Monday, February 20, 2006

Cultural Heritage

Looky! I'm blogging TWO whole days in a row!

It remains to be seen whether I can keep this up.

But it occurred to me a while back that one could determine a person's cultural heritage by what they eat on holidays. If you have haggis on Hogmanay, you're obviously Scottish. If you eat matzo and latkes on Hanukkah, you're Jewish. If you have roast beef and Yorkshire pudding on... Well, I'm sure you get the idea.

And by those terms, my ethnic background is Texan. Can't be anything else. Because I must have tamales on Christmas Eve (and yes, I have made them from scratch, but I'd rather buy them because they're a lot of trouble to make, but if I have to...), and I must have black-eyed peas on New Year's Day for luck.

The tamale-black-eyed pea combination is quintessentially Texan, harking to both our Southern and our Mexican heritage. Yes, I'm genetically as Anglo-Celtic as I can be, but my ethnic background is still Texan. I even put chile powder in my meatloaf--but I may switch to green chiles. Makes it even moister and yummier...

So there's my thought for today.

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