A variety of American foods. The Fr

A variety of American foods. The French are famous for their sauces, the Italian praised for their pastas, the German celebrated for their sausages, but is there anything to eat in the United States? When you get right down to it, there is nothing as un-American as American food. Because the United States quite is made up mostly of immigrants. there amazing variety of foods, from clam chowder in Boston to chile con carne in Houston. The United States is a vast country influenced by many cultures an climates, and the traditional food of one area is often totally unlike that of another. New Mexico and Massachusetts are good examples of states t have very different traditional foods. To understand and appreciate the food in any one region, it often helps to know the area's history. For example, New Mexico was once the home of the Pueblo Indians who lived in villages and grew native crops such as corn, beans, pumpkins, and squash. Later, Spanish settlers arrived in this area, These two groups exchanged ideas and customs and passed these customs on to their descendants. This intermingling of cultures is evident in the food of New Mexico. New Mexican meals make much use of corn, which is served in variety of ways baked as tortillas, served fresh as com on the cob, blended into soups and sauces, and mixed into salads or with other vegetables, especially red and green peppers. Native blue corn is quite surprising when it is served as blue corn bread, chips, or tortillas. In the markets of New Mexico, you can still find chicos, or sun- dried grains of roast sweet corn. Chicos last a long time, but when soaked and boiled, they taste almost like fresh com. Many recipes also contain pinon or pine nuts, the small sweet seeds of the southwestern pine tree, once a staple food in the Pueblo diet. A Spanish influenced can be found in the sweet, anise-flavored cookies sold in New Mexican bakeries. They are prepared much like they were made in the kitchens of seventeenth-century Spain for the Christmas feast. Some traditional foods of New Mexico that show both a native American and Spanish heritage include enchiladas (com tortillas stuffed with cheese, onions, tomatoes, and sometimes chicken or beef pinto beans, black beans, and hot and spicy salsa, an uncooked vegetable sauce.