Food Ways

At home, food is a very big deal. Not to say that we obsess over food, but at both of my households a great emphasis is put on cooking. At my dad’s house, cooking a meal is very common. Most of the time it will be a meat dish with a side vegetable or potato based dish. My dad and step mom alternate responsibilities when it comes to cooking. When one of them is cooking, the other is cleaning up the room or watching my little sister. We do order food frequently though. When we do this, we tend to order either pizza or fried chicken. Sometimes we order Italian dishes, such as pasta, ziti, or lasagna. We then eat while talking about our days and watching T.V. At my mom’s house, we almost always cook. Whether or not it is a big dish where we sit at the table and sit together varies. Often, food is treated like just sustenance at my moms, where at my dad’s it is more of a family time. I typically eat in my room at my moms and just continue to do what I was doing.
The mainstream media here in the U.S.A. displays dinner as a family outing. Whether it be at home or at a restaurant, the family always gets together for dinner, even if they hate each other or are mad. Also, people are never seen eating along in television or movies unless they are being mocked, such as being called a loser. The typical movie or T.V. show depicting food will show one of the parents or more responsible members of the group cooking the meal, with little help. They then serve the meal and everybody talks or makes attempts to talk about their days.
My food ways are a very simplified way of my family’s. When I cook I like to keep things simple and quick, so as not to snack on something else while waiting for the food to be done cooking. I eat in my room and continue on with my activities from before I eat then, not letting it interrupt my day. In that respect, it is different from my family’s food ways, because I am much more isolated.
Between these three food ways, the most direct similarities are between my family’s food ways and the mainstream U.S. food way. In both cases, the family cooks the meal, with only one person cooking. They then eat at a dinner table and talk about their days to play catch-up with one another. I think that this shows the roots of my family. My mom grew up with her mother cooking every night, which she had learned from the media and what was socially acceptable. On my dad’s side of the family, his abuela cooked for his family every night, also instilling the importance of a family dinner. I think that this shows to a certain degree how much the media at the time affected their actions. As for my food ways, they are also very similar to both my family’s food ways and the media’s food ways. I think that this is the case for all people, they grow up with their family’s perspective on how the family should treat food, but there is also the influence of the media there to alter it from being exactly like their family’s, and possibly to go out for dinner instead of eating in.