I can't remember a time in my life, except maybe when I was a very small child, that my family didn't have some sort of international influence. My dad regularly works in Asia or South America, we hosted 3 exchange students, and somehow me and my siblings always had some exchange students in our friend circles. After a while, all of the traveling and our international friends really started to influence our family, particularly the kitchen; cooking our newly collected recipes together as a family has also become one of our favorite activities when we're all together, especially because these days that rarely happens anymore.
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| Surf & Turf with my brothers- New Years Eve 2012 |
Some of the recipes, like the chiles rellenos turned out spectacularly good and remain family favorites. Then one time we tried classic fish & chips. The whole house smelled like burned fish and ultimately my mother banned frying anything in the house ever again. I will also never forget the time my dad and I were tasked with making garlic bread, which promptly caught on fire in the oven. On the other side of that coin, our German exchange student decided once that she wanted to make traditional Flammkuchen for us, but forgot that 180 degrees Celsius is, in fact, not the same in Fahrenheit. After 30 minutes when it still wasn't done (this recipe takes at most 15 minutes to bake), we asked her how hot the oven was and then pumped it up to 375 Fahrenheit.
I think one of my favorite memories of food experiments with my family though has to be the time that we hosted our first "international night" at our house. My parents made chinese hotpot, complete with amazing potstickers. Friends of my parents with deep Italian roots made an amazing pot of pasta; our exchange student friends from South Korea brought us some kimchi and my brother baked a classic cheesecake. Our German guest added to the international ambiance too. The food was amazing, but that isn't the part that I remember most clearly. I remember the laughing, spilling sauces everywhere, chatting, and just being together in my parents' kitchen.
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| My dad carving our turkey. -Germany 2014 |
Come to think of it, that might be the moment that I really fell in love with food. When I really think about it, all of my favorite memories somehow involve food- Labor Day barbecues, Christmas dinner, Easter eggs, going to the farmer's market, going to the fish market- everything really. And if I've learned anything in the almost three years I have spent living abroad, its that food is an international language. Every year I make a turkey, send out other Thanksgiving recipes to my friends, and we have a big dinner (I think we were 18 people in 2013) together, My family visited me in Germany this November, and together with my German boyfriend's family we celebrated a traditional American Thanksgiving too.
The exchange students in Estonia this year have also made their own experiences with food, and have had their own international evenings complete with laughing, dancing, friends, and, most importantly, food. They also celebrated a birthday and everyone brought food from their home country to contribute.
To make a long story short, food brings people together. It doesn't really matter where we are from, or if we think that we have nothing in common with the person sitting next to us at the dinner table. It doesn't matter if you're stirring, slicing, dicing, mincing, or just nibbling on bread and watching what's going on in the kitchen- being together and sharing food brings you closer together. Spring is finally here and summer is approaching- why not already start planning your first grill party for your friends, family, fellow exchange students or host parents. Maybe these international grilling traditions can even inspire your first (or second or 100th) international night this summer.
Yours truly,
Abby (USA)