Are we all just one big America? Politically, we have red and blue states [and some purple ones, too] but some lines are definitely drawn. Are they lines or perhaps barricades?
How about food wise? Can food be a common base for us all?
Not really. We are not one food nation but many. Actually our food diversity is one of the fascinating characteristics about this country. The great regional differences make our nation exciting and not blah.
Take, oh, say, “sweet potato casserole.” On the day before Thanksgiving, folks in Florida are 3 times more likely to be hunting for a recipe than people in my native Oregon.
How do I know that? Who cares?
Well, first the knowing part. There is a book, not a cookbook for food but a cookbook for visualizing data, that is a treasure of ideas: Visualize This by Nathan Yau. Nathan points us to all kinds of fun things like this link from The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/11/26/us/20091126-search-graphic.html
Go to this site, and you will marvel and what Americans search for recipe-wise. Two years ago, Matthew Ericson and Amanda Cox of The Times monitored the top 50 recipes searches on the website Allrecipies.com on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. They took that data, and for each of the 50 most popular recipe searches, plotted a US map showing by state the relative number of people who searched for that term. Now, “sweet potato casserole” was the #1 search item in the nation that Wednesday. But, as the map shows, there were very stark differences among the states.
Why should we care? First, these 50 maps reveal a very detailed map of the “recipe chaos” that is America. Those regional differences may explain why, for a transplanted Oregonian like me, I still search for a decent Bear Claw in New York City. If you think that the foods you grew up with are no longer available, just because you’ve moved a few hundred or thousand miles, you are probably right. They are not where you moved to, but they probably are still back there, back home.
Despite the “levelers” of television, cookbook publishing with national book chains, and recipes sites populating the internet, these maps give us a very clear picture of the diverse food preferences that exist by region and by state. They demonstrate the opportunity that may exist for “regional” cookbooks and recipes websites focusing of what the populations of those places long for.
Suzen thinks I’m a bit warped with my love for pies, a dish she does not relish. Go to Map #9 for “pie crust” and you’ll see that folks out in the Pacific Northwest are way, way more likely to be pie crust recipe hunting for their Thanksgiving feast. You can move, but you can’t forget.
I find these maps fun and very reassuring.
Yes, that is a picture of sweet potato casserole at the top. Yes, those are marshmallows. Yes, that’s the kind of mother I had.