Iowa Travel Forum

Food Trip
Posted: Fri January 30, 2009 11:14 AM UTC

I will have a visitor coming in from Cedar Rapids Iowa. I'm wondering what to feed her. Generally, as a local of Iowa, would it be meat (beef/pork), fish other seafoods, chicken for her? Bread, potato, or rice?

Wondering,

Aimees

moonlighting

10 replies

[Reply]

Re: Food Trip
Posted: Fri January 30, 2009 12:06 PM UTC

Cook what you know how to make well--your own food. It's usually a bad idea to try and replicate the food of someone's home country if you don't know how to cook it. It doesn't satisfy them and doesn't satisfy you, either. And you can never assume that the person you're hosting won't be eager to try your cuisine.

I have had experience with this many times, particularly in India, where sometimes people hosting me just assume that I want to eat "American" food. Cooked by Indians who have no idea how to prepare it, it's always awful. I love Indian food and want to eat it when I'm in India! Give your visitor the benefit of the doubt, and show her what delicious food from your country tastes like!

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travelmad478

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Re: Food Trip
Posted: Fri January 30, 2009 12:43 PM UTC

I agree with Julie. Trying new/different food is part of the fun of travelling! The taste/quality of the same ingredients differ from place to place - and particulary meat is different (how animals are raised, what they're fed, etc.).

(Yup Julie, no really good Indian food there, no good burgers here! Sigh.)

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Donna_in_India

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Re: Food Trip
Posted: Fri January 30, 2009 04:07 PM UTC

Having been to Cedar Rapids, I would say the TYPICAL person from there would be very unadventurous regarding food and would be a meat and potatoes (Beef Pork Chicken) type of person bread rice also, adverse to spices other than salt. pepper,Ketchup and Mustard never had any foreign food other than perhaps Italian and fake Chinese.
But likely to have eaten traditional German foods as most people from that area are of German decent.

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dino335

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Re: Food Trip
Posted: Fri January 30, 2009 10:52 PM UTC

She could possibly be a vegetarian, but not likely. Iowa cuisine is fairly bland and dominated by beef, pork, and chicken, along with potatoes. She probably will like salads, as well as fruits and vegetables. I've never seen Filipino food in Iowa, but they do have Chinese food there.

I like the previous suggestions about making her something from your country that you like and know how to cook well. Just be careful making anything too spicy until you find out how much spiciness she can handle.

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mikelisaanna

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Re: Food Trip
Posted: Sat January 31, 2009 01:47 AM UTC

Actually, a lot of people from Cedar Rapids are of Czech descent, not German, and there is also a large Syrian population there as well as Greek - much more ethnically diverse than one might think. They have a variety of restaurants so I would think anything you wanted to prepare would be okay unless your guest is a vegetarian or is allergic to somethng, such as fish.

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DueSer

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Re: Food Trip
Posted: Sat January 31, 2009 07:05 PM UTC

Cedar Rapids has 30% German Descent. If you add up all the Slavic Groups that might approach 30%.

"Cedar Rapids is 90 percent non-Hispanic white, but has a notably large growing minority population. There are Asian (such as Cambodians arrived in the 1980s), Arab-American and Hispanic communities after an influx of immigrants came for available work in the 1990s. The city itself has large numbers of ethnic European ancestry, such as Germans (an estimated 30 percent), Czechs (over 10 percent alone), Slovaks, Croatians, Serbs, Russians, Dutch, Danish, Swedes and French (from either France and Canada)". WIKI

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dino335

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Re: Food Trip
Posted: Sun February 1, 2009 12:44 AM UTC

Regardless of Wikipedia says, I lived there for many years and still go back to visit regularly. People don't eat much different in CR than anywhere else in the US. There are no German restaurants, unless you count the Amanas, which are actually about 20 minutes outside of CR. Also, the first mosque in America was built in CR so the Syrian population has been in CR for almost a century.

I still maintain, if a guest is coming from CR to the Phillipines, you can serve them anything you would normally serve any other person (allowing for allergies) and will not horrify or offend them.

Dino, are you maybe thinking of Grand Rapids, MI in error?

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DueSer

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Re: Food Trip
Posted: Mon February 2, 2009 06:42 AM UTC

Very nice suggestions.

I don't know if it is because she's young (at 25) but she did not eat as healthy as I thought she'd eating :) She eats anything with beef, pork, chicken, some vegetables, little of fish, did not fancy our tropical fruits.

I cooked her fried tofu. Also beef marinated in soy sauce and Philippine lemon and cooked with plenty of sweet onions (Spanish influence). Also shrimp in tamarind-based soup with plenty of local vegetables. She ate plenty of everything. She just found it weird that the shrimps were in the soup with heads, shells. I told her the heads hold most of the shrimps' flavor and also if you cook them without the shell, they become so bland. Just rinse them well. Anyway, overall, it was a success.

Thanks so much for your tips. Nice to know from you what Iowans (?) normally eat. Also your tip on just preparing the best of our own cuisine is right. Great help.

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moonlighting

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Re: Food Trip
Posted: Mon February 2, 2009 12:17 PM UTC

That's great! Glad it worked out well.

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