My Sainted Mother was from the Maritimes in Canuckistan and forgot what my Grannie, a Utah hill person, taught her, food should taste good. I worked in a heavily Irish part of Boston and the tales of food murder was a good way to past the Night Watch.
I grew up in an Irish immigrant house in Detroit. Blah would be a compliment. Then my aunt married a Syrian-American who had been a cook in the Air Corps in North Africa and Italy, and he was a wizard in the kitchen. Then we moved out and back to mom’s rather unimaginative cuisine.