RIHLA #21

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Run my kitten bats! I'm going to devour your cuteness!

Don't fret, you're safe. I promise not to eat you...but I am craving food right now. I am a rather VERY pick-ey eater; there are only certain foods that I love (Examples: Bacon, Green Bell Peppers, Watermelon, Munster Cheese, Lettuce, Potato Pancakes, Apples, and Macaroni and Cheese) and then there are foods that I have completely signed off of my 'to-eat' list (Examples: Indian Ghost Peppers, Brussel Sprouts, Liver, Fish, and Califlower). Some of us never think of it, but food wasn't as full of variety as it is today.

There were once two worlds: The Old World (Euorpe, Asia, Africa) and The New World (The Americas). Each world had their own staples of crops and animals available to them. The Old World had things like Cattle, Pigs, Carrots, Wheat, Watermelon, Onion, Lettuce, Garlic, Coffee, Citrus, and Bananas. The New World had things like Turkey, Coca, Vanilla, Tomato, Potato, Chili pepper, Corn, Pumpkin, Peanut, Avacado, and Pineapple.

A difficult question for pick-ey eaters, like myself, is what world would I choose to live in? Each one has their own downfalls and plus sides full of flavor. The New world has rich, bold, and potent flavors such as Coca, Chili pepper, Avacado, Strawberry, and Pineapple. The Old World has classic, hearty, tangy flavors like Garlic, Citrus,Onion, Cattle, Bananas, and Coffee. Personally, I would have to go with The Old World: they have Bacon.

Now, an intresting question that you might be asking now is how did foods from one world travel to the other and vise versa? The answer can be boiled down to a sad statement. The Native Americas of the Americas were wrongfully persecuted and forced into labor; therefore, more crops were produced and shipped between worlds. Many Native Americas died, and their population decrease by 90%!w(MISSING)ithin a century (there was an estimated NA population of 40 to 60 MILLION people before the conquistadors came into play).

If I was a dying Native American during the Columbian Exchange (what they call the mixing of cultures and their food), and I could choose anything to eat as my last meal...I would choose an old family staple of mine (which wouldn't have existed back then, but, for the sake of my taste buds, we will let this paradox exist): Potato Pancakes! My Grammy was adopted and raised by a Dutch husband and wife pair who had strong German/ Irish/ Polish influence. Her mother's (my great-grandmother's) signature dish was potato pancakes. Made by dicing potatoes into small strips, mixing with egg and flour (and maybe diced onions), and then crisping in a frying pan; potatoe pancakes are delicious! My grammy makes them on specail occasions because they are a "labor of love" and take an awful while to cook (like most German food), so certainly she would have made them as my last meal.

If you look closely at the ingrediant list for potato pancakes, a lot of the 'minor' ingrediants (flour, onion, egg, butter )come from The Old World; however, the main ingrediant (potato) comes from The New World. I like to think of potato pancakes as a blend between both worlds. It represents neither The Old World nor The New World, but The Columbian Exchange itself!

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