American Peasant/Paesano Food

In my upcoming book “Eat America; a Patriot’s Guide to the Cuisine of Each State” I plan to include a section titled “Peasant Food; how the peasants do it.” For example, I have this picture above of a boy from rural Georgia making boiled peanuts; for Arizona, I have a picture of a native american woman with some fry bread she made. For Minnesota I have a guy sitting alone ice fishing.?

It’s come to my attention that some people will object to calling a native american a “peasant” or calling any other person that, because the word is often used with negative connotation. Not here. In this book, the term peasant is used to convey the utmost respect and admiration.?

In American English the word “peasant” generally connotes a negative meaning, it’s used as a disparaging noun as in “she was as ignorant as a peasant” or even sometimes as a negative adjective as in “that’s so peasant of you.” The word is actually not used very much, because it is most accurately used to describe a class of people who no longer exist.?

The word comes from the latin “pagus” (country district) which evolved to “pais” or “paisent”? in Old French (“country” or? “country-dweller”) and then to “peasant” in medieval English, a noun for a low class person, at the bottom of society and economy, a person good only for manual labor like a farm animal. So, yes, hundreds of years ago, it was bad to be a peasant.

However, in America, an Italian word for “peasant” is “paisano” which does not have a negative connotation, just the opposite. Paisano is a term used in the culture of the Italian-American Mafia for a “man of respect” or a “made man” or at least denoting a compatriot or comrade or someone with the same origins as yourself.?

That’s how “peasant” is used in this book. It’s not a person of any particular demographic; an American peasant could be of any background, any race, any creed. They are a peasant by virtue of being a “Paisano” or “Paisana'' an American Patriot grounded in their faith, family community, and culture.

The American servicemen and women on active duty in the military, who patrol 24/7 far from home, on birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, so that their friends and family back in their home state can have the feasts--they are peasants. The Americans living on farms who get up with the sun to tend the crops and animals, they are peasants. The American workers in factories who labor away indoors without seeing the sun shine, are peasants. The teachers, police, the doctors and nurses, the social workers, the entrepreneurs, the scientists, the bums, the chronically unemployed and disabled--they are all Peasants and American Patriots, so long as they believe in our constitutional rule of law!

So embrace American peasants and rejoice in their culture and heritage--it’s shared, it's all of ours! When you love an American peasant, you love America.?And if you love America, you will love American Peasant food!