Southern Cooking

I have always been extremely interested in not only food but in the preparation of food wherever I have lived. I have spent many hours in the kitchens of my friends and family. I have also spent much time in figuring out the ingredients to a particularly delicious dish when I ate in restaurants. When I like the food, I ask for the recipe. I consider it a compliment when people ask me for my recipes, and I have always handed them over - No, I have never left out an essential ingredient to prevent the "competition" from reproducing my recipes.

That brings me to the southern part of the United States where I lived twice. The first time I lived there was in the 50's when my family left Europe for the great adventures of America. We landed, of all places, in Texas. My mother was most unhappy, and so my father invested all of his money, that is US$ 250.00 in a 1950 Chevrolet and four new tires. We all piled in, four children into the back seat, our parent in the front. Our dad hitched up a trailer with the washing machine and few other essentials, and off we went across the United States ca. 10,000 miles to a greener part of America called Oregon. We had the washing machine on the trailer, because my mother found it absolutely inconceivable to live anywhere if she could not wash our clothes. We might be poor, but we sure were going to be clean! Unfortunately, the washing machine rolled off the trailer, and we had to leave it in the ditch along the way. My poor mother resorted to washing by hand, but we certainly were always clean.

So, when I got married to a European and told my father we were moving to back to the South, he was absolutely appalled. But I looked at it as the beginning of many adventures and opportunities to learning about culture, language and life. Yes, in the South, there prevails a different mode of speech called the southern drawl, culture which is a slower, easy style of living and in general a wonderfully different cousine. The language was English, so I managed that after a short period of adjustment, the culture created no great obstacles, but I learned much about food.

Outdoor cooking is very much a part of the southern life style. Everyone participates in the preparation, the cooking and eating the food, thus making it a wonderful event. There is a mild blend of cousine in the South of cookouts or barbecues, and Cajun and/or Creole food. When we say that America is a melting pot of cultures, we can also say that America is a melting pot of cousines.

Southern cooking encompasses many forms of food preparation. Two very interesting forms of food preparation are Cajun and Creole. Cajun cooking comes from a small group of people in Louisiana, U. S. A. The people came from Nova Scotia, Canada in 1755 and eventually ended up in Louisiana. Their first settlement was called Acadia. The expression "Cajun" originates from the colony Arcadia which eventually changed to Cajun.

In Louisiana these people met other people whose origins were French, Mexican, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. The Cajun people settled in the swamplands of Louisiana where no one else wanted to settle, because farming was complicated if not impossible. The Cajun people lived in isolation for many years, thereby preserving the culture which they had brought with them. They continued to speak French, a prevalent language among the Cajun people today.

In contrast to Cajun food, Creole food finds its origins from the aristocratic plantation owners most of whom also came from France. Cajun food originated from the French working class. Both Cajun and Creole food includes the food cultures of the Spanish and African herbs and spices which the people were able to cultivate along the Mississippi River.

The people were able to catch shrimp, oysters, crab and fish in the swamplands and in the Mexican Gulf. They were also able to sustain their diets by catching birds and in small gardens where they could easily grow sweet potatoes, corn, tomatoes, squash, aubergines and okra. To these fresh produce, the people added their herbs and spices. The Cajun and Creole people take great pleasure and pride in stimulating the palate and challenging the taste buds to give the consumer an unforgettable experience in taste.

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