THE NEWFOUNDLAND QUARTERLY :: ONLINE EXCLUSIVES
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Online Exclusive for #433 What food do you associate as being a typical Newfoundland meal? Are there certain foods that make you feel a certain way? Are there foods that are solely a Newfoundland delicacy or even further to that a rural Newfoundland delicacy? Are there certain foods you just couldn't be without? What foods will live on in your family and continue to be passed on from generation to generation? As always please use the preceding paragraph as a guideline in your response, and feel free to let your thoughts roam around cuisine. - Jay McGrath "Sunday dinner is a big part of who we are. Think about the depth of the meal: potatoes, carrot, turnip, cabbage or greens, salt beef, roast or chicken, figgy pudding or doughballs topped with gravy. Most meals have the main meat part and then a side dish; with our Sunday dinner we have two different meat portions with four vegetable sides and a pudding or doughballs. It's no wonder I have high cholesterol. I think whoever came up with it must have been down to the last of everything and it was Sunday and they said 'shag it, throw it all in the pot and boil it.'" - 26, MUN student "I likes [sic] going with a few containers (or tumblers as the older crowd would call 'em) and getting some blueberries. Come home then, and that evening you'd make a nice pie out of the berries. You'd be after going into the shop and getting a tub of vanilla ice cream. Blueberry pie and vanilla ice cream is something I always connects [sic] with summertime home. And the berries have to be right off the bush, none of these California blueberries you can buy in Sobey's." - 23, Nurse "Pea soup with some paste on it is something I identify with home. And thick too, like the soup has to be almost thick enough that you could stand on it if you wanted to. Cut up a bunch of carrots, turnips and potatoes in it with a paste on top. I always, always, always ate too much too. Mom wouldn't have it cleaned up and I'd probably be on the couch dozing off. Thick pea soup and a nap, can't beat it." - 25, Teacher "Jiggs dinner is the obvious one for me. Sunday never feels like Sunday unless you cook Jiggs Dinner. Often times when we don't cook it now, it feels like I missed Sunday and all of a sudden it's Monday and I'm back to work and I don't know where the week went. But when we do cook it, it's a whole day process: the preparation, the actual cooking, the eating, and the clean up, now that's Sunday to me." - 35, Client Services Representative "Outside of the regular Sunday dinner, there's something about us Newfoundlanders that enjoys salt beef. Maybe even salty foods in general, I guess it's the fishing ancestry in us, but we seem to be almost fixated on salty foods, in particular salty beef. We have it with our Jiggs dinner, pea soup, fish, I even know people who just have it as a main course of the meal with a few potatoes." - 22, MUN business student "Newfoundland steak of course, good old bologna. We'll fry it, make a stew of it, sandwiches, eat it raw, take it hunting, cut it and put it with fries, I mean what can't we do with bologna? That's what I want to know." - 35, Engineer "When we lived in residence we of course used to eat at meal hall (Gushue Hall) and the staff there would have themed meal nights. It might be Indian, Chinese, etc. Anyway I remember one instance when they had a sign for the next day's "Newfoundland theme." I thought for sure it was going to be Jiggs Dinner with all or at least some of the toppings. We did not however get Jiggs, instead we got, believe it or not, bologna and Kraft dinner. And it didn't say macroni [sic] and cheese either, it blatantly said Kraft Dinner, keeping in mind that Kraft is a brand name that did not originate in Newfoundland. Now I could understand the argument to be made to have bologna on "Newfoundland" night but I did not understand Kraft Dinner. Who thought that was "Newfoundland" theme? Doesn't everyone eat Kraft Dinner? I don't imagine we eat it any more or less than say people from New Brunswick. I always thought that was weird. Am I missing something? Is there a connection between us and Kraft Dinner?" - 26, Master's Student "Something that's very traditional is to make a stew out of something. Like I think we could make a stew from just about anything. Bologna stew being my favorite but I think some people see whatever is left over and think 'I could make stew out of that'." - 40, Welder "Purity Products. What's Christmas without Purity syrup? Or a cup of tea without a Purity cracker? And what's childhood without a few Jam Jams?" - 28, Construction worker "I love Jam Jams. I always, always have Jam Jams on hand. When I was little, I'd always have Jam Jams with my Nan. She'd have a cup of tea and I'd have a glass of milk with them. I'll absolutely have Jam Jams with my grandkids someday." - 36, Mother "Everyone is probably responding back with Jiggs dinner, figgy puddings and what have you, but let's not forget our beverages, in particular our beer. Quidi Vidi beer is wicked. There's a unique taste to the beer, I find there's not much difference in Molson and Labatt products, they're pretty generic, but as a beer drinker when I taste a Quidi Vidi beer, there's a different taste, there's something 'made right here' about it." - 26, Federal Government Employee "While not native to our province, the moose has become something I associate with home. You get your license, sometimes nowhere near where you live, and a few of the boys head out to the woods and cabins after the moose. I guess that adds to the quality of moose for me. Part of it is the hunt: I know we tracked down this animal and brought it back with us. But man when its cooked up with a few onions and a bit of gravy and the meat is nearly falling off the fork, that to me is one of the meals I'd associate with being a Newfoundlander. While the animal has caused a lot of grief for many of the unfortunate folks who hit one in the car, I still think it's an important part of who we are and what we eat." - 52, Avid Hunter "Given our dependence (at least our one-time dependence) on the fishery, you certainly have to tie fish-related foods to our traditional cuisine. Trout, salmon, fresh fish, salt fish, if there's a fish out there that we haven't fried up with some batter I'd like to know what it is. With the fish being so plentiful years ago, it's not surprising that our meals were so heavily centered around the ocean. And yeah its not just fish, it goes beyond that too. It's inshore lobsters, crab legs, etc. that have filled our bellies on so many evenings. A lot can be said about the fishing industry in this province but one thing I'm certain of, the industry has kept the hunger away from many families." - 33, Teacher "I'm not from here originally, but have lived here for a few years now. The thing that really threw me for a loop upon arriving in the province and getting settled was one meal in particular. I could not for the life me believe that you guys ate the tongues of a fish. At first I thought it was a joke and that it was something you guys did to all newcomers, convince us you ate cod tongues and get us to try one. We would then discover that we'd been had and that it wasn't a normal delicacy. I was wrong. And I came to enjoy them. We usually get them every year now, just enough for maybe two or three meals mind you, but still we ensure we have our quota of tongue. Even now though as I write this back to you, it seems a little weird, to eat tongue. But hey it is very good and definitely very Newfoundlandish." - 40, Mainlander "Nothing like a feed of fried toutons to make you feel like home." - 21, CONA Student "I'm not sure it has anything to do with being from Newfoundland or being from rural places, I grew up in a very small town, a fishing town in fact and my family rarely ever had fish and we didn't like Jiggs Dinner. None of us were fond of salt beef and the number of food items needed for the meal seemed excessive, not to mention the clean up required afterword. So we were not your typical consumers. Instead for me meals that remind me of home and growing up are more centered around chicken and ham, not salty beef or fish. So does the feeling that food gives you have anything to do with where you're from, or is it solely based on how you were raised and what you specifically are accustomed to? While we do have types of food that are more common here in this province and in rural parts of it in particular, I think its more of the family atmosphere that gives us the feeling." - 27, Beautician Back to Online Exclusives main page. |
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