settle people's stomachs, that's the whole reason why it has the term "Dr." in it.

Cola was invented in the US as well. Coca-Cola in particular began when a guy decided to combine carbonated water with the cocoa plant. (Early day Coke had cocaine in it, that's why people became so addicted, and Coke's original color was green).

Fortune Cookies were also invented in San Fransisco.

Peanut Butter was not invented by George Washington Carver like everyone believes. Peanut Butter was invented by a Canadian doctor living in St. Louis who wanted to invent a way for his toothless patients to intake protein. He mashed up peanuts and combined it with sugar, creating peanut-butter.

[Dedalus Diggle]

Originally Posted by SeverusSnapeHBP

Breakfast cereal, potato chips, cola, the ice cream cone (just the cone), soft ice cream, corn dogs, fried dough and the modern doughnut all were invented in the US as well...

I think you had better check a lot of your 'facts' there. Some are at best urban legends, and some are clearly wrong. For instance, coca-cola used 'coca' not 'cocoa' - but maybe that was a typo. I am pretty sure the IC cone was invented when an IC vendor at the St. Louis World's Fair ran out of dishes, and made a deal with a waffle vendor who was not doing so well - well, now Wikipedia shows there were waffle cones well before that - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cream_cone

I don't dispute that all the foods you mentioned are big in the USA. But one has to be cautious about the tales one hears in the dark alleys about various things.

Originally Posted by merrymarge

go to any part of the United States and people will tell you what the country's traditional food is. It is such a conglamorate of different foods from all countries. each state has their own favorite food, each region has their own food. each neighborhood will tell you their favorite food. America doesn't have one traditional food, they have many different types.

America's favorite food is food! Preferably on an All-You-Can-Eaty buffet!

[Sofiakingi]

I'm from Finland.

For example Karelian pasty (karjalanpiirakka!), rye bread (ruisleipä!) and sautéed reindeer (poronkäristys!) are traditional Finnish foods. We also have very good candies (but only Finns like them), salmiakki and Fazerin sininen ♥