Origins of food....food for thought.....

So, tonight as I sit reflecting on our day of family with Nanna and Granpa, food and fun, I find myself still licking my fingers from the days leftovers. I realize how much of a Southern gal I still am at heart; I love good food. Now, if you aren't Southern, you may not understand the full impact of this statement. I mean, I LOVE good food! Such as a conversation with my Mom on the phone, "So Mom, how was your day?" "OH! Why it's been sooo good! We cooked up some ham for lunch in the frying pan with some of your Daddy's pear preserve's and some terriyaki sauce. Then had some green beans (coca-cola & garlic, salt & butter)." And, so, I grew into adult-hood and realized that to an extent my Mom and Dad associated their well-being with what kind of (good) food they had experienced that day. Now, I have tried as hard as I can since I came to this realization (and following that this is how I had been raised...), not to define myself by my food..... but ~ I have come to an epiphany tonight.... (insert drumroll, here)

Food not only defines you, but your culture as well; though, it does not define your over all well-being (though contributes greatly to it.).

Yeah, I know, not original - I just had to come to terms with my love of good food. This does not mean I define myself and my well-being ~ but, it's ok to admit it. :)

So, then this led me to wondering about the origins of our favorite foods. I would love to study more about this subject. As a dedicated heirloom veggie gardener, I love finding out the stories of the seed varieties that I grow and pass along to community members here in Northfield. My Purple Peruvian Potatoes, French La Rattes (potatoes), Cherokee Trail of Tears (beans), Hidatsa Shield Figure beans, Dutch Bullet beans, etc. All my garden friends have a story, an ancestry to share. And, thanks to someone, somewhere along the way passing them on to another friend or neighbor ~ they were eventually available for me to put in my garden.

So - how did the Purple Peruvian potatoes spread originally? How about the first potatoes that were 'domesticated' and taken to Europe and became such a staple for the Irish? How did they get from South America to Europe and when? With the Spanish explorers? Taken back at the same time as chocolate? And, as I licked the peanut butter off my fingers and took my nano-second to process the above train of thought.... I wondered... peanuts came from Africa - how did they migrate to Asia? (We all know how they arrived in the US... but... Asia?) Overland trade routes - spice roads? Tomatoes - North America to Europe to Italy or straight to Italy? How do we have naturally occuring (I'm presuming) mango's in Mexico and India? Cilantro - Tamarind - lime - same thing... Mexico to India. I realize that a lot has to do with it just being the same tropical growing zone....but, yet so many of the plants are in common 1/2 a world away - there had to be some shared growing time/seed dispersal to have such a large group of overlapping common plants. (Again, just a presumption, but otherwise, if the two were in total seperation/isolation there wouldn't be any overlap. Would there? And birds, humans and other mammals couldn't bring and naturalize that many foreign plants in such short evolutionary time period.) Someone out there with a brain more giant than mine, knows these answers.

If I had one super power - just for fun.... it might be the ability to hear the full ancestry and 'migration' story of each little veggie/fruit/spice if I got to hold it in my hot little hands. :)