Taj India (Food Culture Blog)

I ate Indian food from Taj India on Saturday (4/24); I had planned to go to the restaurant to eat with friends but everyone canceled because the weather was so bad, so I ended up ordering food from there and going to pick it up and eating it at home. I got a vegetarian dish called Sag Paneer that was made of spinach and cottage cheese, and I think it had onions in it also, and Nann bread. Everything was really good! The dish was not too spicy but had tons of flavor and did not taste like I expected it to at all; the bread was the perfect thing to eat after a bite of the Sag Paneer to cool down your mouth and was also delicious eaten along with the Sag Paneer. I was dissappoined that I was not able to experience having a meal in the restaurant but this being my first time to have Indian food, the different tastes were an adventure in themselves. The food was completely different from American cuisine; the entree was simple in terms of the main ingredients but complex in the many spices it had, as where with many American dishes there may be many different ingredients but the primary spices are salt and pepper. This could come out of traditional Indian culture needing to make a few main ingredients go far and taste good instead of making a dish and needing to have butter, cheese, milk, meat, ect. as it is with many American dishes. I learned that Indian food is spicy and that bread is a major factor in Indian meals. The only preconceived notion I had before having this food was that it was going to be really spicy, which it was; but it was delicious, as expected. I am using an etic view to describe this event.

Lebanese Food Festival (Rituals culture blog)

I went to the Lebanese Food Festival at Saint Elias Maronite Catholic Church today (4/10). It was really cool, even though I ended up going by myself which normally makes me a little nervous. I actually saw a girl that I work with there; she goes to the church and was involved in the festival, she had danced on stage earlier in the day but that was before I got there. It was really neat seeing her there because before today I really knew nothing about her, and now I know that she is half Lebanese and knows how to belly dance!
I also walked through the Heritage Room which had a lot of historical facts about the church and had old things from the church to look at; like the hands from the original church tower clock.

I also walked through the silent auction and was a little disappointed that there was not more for sale that was traditional Lebanese art. After I finished learning about the church and looking around at the items in the auction, I went into the food room. There were so many people and so many things to eat. I ended up just getting a dessert called walnut mamoul, which was amazing; it was made from cream of wheat, sugar, flour, walnuts, and butter.

I did not find this experience that different from my own experience with church gatherings, except for the types of things that were going on. Growing up, my church would have things similar to this festival but we had homemade "comfort food" and there was no dancing, just socializing. So the main difference from my own culture seemed to be the type of food and entertainment. I did learn that the type of dancing they do is belly dancing, but not the provocative dance you think of when you hear that term (their bodies are covered). I also noticed that a lot of the food they served was similar to the food served at the Greek Food Festival.
I did not really have any preconceived notions or stereotypes to be dispelled. I was a participant observer at this event.

Anatomy of Hate (Diversity and Cultural Event)

I attended Anatomy of Hate last Thursday (3/25/10) at the HUC. This was a viewing of the documentary "The Anatomy of Hate" by Mike Ramsdell. In the documentary, people from extremists groups were interviewed about their beliefs. The main groups interviewed in the film were Neo-Nazis, a church group with strong hate toward homosexuals, Palinstian and Isreali people who showed hatred for each other, and US troops in Iraq. The main message I got from the film was that putting a face on the enemy will decrease dehumanization and hate.
There was a dialoque after the showing of the documentary with four panelists; two from Life 180 which is a Christian organization at UAB, and two from Birmingham Freethought Society which is an organization for athiests and agnostics. This discussion was extremely interesting because only one person in the audience was not able to have a civilized conversation with people that had different beliefs than he did; so besides that one incident, everyone was really accepting to different opinions and I think it was a good discussion.
This was different from my own everyday culture because I normally avoid touchy topics like religion with people because I assume the conversation will just get ugly if we disagree. So, I learned that most people are way more accepting to different opinions and beliefs than I had initially thought. This preconceived notion of close-mindedness probably comes from me being from a small town where most people are closed-minded; if you were anything except Southern Baptist, you were just wrong. I was a participant-observer at this event, because I did not engage in the discussion, I just listened and enjoyed. Also, I think the idea of a holistic approach is applicable for describing this event because it was emphasized to view people as who they are as an individual and not just label them because of their religion, sexual orientation, ect.; we were encouraged to learn about the whole person rather than judging them based on one aspect of their life.