Chapter 6: Bread, Ugly Gravy and Boring Parties: Encounters With Dutch Food Practices

This quote shows how customs in Dutch society can clash with customs from the Dominican Republic. Mariasela described how after overcoming several cultural shocks, she found her way in the Netherlands and learned to deal with what she perceived as Dutch culture. Something that, as she put it, shocked her was Dutch birthday parties, specifically the kind of food that is served, the sequence in which it is served and the quantities. There are more stories, like Mariasela’s, of immigrants’ encounters with different food practices post-migration about how these differences compel negotiation and even changes in practices.

This chapter explores the relationship between the receiving society and immigrant homemaking. It examines which unfamiliar practices and customs immigrants had to deal with in trying to recreate home and the negotiations they made due to these encounters. It also shows how the encounter with these unfamiliar practices and customs could lead to changes. By ‘the receiving society’, I mean the Netherlands’ dominant cultural group as well as other immigrant communities. In my research, this constitutes Dutch natives and the Surinamese, Dutch Caribbean, Moroccan and Turkish immigrant communities, who have been residing in the Netherlands for approximately three generations. The term ‘unfamiliar practices’ refers to material, social and cultural practices of the native Dutch and the large immigrant communities that could influence Dominicans’ practices.