I love food!

Food has always been an important part of my life and of my culture. To me, food is what brings people together whether it is during the holidays or on an everyday basis. The main culture that I grew up in is American pop culture. However, my Italian background has also been incorporated into my culture and my eating habits.
Food was always a great reason for my family to get together. Growing up, my family would sit around the table each night and eat dinner together. During this time we would talk about everything that went on in our day and catch up on eachother's lives. Gathering together around meal time is something that we have adapted from our Italian culture along with being very involved in family life. My family is fairly large. There are four children in my immediate family which makes a total of six members including my parents. We are all very involved in storytelling and sharing our daily routines with one another. Dinner time gave us the opportunity to stop what we were doing and spend time with one another. My mother and father would prepare meals for us each night so that we always made sure we hadtime to enjoy eachother's company.
Growing up, we ate a lot of Italian food which mainly consisted of a lot of pasta and salads. We also enjoyed meals consisting of chicken, fish and beef. My mother had a number of different meals that we would rotate through throughout the weeks. My mother had a variety of meals that consisted chicken. When we ate fish it was mainly just salmon or halibut. When we ate beef it was either ground beef for tacos, meat sauce or hamburgers. Occasionally, on special occasions we had steak.
Today my eating habits are very similar to when I was growing up. However, I do not eat as many animal products as I did growing up simply because I do not have the time or energy to prepare such meals. In college, I make chicken our a regular basis. I also use ground beef once in a while. I rarely ever have steak or fish. I definitley still enjoy eating meat and eat it whenever I have the opportunity to. Besides humans, there isn't any animals that I think are wrong to eat although there are many that I would never eat. For example, I would never eat a cat or a dog because these animals are pets to me. I also think that it would taste gross. However, I do not think eating a cat or dog is worse than eating a cow. I think that all animals are equal. I support others beliefs on what they eat as long as it is not humans.
Overall, I enjoy eating food and find it very satisfying. I also love getting together with friends and family to eat whether it is at home or at a restaurant. It is a great form of entertainment for me.

If you want to learn more about food habits in the United States I recommend this book:

Cummings, Richard O. The American and His Food; a History of Food Habits in the United States. III. ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago P,1940.
Wilson 4 W-Books
TX360.U6 C8