Today I'm thinking about culture - A long time ago I was cooking with a French friend and we made fried yams. While we were cleaning up, I noticed him begin to empty the pan of oil into the sink and I almost had a heart attack. I grabbed it from him and said "We don't do that!"

Now I wonder, who was "we"? I grew up in a home where used oil was always saved for another day. But it's possible that this was because I was from a lower middle income home. It's what I knew and I couldn't imagine it another way. Why do we do the things we do?

Went to a restaurant to a friend recently and she told me to try their crêpes. I told her I didn't understand crêpes and preferred pancakes. That I thought crêpes were inferior to pancakes. Then she pointed out to me that this might have something to do with colonial history.

The British eat pancakes and the French eat crêpes. Nigerians eat pancakes, Senegalese eat crêpes. This was a revelation for me. My perceived personal choice transformed into colonial legacy. I started to look out for other stuff and came up with some questions.

Do we like bread with beans because it is a version of the British beans on toast that we may have been introduced to? How about fish and chips? You can't compare both versions but it's the same idea. How many things do we think are ours but were actually introduced recently?