Food and Identity

In my last post I wrote about the fried food eaten at the Jewish festival of Hannukah; the food laws and various culinary traditions of Judaism provide a key way in which Jews signal their identity to the wider world.

But you don’t have to follow strict food rules and practices to tell people who you are via the food you eat. Like the clothes we wear and the music we listen to, the food we eat sends out clear signals about our identity. Continue reading “Food and Identity”

Eating someone else’s food

When we had done, [the waiter] brought me a pudding, and having set it before me, seemed to ruminate, and to become absent in his mind for some moments.
‘How’s the pie?’ he said, rousing himself.
‘It’s a pudding’, I made answer. 
‘Pudding!’ he exclaimed.  ‘Why, bless me, so it is!  What!’ looking at it nearer.  ‘You don’t mean to say it’s a batter-pudding!’
‘Yes, it is indeed.’
‘Why, a batter-pudding,’ he said, taking up a table-spoon, ‘is my favourite pudding!  Ain’t that lucky?  Come on, little ‘un, and let’s see who’ll get most.’
The waiter certainly got most.  (David Copperfield, Charles Dickens)  Continue reading “Eating someone else’s food”