Taste Can Be Tasteless

I always thought food was about the taste, I thought that he most important thing was how the food tasted and where you are it had absolutely no importance in enjoying it. But this was as a kid, when all I wanted to do was eat and company and setting meant little to me. As I started to mature however and in traveling on my own, I started to appreciate other aspects that come with eating. What comes to mind when I say a fine meal? A perfectly cooked New York Strip at Pappas Bros. Steakhouse in Houston? Maybe a delicious foie gras served at L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon in Paris? Fair enough. These mouth watering dishes are one of the most delicious I have ever tried and I dream of going back to them during a vacation opportunity. My main point isthis, imagine both of these dishes or any dish that you would kill to have again. Got it? Good. Now, imagine yourself sitting down in your dream kitchen eating it. Here’s the catch though, you’re alone. Instantly the dish loses meaning. It’s not the same as if you were sharing these marvels with a lovedone, a friend, or a family member. This is what food is. It’s company, setting, love, sharing. It’s a cliché nowadays. This idea that everyone needs to gather around the family table during dinner and laugh and share everything is too much of a commercialized idea and it’s not always the case. But when it does happen, it can be something amazing.

I’ll speak from a personal example. I am a soccer fan and yesterday night actually, my team Tigres won the championship for the first time in 29 years. After 13 years of supporting them during the highs and lows they finally won it. Now, being at Kent I am forced to look for a live stream on the internet and sit in my room screaming at my screen but when I m back home and I can go the stadium and watch them play, it is the highlight of the weekend. Screaming and laughing with good company is what makes the stadium what it is. It isn’t the “torta de arrachera” that makes it what it is. I don’t think, ‘hmm, I really want a torta from the stadium today” no, I think “I want to be AT the stadium with a torta in my hand”. See, that simple torta is one of the most ok foods I have ever eaten in my life, but it is one of my favorite things to eat. Period. It’s because I have learned to associate it with friendship, highs, lows, victories and defeats. There is emotion behind that simple creation of putting together arrachera, bread, and salsa. If it meant eating that the way I have all these years, with friends, over eating the finest dish by myself, I would take the decently delightful torta any day. Even if it means it’s all I have to eat for another 29 years.

Aquarius. Water, saccharose, mineral salts, sodium citrate,sodium chloride, sodium
potassium, sodium magnesium, acidulant, citric acid, scents. These are the ingredients for the Spanish equivalent of Gatorade. However, if you ask me what Aquarius tastes like,

my brain will evoke a dry, scorching hot half-noon in mid-June Madrid, walking back

from "El Canal" after two hours of chirping, running, kicking and heated arguments against the other football team.

Getting to the chino (chinese in spanish, it is

how we call little convenience stores) and buying two one litter bottles, one orange, one regular. The fierce desperation

with which you drink both bottles in ten seconds, getting a rush of coolness is what Aquarius tastes to me like. This is what I call food imagery. Food imagery happens when a flavour, smell or food in general transcends its physical characteristics and acquires a meaning unique to you.

I'm sure every one of you has experienced this. Even my dog Jack has. When he was little, every time I left the house, I had to lock him in the laundry room.

He had not been house broken yet, so we could not trust him. After a couple of times, he learnt that me

calling him form his inside the laundry room meant it was prison time, so he would stealthily hide. To bring him out, I used treat bones. His fear would then go away, and he would happily follow me into the laundry room. Then, within the blink of an eye, I would throw the bone to the far corner, Jack will turn and I will close the door shut. If I reopened the door, he would be standing in-between the bone and the door, wondering how he had fallen into that trap again. Eventually, he learnt and now hates dog-cookies from that brand with all his might. He wont even eat them if I give them to him as a treat or a reward. (Unfortunately for him, his eager enthusiasm when it comes to chewing my sister's stuffed animals makes him vulnerable to a different version of the trap.)

Food imagery usually acts in our subconscious, it is not something that you can create voluntarily, it just happens. I cant decide to which memories I want to attach the taste of Aquarius, nor can Jack help himself from remembering the laundry room when he smells a treat bone. What are your most significant food imageries?

