Pike Place Market Old and New

I was going to tell you about corn bread pudding, but first I want to introduce a very exciting place. The Pike Place Market in Seattle is a popular antique place where people have gathered to buy and sell farmers' products for over 100 years. I went there for a future blog post, but now I have the assignment of comparing one of my pictures with an old picture from the University of Washington Libraries Digital Collection. I chose a picture from 1917, showing a group of vegetable sellers:



(For a bigger view of this picture, follow this link.)

I had taken this picture when I visited Pike Place Market:


I took this picture in a similar place as the one above. If you look at the old picture, you can see the sign "Sanitary Public Market" on a building across the street. If you look closely at my picture, you can see windows in the back. I remember seeing the Sanitary Public Market building across the street from where I took this picture. So I believe that I was very close to the same place.

The first thing you notice when looking at the two pictures is that they both have nicely organized piles of vegetables and fruits, with signs showing how wonderful their prices are. Behind the tables, the salesmen are looking bored. This kind of job hasn't changed very much! The old picture has more people behind the table. I wonder why this is? Maybe today the salesman buys the produce from the farmers, but in the past the farmers sold it themselves. The most interesting part is that my picture has many more kinds of produce. In the past, it was probably much harder to bring food from different places, so maybe they could not have as many choices.

It is very interesting to me to think that I was standing in almost the same place as the person who took the other picture almost 100 years ago. It is also very interesting to think that the same things are still happening in this place.

Good Eats

When I posted my last blog entry, it reminded me of how much I liked corn bread pudding. I decided I wanted to make it for this blog. I asked my friend where he'd gotten the recipe. He showed me the link, but he also told me about the TV show where he'd gotten the recipe. I decided to watch an episode.

The show is called Good Eats, starring Alton Brown. I had watched cooking shows in Vietnam but I thought they were boring. They just showed people standing at a counter putting ingredients together. Sometimes they showed how to do something interesting, but they never gave the reason. My friend told me I should watch Good Eats, but I didn't want to. But now I am glad I did.

Good Eats is different from regular cooking shows. First of all, it's funny. He tells little stories and jokes. When he made corn bread pudding, he covered his eyes to show how easy it was. He also gives you the history of the food. I watched the Thanksgiving episode and he talked about how the first Thanksgiving was very different from what we have now. He also uses fun illustrations to show the chemistry of food.

The show reminded me of my friend from France, who taught me how to brine a turkey. I was surprised to see Alton Brown do the same thing on his show. It makes me wonder how my friend would know about this, because turkey is American. I am very excited to watch more Good Eats, and now I will make my own corn bread pudding! I will tell you about it next time.

Holiday Foods

I'm starting this blog at the time of the Tet holiday in Vietnam. In my country this is a time for many traditional foods. In my family, one of our favorite foods is banh xeo, or Vietnamese pancakes. We usually cook this in the winter, when the weather (in the middle of Vietnam, at least) is cold. We cook it with charcoal in a type of small clay barbecue pot, with the family all crowded around. It warms up the house, and smells very good.

As we eat, we talk, share stories and jokes. It is a happy time in my family.

I was glad to find similar traditions in America. When I came to Seattle I was invited to celebrate Thanksgiving with my sponsor family. The food was very different. The main dish was turkey. I had never tasted it before. But the most interesting part were the side dishes. Some I recognized, like mashed potatoes, corn (although it tasted very different than in Vietnam, much better!), salad, and sweet potatoes. But others were very strange to me, like stuffing, deviled eggs and corn bread pudding (my favorite!). And even though I never liked pumpkin in Vietnam, I thought pumpkin pie was quite good.

But even though the food was different, the feeling was the same. People laughed, played games, watched football (OK, not every tradition was like my country) and enjoyed each other's company. Even though the world was new to me, in many ways it reminded me of home.

Welcome to my blog!

Hello! I am an International student from Vietnam, learning in America. All my life I've loved to cook, and when I came to America I wanted to learn what food is like here. In this blog I want to explore American food, the different styles, ingredients, and cooking methods that make it what it is. I will share my research and experiments with you. I hope you enjoy it!