Dr. Tejada: My Family's Cultural Food

My family comes from Dominican Republic, it looks pretty small on the map.

Dominicans eat a lot of strange foods but I'm going to list some of my favourites. 

1. Morir Soñando 

This is one of my favourite drinks. Some people add different things to it but I like how my grandmother makes it. Morir Soñando in English translates to "Die Dreaming" its a weird name but its a tasty drink.

To make it you need:

Orange Juice

Vanilla

Milk

and a couple of other things I think but thats all I can remember from the top of my head.

2. Chicharron De Pollo

This type of food should only be eaten sometimes, not everyday because its fattening. But it tastes really good! I don't know how to describe it but chicharron (theres different types of it) is pig, like pork and its crunchy. Most people sprinkle a bit of lime on it because "Otherwise your it'll go down bad in your stomach" but I've eaten it without lime and nothing happened. With lime, it tastes sour.

3. Chimichurri (Dominican style)

This dish is one of the popular ones, if you're Dominican or at least half and you say you don't know what it is, people would call you crazy. Basically its a huge sandwich stuffed with a bunch of things like sauce, lettuce, meat, tomato, All kinds of things. It gets messy with the sauce and everything. I like my food plain so the first time I tried it, I ordered it with only the meat and lettuce but the second time, I decided to just get it regular and it was surprising when I found it tasty.

Have Americans lost their food traditions?

It depends. I dont think we had that much culture to begin with. Compared to countries like Japan, China, Korea, or the UK, we're still pretty much the youngest country so I don't think we had time to even make food traditions. More like adopting food traditions from other countries since there is so much diversity.