SE#1

Keane Lim

WRIT 1133

Professor Eric Leake

3/27/13

What Does Food Mean To Me?

            I've always wondered why in those moments when my family went out for food at a restaurant, I grimace and find myself disillusioned by the quality of the food. I find myself thinking thoughts like "It's not as good as what we normally eat" or "Dad could cook it better" in a sardonic tone as I proceed to reluctantly clean my plate. For me, it's an instinctive reaction, especially when it comes to eating in order to celebrate a holiday or a special occasion. It just seems like no matter where I go, "outsider" food pales in comparison to what I eat at home.

             Rationally thinking, it is unlikely that my family cooks better than other places. After all, my family never went to culinary school nor got a degree like these professional chefs in other areas. My parents and grandma are not well-versed in exquisite dishes, and yet, their dishes as generic as they seem in contrast to these dishes, satisfy me more. Is it really contrary to common sense that these dishes, which can be very expensive at times and made by experts, are less enjoyable despite the effort exerted to make them and their prestige?  In which case, it begs the question of why we humans have preferences towards certain foods. I believe the answer is: it's because of the significance that these foods have on us.

            I concede that I've developed a bias for homemade food. After all, "homemade" food is cooked at home, which the word itself connotes a special warmth that restaurants could never recreate at their locations. It goes back to the importance of "place" when talking about food. I could order a grilled tilapia at Red Lobster, but it does not elicit any meaningful response out of me that I will remember in the future. That does not mean to say that I never enjoy food from the outside, but rather that I have found my most fondest memories through the food that was made at home.

            I imagine my dad taking that same slab of fish, scaling it meticulously so that it is clean. Then, I watch curiously as he takes the insides out and jerk back from the putrid smell. It becomes an interactive sport where I try to guess what the next ingredient he is going to use while he skillfully chops the green onions, cubes the tomatoes and stirs the spices into the pot.

            On the other hand, I feel this enstrangement when I eat out. Fast food's purpose is to be convenient and available. Could something so readily made carry as much care in it as with what I associate with homemade feed? This could be interpreted as my egoism since it would be a delusion to assume or even fathom that all food is made just for "you." That must be what makes homemade food more appealing - this idea that it is made for you, moreover, by the people who care about you to make it in the first place.

            My grandma, at the tender age of 81, still cooks for the family and defies the stereotypes of the elderly getting restless and sedentary as time passes. Even so, I still take that into consideration and am always grateful for what food she has introduced to my world view.  In fact, I feel food has allowed me to live vicariously in a different time period.

            My grandma has instilled on me her story of living in the 1930s. Her traditional cooking of making egg noodles for pasta dishes and egg wrappers for egg rolls by scratch showed me how creative people had to get back then in order to make the dishes that we do now where everything is premade for you. This, for me, is a paradoxical thought. How is it that things that I have taken for granted in my time like boxed spaghetti noodles or bottled water (which my grandma used to pitch straight from a waterfall) could be reduced to an even more complex preparation process?

             Homemade food is significant for me because it has brought perspective into my life about my own native roots. When I eat the sweet banana chips that my dad makes by cooking plantains, I learn at the same time that my dad used to make a living in the Philippines by waking up at 5 am to prepare these for selling at the Philippine bays. The curry chicken recipe my mom always makes along with her adeptness to cook dishes including any farm animal, comes from the fact that my family used to own a large barn which she had to take care of from a very young age because of my grandfather's untimely sickness. Knowledge of different spices comes from talking to the merchants that would frequent the food markets coming from neighboring countries like Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and India. By eating what they cook and observing them as they do so, food has brought me under the tutelage of my heritage which I will be able to pass on to the next generation in my family. This must be where they get the expression "cultural flavor." 

            When I think food, I think family because every breakfast, every lunch, and every dinner, we always congregate together in the dining room and eat together. Food acts as a trigger to quality bonding time. The best part about homemade food is that it is distinct for each "home" and each "you" in the world. Everyone else has their own dishes that encompass what it means to eat something "homemade" and share that penchant towards it some way or another. Even prisoners, who have to come to terms with the jail cell as their new home, can embellish the food they eat that defines them, like with the creation of prison spread.

            What really fascinates me about the topic of food is how my thinking has evolved from writing about it. Food is described as a "physiological need," "nutrition" to satiate our hunger. In psychology class, I learn about Maslow's hierarchal pyramid and how food is but one requisite to fulfilling the tier that we need as humans. I learned how mice developed "conditioned food aversion" where they learn to avoid food after experiencing nausea after eating it or the slow reaction times to food of unusual shapes paired with electrical shocks. Could not this connection I feel through food mean that there exists such a thing as conditioned food "affinity?"