"Food Habits & Racial Thinking"

To me one of the most interesting parts of this article is Purcell's recipe for "Chili Con Carne"-- a dish stemming from Mexican culinary traditions but written in the dialect of "Aunt Priscila"who was representative of a female African American cook. The fact that this recipe was written by a white woman, about a dish that was rendered as "traditional Mexican food" by the majority, in the dialect of a Southern black cook shows how white cultural imperialism infiltrated the food industry. Americans enjoy foreign culinary practices, but only once they have stripped them of what made them "foreign" in the first place to make them appeal to the regular American appetite which is perceived as what should be considered normal by the majority. Anyways, I for one will never eat Taco Bell, but I was astonished to learn that cheddar cheese was not part of traditional Mexican cuisine.