Garrett Dalton-people and food

A film the class viewed dealt with food and its connections with people and culture. Food has the inordinate ability to bring people closer together and to their past. Dinner is a time in which many families come together to socialize and to cement those family connections. Though my family is rarely together long enough to sit down for dinner, mainly due to college and work, it is always good to eat a good meal with the family and to catch up. Food can define entire cultures and many foods around the world are eternally linked with a certain people or culture. Being of Irish descent, I have come to understand the importance of the potato to the Irish people. My own family immigrated to America during the Potato Famine of the 1840s. They relied so heavily on the potato crop that such a large crop failure forced immigration. There was an interesting portion of the film in which a prison cook described his experiences preparing the last meals for inmates on death row. The last meals were often foods that prisoners had when they were children. These foods probably brought about fond memories from the past.