I bet other minority people have a similar relationship with their traditional food: your mom makes an old recipe when you are a kid, you don't like it because it feels so different from the pizza pockets and hamburgers you are used to eat. Then you grow up, move out and see "cool" people eating it...and you start loving that same dish. That's my story with fricot.

Fricot is a meat stew with chicken (yummy!!!), beef (will do) or clams (Nope. Never liked seafood, never will) with potatoes, dumplings made of corn starch and water, sometimes carrots and summer savory.
When I started going to U de M, all the cool people liked fricot and I finally started eating it. It had become a symbol of acadians. I heard hispters even tried to make fricot-flavored craft beer!

When I transcribed old recipe sheets for my mom in 2007, I noticed that almost all sweet recipes involved molasses (not maple syrup, as you would expect in Canada) because with the British Empire trading the 18th and 19th centuries away between England, Jamaica and Canada, molasses from the british west indies was the cheapest source of sugar when those recipes took form.

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Pour less non-acadiens, un fricot c'est un ragout de viande (poulet, boeuf ou fruits de mer) avec des patates, des oignons des carrotes et un peu de sarriette. Ma mère en a fait pendant des années, c'était pour moi une vieillerie...jusqu'à ce que j'aille à l'Université de Moncton et que tous les gens cool en mangent, que ça prenne valeur presque de symbole national!

C'est aussi une rare recette traditionelle populaire sans mélasse. Dans la cuisine acadienne, à peu pres tout ce qui est sucré contient de la mélasse (pas du sirop d'érable!) parce que dans le Canada britannique du 18e et 19e siècle, la mélasse des antilles...britanniques était la source de sucre la moins chère.