Lunch

Over the weekend, I went back home for my great aunt’s 75th birthday. She doesn't eat at many restaurants because she’s sure every restaurant is not up to her standards of clean so we decided to throw her a big party at her house and everybody pitched in to cook and bring different desserts. In my family, at family event there is always food. Food is a big part of my family because our family is so big and everyone always comes together when food is involved. My aunt’s famous greens, my mom’s famous dressing and cornbread, My cousin’s famous candied yams and we can’t forget my granny’s incredible peach cobbler. I brought one of my good friends home that weekend so she also came to my aunt’s birthday dinner. My friend is from Sudan so a lot of the foods that me and my family enjoy all the time she had never even seen or heard of. She comes from a wealthy background so back home, she goes out to eat at restaurants way more often than I do. Especially when it comes to celebration, her family will go to a fancy restaurant opposed to my family, in times of celebration we do potluck style dinner. It really made me take a closer look at how social class and race play such a huge roll in my identity. I believe food is a huge part of anyone’s identity. Food brings family together in times of happiness as well as times of hardships and pain. There are some foods that my family has never eaten because of our culture, traditions and social class. I didn’t even know what caviare was until I got to college. That’s a type of food I would associate with an upper class family, but to others that food may seem like something that’s normal and that’s eaten by everyone. ]

Alot of recipes and traditions that my family has were passed down from generations and generations before that. A lot of my family are from South Carolina and Atlanta, Georgia. I believe that a lot of the food patterns my family have are because of the traditions we took from our great-great grand parents and other relatives that were born before us. Food patterns are something that start come from years and years of cooking and family dinners. Class plays a huge role in even the way we eat with our families. Some people go out to fancy restaurants, some family has one person make all the food for the family, or some people like me, there families all have to pitch in and cook in order for a successful dinner. Even down to the groceries stores we shop at, it’s different depending on race and class. When I was growing up, my grandmother would drive 30 minutes to krogers because and I quote “All the good grocery stores in the suburbs for the rich white folks, well I want my family to eat the good food too, so I’m going to shop there too”. She would say this all the time, my other family members would laugh at her saying she was being dramatic but I understood her concept. There are certain grocery stores like Krogers, Family Fare, Trader Joes that are far more expensive and target a upper class household. In grocery stores like Save A Lot and Alde’s, a lot of grocery options are not even sold there. The issues of race and class are both heavily influenced when it comes to food and how we identify with it.