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Preparing, cooking, serving, and finally, sharing your traditional dishes are a great way to learn about and reconnect with the culture(s) in your family history.

How would something as simple as cooking have a role in reconnecting with your culture?

I had the same question.

It was only after the attraction wore off of trying new and exciting types of cuisine and dishes after a few years, that I came back around to wanting to be more connected with my cultural roots with food products and dishes that are common to the Balkans.

For someone like me, being of mixed background covering a good portion of the Balkans, that’s a tall order! There’s way too many different types of food and recipes to go through; often it’s just sticking to a few standard recipes and experimenting occasionally.

I take my time with experimenting with food and recipes; It keeps new opportunities to learn available all the time this way.

First and foremost the major impact the cooking had on my project of cultural reconnecting was a sharp increase in the time spent interacting with other people of the same background.

There were several aspects to this interaction:

– Ethnic food stores

– Reading or learning about recipes

– Interaction with others while preparing the food

– Sharing the cuisine with others, which inevitably led to culture being part of the interaction.

Second place goes to the proven fact that just the act of eating with others is a social event. It goes beyond just the physical aspect; there are also emotional connections being made between the people gathered. These connections are made through a number of ways that we don’t often realize, and which don’t take any effort on our part, normally.

Subconsciously we pick up cues from others around us, which has an effect on our own emotional state and the way we act towards others.

– The body posture and actions/motions that other people make, as well as their expressions.

– The tone of voice other people use

– There is even evidence that energy, regardless of source or type, is shared amongst people who interact for extended periods of time. Who hasn’t felt renewed and energetic after meeting with someone who has an abundance of positive energy that you can feel instantly? The same can be said for other types of energy other people carry.

I really do believe that out of the different activities I’ve started to add to my daily or yearly schedule that are culture specific, the acts of sourcing, preparing, cooking and sharing food recipes is one of the most efficient and effective activities in learning about a culture. That is, aside from moving to and living in a place that is the centre of this culture, day in, day out, for the long term.

Why didn’t I consider speaking the language as a stronger method of learning a culture?

Good point!

There are some things that can be learned from a language, from the way to view everything changing just by regular use of words and phrases unique to that language along with the pronunciation of certain words, to interacting with people you otherwise wouldn’t seek out or interact with, to have a conversation with to be able to get practice speaking that specific language.

The beauty of traditional cooking is that it can also include, as a sort of 2 for 1 deal, the opportunity to speak the language with others who have learned this as their first language.

And what is better for the purpose of learning about or reconnecting with a culture than to include speaking the language?

It’s often said the best way to learn a language, or culture for that matter, is to take a deep dive into the middle of it, to give yourself no option but to learn to be able to do anything in that foreign country.

The reality is, you don’t have to go to that extent; there are many ways to do the same thing without even leaving your city.

It’s not as exciting as traveling to another country, I agree, although it’s still bound to broaden your horizons. After all, a good percentage of the people you meet even where you live, still have experience living in a different country, and will certainly have personality traits and habits and other matters that people living there, pick up.

This realization about the potential for cooking to have an impact on cultural learning came to me when I was searching for a way to interact more often with people that shared the same culture and language that I was interested in reconnecting with, in an activity that wouldn’t take up more of my time than I could spare.

There was little else that connected me with people that would enable me to learn more about culture than cooking does.

Need an example?

Just look through history at all the famous events or even just at your calendar to see how many events are focused around cooking and sharing tradition, regardless of what part of the world you live in. It’s not that unusual of an occurrence; there are countless reference points for events and celebrations where food is at the center.

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One of the most memorable and frequent events I’ve had while spending summers with my family in Bulgaria that connected food and culture was preparing and roasting peppers along with the tomato sauce to go over top of them.

If you haven’t tried this dish, I highly recommend it! Unfortunately there are no recipes I could find for this online, I’ll have to put that on my list of ideas for the blog, to be the first to share it with all of you.

Make sure to have bread ready, you’ll thank me later…

The reality in many houses in Balkan villages was that the kitchen was the main room of the house and had the majority of the seating, so naturally everyone gathered there. Either to help or just to talk while others did the preparation and cooking, this was a time where conversations between people happened, which often wouldn’t happen under regular day-to-day life.

As with many of the best tasting dishes, everything was done by hand, so there was plenty of time to talk, interact and learn, while waiting for peppers to roast or tomatoes to simmer to reduce the water level.

This is only one example; I’ve seen, or smelled, many other food-centred events that only happened in villages. No matter the occasion, these events played a major role in culture being spread between generations, along with many other things.

Unfortunately it’s not possible to replicate many of these with the differences in life and living space that there is in major cities, although lessons can be taken from this and adapted to your own life, to help you reconnect, whether it be with people or with cultural background…