"Folk Cuisine" Rising in Popularity

What is your favorite food? Is it Mexican? Italian? Chinese? If you ask most people that question, they will usually name one of the top three as their answer. (In most surveys, Italian comes in first.) But rarely will they name American cuisine as their favorite. Maybe that's because there's some confusion as to what American cuisine really is. Most identify it with the comfort foods that you grew up with like fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, burgers, and barbecue. Then there are the regional dishes like New England clam chowder, Jambalaya and St. Louis toasted ravioli, that sort of thing. So I guess it's regional just like in a lot of other countries. Most people say Chinese not Szechwan Province Chinese.

Sometimes American cuisine can have definite overtones of cuisine from other countries, depending on the nationality of the group and how long they have been in the United States. We are after all a nation of immigrants. (Witness the sudden boom of ethnic aisles in the supermarket.) This doesn't always result in those foods being liked by the next generation though. A lot of us didn't like some of the dishes that our mothers prepared. My grandmother was German, for instance and used to make sauerkraut. That acidic cabbage smell would fill the house and almost turn my stomach. I've never liked it, likewise with liver. I always fled down to the local hamburger joint when I detected the smell of liver and onions cooking in the frying pan.

According to Healthy Planet Magazine, (www.thehealthyplanet.com), there is a new terminology that incorporates the regional aspect of American cuisine. It's called folk cuisine. The James Beard Foundation recently conducted a survey as part of "Taste of America" to determine if there was really a bona fide "American cuisine."