The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American by Jeff Smith
Our real American foods have come from our soil and have been used by many groups — those who already lived here and those who have come here to live. The Native Americans already had developed an interesting cuisine using the abundant foods that were so prevalent.
The influence that the English had upon our national eating habits is easy to see. They were a tough lot, those English, and they ate in a tough manner. They wiped their mouths on the tablecloth, if there happened to be one, and they ate until you would expect them to burst. European travelers to this country in those days were most often shocked by American eating habits, which included too much salt and too much liquor. Not much has changed! And, the Revolutionists refused to use the fork since it marked them as Europeans. The fork was not absolutely common on the American dinner table until about the time of the Civil War, the 1860s. Those English were a tough lot.
Other immigrant groups added their own touches to the preparation of our New World food products. The groups that came still have a special sense of self-identity through your ancestors who came from other lands was supposed to disappear in this country. The term melting pot was first used in reference to America in the late 1700s, so this belief that we would all become the same has been with us for a long time. Thank goodness it has never worked. The various immigrant groups continue to add flavor to the pot, all right, but you can pick out the individual flavors easily.
The largest ancestry group in America is the English. There are more people in America who claim to have come from English blood than there are in England. But is their food English? Thanks be to God, it is not! It is American. The second largest group is the Germans, then the Irish, the Afro-Americans, the French, the Italians, the Scottish, and the Polish. The Mexican and American Indian groups are all smaller than any of the above, though they were the original cooks in this country.
Question 6: Which of the following statements is nearly identical in meaning with the sentence “they ate until you would expect them to burst” in the second paragraph?
A. You bet they would never stop to eat till they are full.
B. What you can expect is that they would not stop eating unless there was no more food.
C. The only thing you would expect is that they wouldn’t stop eating till they had had enough of the food.
D. the only thing is that they wouldn’t stop eating till they felt sick.
Question 7: Which of the following statements is Not true?
A. English people had bad table manners.
B. American food was exclusively unique in its flavors and varieties.
C. American diet contained a lot of fat, salt and liquor.
D. Europeans were not at all accustomed to the American way of eating.
Question 8: The author’s attitude towards American food is that
A. American food is better than foods from other countries.
B. American food is superior to European food.
C. European food had helped enrich the flavors and varieties of American food.
D. People from other countries could still identify from the American foods the foods that were unique to their countries.
Q9: Immigrant groups, when they got settled down in the United States, still have had their own sense of self-identity because
A. their foods are easily identified among all the foods American eat.
B. their foods stand out in sharp contrast to foods of other countries.
C. they know pretty well what elements of American food are of their own countries’ origin.
D. they know pretty well how their foods contribute to American cuisine.
Question 10: Which of the following statements is true?
A. People from other cultures or nations start to lose their self-identity once they get settled down in America.
B. The “melting pot” is supposed melt all the foods but in reality it doesn’t.
C. The special sense of self-identity of people from other countries can’t be maintained once they become Americans.
D. The “melting pot” finds it capable of melting all the food traditions into the American tradition.
參考答案：
6. D 7. B 8. D 9. C 10. B
