I live on the Oregon coast, but my family is a melding of about everything: my father was born and raised in China, so we had the asian influence, my husband's father was born in Scotland, but his grandfather was Burmese, so they had the spicy Burmese influences in there Scottish fare, they had mince and tatties, potatoes and minced or ground round with onions and a lot of Burmese curry was a mainstay in their diet. It's one of my family's favorite dishes. Then my mother's side of the family is French, German,and English, all being raised in Arkansas. Talk about a combination of different tastes. Cracklins to sop. which is cornbread and milk. We also ate a lot of okra, fried. Biscuits and gravy were a mainstay at Grams, Grandpa was fron Texas, so we ate a lot of Mex style food also, and there was always bread and potatoes on his table. His favorite dessert was shoo fly pie, of raisin pie(yuck), Grandma was a cobbler maker if it was fruit she made cobbler out of it, and being in the salinas valley in California, there was all kinds of fruit and fresh veges, and most of their meat was either baked, or fried, they ate a lot of beans, I don't think my Gram ever got over the depression. Don't get me wrong, I love beans,lima, navy, black, and any other. The one thing that Gram made that I couldn't stand was the green beans that were cooked all day with bacon. To this day, I can't even stand the smell of this. I love veges lightly cooked, or stir fried. And, don't let me get started on cornbread, can't get enough of it.
Now in my family, we eat almost every kind of food. In one week are meals can consist of stir fry, lentils, fried chicken, spaghetti, Tom Yum soup, sauerkraut and dumplings with spareribs. And on and on..
I don't think I have ever had a twinkie, but what I had had to have been better than preservatives in a cake. That was my mothers definition of a twinkie.
Our favorite places to go out to eat are Thai. Mongolian, or Chinese. I know these are very "Americanized", but they are healthier than plain American.