cjomamma, you're right, i'm sure americans are among the top 2 worldwide in the overweight folks category! this group is great, lots of laughs on this subject! i like the one about mushed peas in uk not rolling off the fork. the 1st time i went to london with my husband, i ordered fried fish. i didnt catch the look he gave me, he knew it was going to be served with the head and eyes!! i went hungry that afternoon!

Love all the wrong foods.

I was raised in the back hills of West Virginia, and
still love fried corn meal. It is boiled and then cooled,
sliced and fried in bacon or sausage fat...yummy with
syrup and hot coffee on a cold, wet day.

I live in the Central Valley of California which traditionally is a farming community. However, we seem to have a bevy of international farmers here; Germans, Basque, Japanese, Chinese, Hmong, Vietnamese, Italians, Danish, Greeks, Armenian, Mexicans and probably a lot of other nationalities I’m not aware of.

Consequently, we have a have an international choice of restaurants to choose from. Plus, we have celebrations throughout the year by different nationalities such as Cinco de Mayo (Mexican), a Basque Picnic, the Greek festival, and the Blessing of the grapes (Armenian) to just name a few. And I have to tell you there hasn’t been one of these events I’ve attended that I didn’t find some new food dish that I just loved.

School lunches brought from home are traded like crazy so our kids grow up liking and craving all kinds of foods I never heard of growing up in Denver Colorado. I just love living here.

I never liked Saurkraut either, but my ex-husband is Croatian and his parents made their own every year (pronounced KOO-poos) and it is delicious!! It is cooked all day in a large pot with some kind of smoked meat - either smoked ribs, really dry smoked sausage, dry cured bacon slabs (slanina)... It's wonderful and I still crave it sometimes, served with plain, boiled potatoes. Even my very picky 10 year old daughter loves it!

My dad was 100% Swedish and my Grandmother (I never knew her) brought over her recipe for Potatis Korv from Sweden and every year after Thanksgiving and before Christmas, Dad and I would make it. It is potato sausage with ground round, ground pork, potatoes, onions and ground up allspice. Mom always cleaned the casings and then we would stuff them. When they were cooking it smelled up the whole house. Talk about dinner from heaven. Coleslaw, bread or Lefse and Potatis Korv.

Then for Christmas Eve Mom (100% German)would make Stollen. (That recipe came from Germany) OMG that was the flakiest with nuts and candied fruit. Mom is almost 94 now and doesn't have the strength in her legs to stand or arms to knead, so I have taken over the job. So we still have the Stollen and Potatis Korv for the holidays. It is our responsibility to pass on the family recipes that our families before us brought over from their birth country. And God bless us for passing it on to our children. My daughter in law and I have made potatis korv and it was fun - memories came swarming back like you wouldn't believe. Even though it isn't 100% American food, if you look in the grocery stores, they sell Lefse (which my sister makes from scratch) and Potato Sausage and Stollen. Doesn't taste as good, but with all the Swedes and Germans around here, it is becoming a traditional food during the holidays. Edie

Hmmm...in my area, we can watch the native Americans pull salmon from the Columbia River, so that's common fare around here. My favorite story about "foreign" food is my sister-in-law, a native US Northwesterner, who married a sailor from Tennessee. She tried for years and years, every recipe she could find for biscuits, but she just couldn't make biscuits like his mother did. Nor could she find the "arsh" potatoes his mother used for her mashed potatoes. When she finally got to meet her mother-in-law, she found out the biscuits were store bought biscuits and the arsh potatoes were Irish potatoes.

That is so funny! Keep these for the memories, eh? Edie

Beef and Chicken. also Biscuts and gravey are big hits.

All the Fatty food stuff is making me salavate.
I just had the start a and diet/exercise program
for diabetes control.
YA'LL SHOULD BE ASHAMED!!!