Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Oral History Interview

            In my immediate family, my mother cooks the most. My father also cooks meals; they cook probably equally, but depending on the type of dish depends on whether my mom or my dad is cooking it. I cook easy mac and freezer meals. So no, I do not cook. I do not eat pork. My parents do not eat pork. I think I got that from them but it’s also a personal decision. Raised Jewish, I do not eat pork. I’m not a fan of pork, I think it’s gross. I eat more Jewish food on Jewish holidays then I would regularly. My parents, though, cook a lot of Jewish style food I guess you could say, meats and eastern European type foods. The more I think about St. Louis food the more I think it’s really weird in that nobody understands it or knows about it and St. Louis is known for its Italian. It’s also known as a little bit of a French town. There’s the hill; that’s famous in St. Louis. We also have certain foods that are unique. We deep fry raviolis with meat inside, which is called toasted raviolis. Apparently, I didn’t learn this until the other day, but provel cheese is a cheese in St. Louis that apparently no one else knows about, and St. Louis food is definitely unique, but I don’t know how to compare it everywhere else, it’s kind of its own little thing.              I don’t know if I have a greater appreciation for food, I don’t really appreciate food that much. I think I take food for granted a lot. But, I think one thing New Orleans has done has made me understand, since Katrina, the role of home cooking and fresh food. I think I have a greater understanding of why that’s important. New Orleans food is great, along with the Cajun style and Creole style kind of all thrown together; the unique flavors and spices are like nowhere else. You can’t find a po boy somewhere else, a real po boy at least, and you can’t go find real French cuisine, except for here. I think the food is very important down here and it’s hard to live without. I’m definitely not cut out for the grill yet, or cooking but, maybe one day. My mom’s cooking, my mom can be good at cooking, she always breaks out all these recipe books an tries to cook things that I don’t think she can actually cook. Sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s just terrible, and she’s not very good at cooking meat because she’s a vegetarian, and she doesn’t have a huge diet. My mom cooks half of the food I guess and my dad cooks the other half that she can’t cook. I’m very fond of St. Louis and Kansas City style barbeque. The barbeque in the Midwest is really the only thing I’ve grown up on, like Arthur Bryant’s and Gates and Pappy’s in St. Louis. I’ve been to Memphis once and had their barbeque and it was pretty good. I’m still sold on Kansas City though for my favorite barbeque.
            I definitely don’t want to eat that much seafood. I’m not that big on seafood, I probably will not eat oysters, or a lot of fish. I’ll eat fish sticks, or that beer battered cot that they serve in the OR. Just the feeling that seafood gives me is kind of gross. Pork and seafood are different. I don’t like the taste of pork, but you can make seafood taste like anything I feel like. You can beer batter this cod or you can fry this catfish. You can fry little shrimp poppers or dump your shrimp in gumbo or make it in some French saucy cuisine. I feel like you kind of have to be raised on pork to like pork. Hot dogs, I eat a lot of beef hot dogs, the way hot dogs are meant to be made. Hot dogs are not meant to be made with any other kind of meat in it. All beef! Hebrew National hot dogs and Hundreds hot dogs from Busch Stadium.

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