Food traditions

I am a fish out of water when it comes to food traditions in my local area. I live in an area predominantly of Hispanic heritage. There are many food festivals in the local park, but I don't attend them because they have nothing to do with my food traditions. The only food traditions I have experienced that involve this area are of the Miccosukee Indian Tribe.

Every year they have a festival where they display their traditions, including their cooking, clothing, jewelry making, and alligator wrestling. They lived in the Everglades and the Big Cyprus were they had to eat off the land as their ancestors did. Their diet included many wild animals, such as wild boar, fish, alligator, and other game. In the festival, they roast wild boar over an open pit, making an old fashioned barbeque. Their reasons for cooking it this way is because it was the way their ancestors cooked it, and they're honoring that old tradition at the festival for others to experience. Most eat the pork without any sauce slathered on it to enjoy the smoky flavor and can eat it without utensils.

Those attending the festival for the first time would learn how the Miccosukee Indian Tribe cooked their food and how the traditions that comes with it were passed down from generation to generation. They would learn that even now the tribe still finds their food from the wild and prepare it the same way, honoring their ancestors.

What make a dish traditional? I believe one of the things that makes a dish traditional is if the ways the dish is prepared are the same (how it was cooked). Like the Miccosukees, some people cook a dish the same way an ancestor cooked it, and it's mostly only to honor a tradition. When creating S'mores, it would be so much easier to put marshmallow fluff on the chocolate and gram crackers than it would to make a fire, hold a marshmallow over the fire with a stick, and try to put the sticky, blackened marshmallow on the chocolate and gram crackers. But it's done the harder way because it's traditional. Another way a dish can be traditional is if a recipe for a popular dish is passed down to the next generation and is made the same way. It's a traditional meal because it's actually respected and special enough to be passed down. But it has to be the same or it's a different meal. Another way a dish can be traditional is if the dish is reoccurring at a particular event. It doesn't have to be prepared the same way, but the dish must be at the event every time, like hotdogs and apple pie on 4th of July, and turkey on Thanksgiving. That's what makes a dish traditional.