Defining Food and Family

By define, I guess you mean which food characterizes my family? Or which foods do my family eat on special occasions? I will answer both questions.


Vietnamese tradition:
For a wedding, the characterizing food would be a fried, oily pig (for the initiation ceremony which is customary in Vietnamese tradition). You read right. For New Year's, it is a round container with slots for many kinds of delectable candy like coconut, ginger, soybeans and other ground foods all sliced and sugared for eating.

Family tradition:
For graduation or coming home from school or visiting, it varies. Sometimes we go out and eat at a restaurant, but I consistently remember pho or some other Vietnamese noodle for the home menu. Maybe because it's my favorite food or because it is so served so often, that's why I remember it. But I do not really see it as much as a tradition as it is a common serving at special occasions.

Now that I think about it, there is one tradition that we have, but I don't remember how it got started: when guests come over, my mom prepares a griddle with fresh meat and seafood ready to grill on the tabletop as well as a boiling bowl, for lack of culinary knowledge, for the noodles and green vegetables. I miss the mussels, which are expensive but are so good.

The defining link between these two 'traditions' is that, except for the last example which I think is a Thailand dish, they both serve Vietnamese foods. It is not a tradition because it has been passed down, but it is a continual clinging to Vietnamese customs as my family and I continue living in America.

So, in short, what foods characterize my family? Vietnamese foods, or noodles, specifically.
What foods do we eat on special occasions? Vietnamese foods, or noodles of any variety.