My daughter asked us to explain what “bread pudding” was the other day. In explaining it to her (I don’t serve it typically, because frankly, I don’t like it), I started to think about the origins of food and how there are certain dishes that have been around forever, but in reality, some cook, somewhere, had to make to the first version of it.
When I looked up the origin of bread pudding, it turns out that it started in the 11th or 12th century, as a frugal cook’s way to not let stale bread go to waste. It was called “poor man’s pudding” in England for centuries. I grew up in Pittsburgh, where pierogies were a popular dish. The “poor man’s pudding” reminded me of a friend who used to slap mashed potatoes in-between lasagna noodles and exclaim, “There! “Poor Man’s Pierogies!”
When I was in high school, my friend’s parents owned a restaurant and sometimes they would let us take their tickets for the local “food show.” I never turned those tickets down! It was at one of those food conventions that I experienced “curly fries” for the first time. After eating my sample, I knew that they would be a hit with me and with everyone else, for the rest of my years!
Food is such a vital part of a community’s identity. When you go to certain parts of the country you just have to eat their local specialty, i.e. Philly Cheesesteaks, Chicago Deep-dish Pizza, Texas and Carolina BBQ, San Francisco sour dough bread, etc. And then when you go back home from a fun trip, full of food breaks, you desperately try to find a local restaurant who can best duplicate the original specialty cuisine. What’s your favorite Greek restaurant, Italian restaurant, Mexican restaurant, and/or Chinese restaurant? I bet we can all answer that question.
I guess I must be hungry right now to be pondering food so much. We have been celebrating birthdays and life with a lot of caloric gusto lately, so last night I told my husband I was just wanting to feast on some salad. So we split a nice, green-y salad and then we decided we might as well split a lobster BLT with some onion straws, for good measure. (We live in a part of the country that is known for good seafood.) Oh, well, baby steps . . . . into the kitchen . . .