A question (or two) regarding food

[beboots]

Hello, everyone on my friends list! I had a few quick questions for you all. 

I've been thinking, lately, of "Canadian culture" (if such a thing exists, and I think that it does), and what you really think of as defining a person's culture. One of those things is the food they eat. And I got to thinking: maybe some of my favourite foods, things that are so omnipresent in grocery stores all around Canada, aren't as common as I think that they are!

So, tell me: have you heard of all of these food products? Have you ever tried them? What did you think of them, and how were they served? (AKA what kind of toppings/side dishes?) What are your favourite local foods?

(Just to clarify, I live in Western Canada, but I have lived in Ontario, very near to Quebec, so I'm also familiar with French Canadian culture... but these foods are all found in Western Canada too.)

-Perogies (Holy crap the interwebs don't even recognize this spelling! It's on all of the bags!) AKA lovely potato dumplings sometimes stuffed with cheese and other things, boiled, often eaten fried with butter and onions, and topped with bacon bits and sour cream. Maybe I only know it because we have the largest population of Ukrainians outside of Ukraine here in Western Canada...?

-Pumpkin pie. In fact, pumpkins in general. Not squashes. Pumpkins - the kind you make into Jack-o-Lanterns. (Also edible!) Has anybody outside of North America ever had baked pumpkin seeds? (One of the best non-candy Hallowe'en snacks there is, and they're just the leftovers from making art!)

-Maple syrup. Maple candies. Maple anything. I know that pancakes and waffles exist outside of Canada... but what do you put on it if maple syrup isn't available? Just cream or something? How easy is it to get maple syrup outside of Canada? Pancakes + maple syrup is such a ubiquitous combination here that anything else is just plain WEIRD. 

Comments

[especially.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure these things aren't that uncommon. &I put corn syrup on my waffles (don't like maple syrup, bad canadian, etc).

Things I know are rare outside of canada:
Smarties
Ketchup chips

[beboots.livejournal.com]

I heard that about Smarties! That's kind of bizarre... but then again, I like M&Ms better, so... ;)

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Most Americans would be stunned to hear that pumpkin pie is eaten outside of the US, because here, it's so strongly associated with Thanksgiving. Pumpkins are a large part of the late fall US diet in baked goods, coffee and as salted, baked, spiced seeds. It's what keeps me out of grocery stores and makes me neurotically careful when walking down the street, because just being near one can trigger a violent seizure because I'm so allergic, and being in a store where they're cooking pumpkin pies in the back, no way!

Maple syrup is very expensive outside the northeast (though easy to get if you have the cash), but maple flavored syrup is ubiquitous, and maple syrup and candy, while expensive is still enjoyed as a special treat by a lot of us southwesterners, at least.

Perogies are available throughout the northeast, where slavic populations are larger, but unheard of elsewhere.

[beboots.livejournal.com]

...We have Thanksgiving too! ;) We just, uh, have it in October so that the celebration of the "harvest" occurs before everything gets frozen over. We have a much shorter growing season up here. ;)

That's what I was wondering about perogies! ... They're so delicious, I have to wonder why they haven't migrated everywhere...

[dhrachth.livejournal.com]

We've got all three in Alabama. Pumpkins and maple syrup are pretty common. Pumpkins are all over the place in the fall for Halloween and Thanksgiving, not so much the rest of the year but you can always get the canned stuff for baking with. Maple syrup is pretty standard, but there's lots of other syrup flavors to choose from mostly made with corn syrup, like my personal favorite butter pecan. Maple candies you don't see very much. Pierogies are probably the hardest to find, but they are available in most of the larger supermarket's freezer cases. I think fried pierogies are probably responsible for about 20% of the weight I put on during grad school.

[beboots.livejournal.com]

"my personal favorite butter pecan" Ooh... that sounds delicious! :D

Maple candies are delicious as well; you can get them in the consistency of smooth lolipops (in shapes like maple leaves, moose, etc.), but you can also get them like hard-packed brown sugar, also in shapes like maple leaves. They melt on your tongue; delicious and patriotic! ;)

[boko.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I've heard of all of these foods.

Pumpkin - Yes! Pumpkin seeds are one of my fave snack foods! But other than that, it's more common as pies where I've lived (Hawaii, Arizona and Texas).

Perogies- I'm not sure I've had this. I can't say that I've gone to a restaurant and ordered them, or had them served at dinner at someone's home, but they sound like a deliciously heavy version of Japan's "potstickers" (aka: gyoza). It might not be common in Hawaii, but I think they're more common in the Polish families here in Texas though.

Maple syrup - This is where I get worried. I think maple syrup and pancakes is as American as you can get in an American breakfast (ideally with bacon or breakfast sausage and eggs, right?). I love that sugary thing we call Maple Syrup but I often wonder if what I'm getting is the real deal. It seems like the maple syrup commercials in my time tried to convince me that the sugary syrup I love came straight from trees in Canada... Yeah... I'm sure I got the bait and switch.
If maple is not available I prefer buttering up my pancakes enough so that they don't get dry. There's all these weird syrups now that it seems kind of superfluous.

[beboots.livejournal.com]

I'm a huge fan of gyoza! Perogies are superficially similar in looks, but the fillings are quite different. Gyoza are more... meat and herbs and such, but perogies are more often potato and/or cheese and/or herbs. I'm a huge fan of dumpling-like foods in general. :3

Maple syrup is the most Canadian of foods, I think. I mean, the leaf is on our flag and all that. ;) The most delicious form of it, though, I find, is what the francophones call "tire", which just means "to pull". It's a winter delicacy in which really hot maple syrup is dribbled in a row into troughs of crushed ice/snow so it firms up into a delicious drippy and sometimes chewy taffy. It's AMAZING. <3