Throughout all of the research I have done on the connections between food and cultures I have learned just how interconnected they are. I’ve learned how different spices and flavors resonate with different cultures, and on a more personal level my family.  In The article What Food Tells Us About  Culture written by Chau B Le, she writes “Many of us associate food from our childhood with warm feelings and good memories and it ties us to our families, holding a special and personal value for us. Food from our family often becomes a comfort food we seek as adults and times of frustration and stress.“ I found this quoteto be very interesting as an all of my interviews words associated with stress and comfort came out. Most of my family members spoke about a dish that many of us would think of us comfort food.

What I found the most interesting though was the ways in which my family and my families connection to my culture came out in the dishes that they were describing. For example following Le’s article most family members with  Colombian roots gave dishes like Arepas, ahíjaco, Aroz con pollo, frojoles, Where the other side of my family with Caribbean and Egyptian roots spoke about foods like stews, kebbehs, and other traditional dishes from that culture as their comfort food.

Yet, when I interview family members who are not as tied to our roots, and have a simulated more into American culture I found that their comfort foods had nothing to do with my Romanian, Caribbean, Egyptian and Colombian culture. For example one of my cousins mentioned that his favorite dish growing up was pat tie. When I asked him if his parents made it he said no but he would order it and from restaurants almost every day. Through comparing the ways in which my family holds our culture to the ways in which my cousins family holds their culture I realized that there are differences. Where we stay very close to our roots, my cousins family is not as tied to our culture. This information is not necessarily good nor bad. It’s simply shows the ways in which something as simple as a pad Thai dish being a comfort food can say a lot more about that person’s connection to their heritage.