Many of my childhood restaurant memories were made at the American Pie Company, a small, American-style restaurant and bakery in Sherman, Connecticut. The last time I stopped in this past summer, it felt weird walking in and being able to see over the counter as I was greeted by the person at the register – as a child, I always remember walking into the bakery, which was attached to the restaurant, the bells on the door ringing as the door shut behind me, the smell of a freshly baked pie hitting my face, and being greeted by a sprawling case of large cookies instead. These delectable cookies of every kind imaginable were always something I looked forward to after dinner. As soon as I would see the case of cookies, I would start thinking about which one I would get for dessert that time – peanut butter was always my favorite, but sometimes I would get chocolate chip or – if I was feeling extra daring – the double chocolate chip cookie. My brother and sister would always get the M&M cookie, which I hated – the one time I tried it, I picked off all of the M&M’s, leaving the bare, hole-filled, tasteless sugar cookie on my plate.

Both my Mom and Dad knew the owners through the community and my Dad’s former business. They would always come out and say hello to us, asking how everything was, either while we were eating or on our way out. I felt special having the owners come over and personally ask how we enjoyed our meal.

American Pie was the place I stopped in to get a snack and drink (usually a cookie and a Snapple) after working at a job with my Dad if we happened to be near Sherman. It was the place where I spent countless breakfasts, lunches and dinners eating with my family, cousins and close friends. I remember walking up the creaky, steep wooden stairs to the upstairs balcony where families and large parties usually ate. The second we would sit down, my brother, sister and I would scramble for the small, ideal-sized pink and blue sugar packets which we would use to build castles with, dreading to be the one stuck with the large, bulky “Sugar In the Raw” packets that never worked well. When the sugar packet building would get out of hand, we would quiz each other with the trivia cards sitting in the middle of the table. We weren’t ever any good at them, though, as most of the cards asked about actors and movies we had never heard about.

When I was little, my favorite meals were on the Kid’s Menu – grilled cheese, chicken fingers, and macaroni and cheese. As I got older, I learned to try new things, like their sirloin steak, which was cooked very well with very good flavor. Their buttermilk pancakes have always been a favorite of mine when I eat breakfast there. The perfectly soft, fluffy pancakes, complemented extremely well with drizzled syrup and butter, melt in your mouth and are extra satisfying when paired with a side of bacon or home fries.

During my childhood, American Pie was the place I learned not to blow bubbles in my drink or slurp with my straw after I’d finished my drink. As I got older, it was the place where I shared meals with old friends, catching up, talking about our busy lives, and wondering why we never saw much of each other anymore. It was the place where I talked and spent time talking with my Dad over lunch. A few years ago, I remember eating a meal with my sister, and when we were finished, we innocently asked about the free cookie that always came with our meal. Then came the resentful, sympathetic look from the waitress who told us that cookies only came with meals from the Kid’s Menu. Until a couple of years ago, my sister would still try to order chicken fingers off of the Kid’s Menu – she claimed it was because she’s a picky eater, which she most certainly is, but I always liked to think it was because she still wanted that cookie. Even though the cookies were no longer free with our meal, we still got them anyways and enjoyed them just the same.

Image: http://americanpiecompany.com/photos/IMG_1127.JPG

Kimchi

Today, I would like to talk about Kimchi,
yes, the reddish fermented cabbage mixed with garlic, salt, vinegar,
chile peppers, and other spices. Even from the
appearance of Kimchi, you can sense how hot it is, but in fact it is not so bad
after all. Trust me, I have seen many foreigners tried it and loved it. So, it
might be not a bad idea to try it especially Kimchi is one of the healthiest
food in the world.

Kimchi is full of vitamins A,B, C, iron,
calcium, and carotene, but the biggest contributor in making Kimchi healthy
food is the bacteria called lactobacilli, found in fermented foods like Kimchi
and Yogurt. Lactobacilli helps digestion, eliminates cholesterol, prevents yeast
infection, and helps lose weight! Some studies show Kimchi includes compounds
that prevent the cancer. So, why not try it?

Here is one of the over 200 different
Kimchi recipes, perhaps one of the most common one you will find in the market,
cabbage Kimchi.

Ingredients:
- 2 heads Napa cabbage
- 1 1/4 cups sea salt
- 1 tablespoon fish sauce
- 5 green onions, chopped
- 1/2 small white onion, minced
- 2 cloves garlic, pressed
- 2 tablespoons white sugar
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
- 5 tablespoons Korean chile powder

Directions:
1. Cut the cabbages in half lengthwise and
trim the ends. Rinse and cut into pieces about 2 inch square. Place the cabbage
into large resealable bags and sprinkle salt on the leaves so they are evenly
coated. Use your hands to rub the salt in to the leaves. Seal the bags and
leave at room temperature for 6 hours.
2. Rinse the salt from the cabbage leaves
and then drain and squeeze out any excess liquid. Place the cabbage in a large
container with a tight fitting lid. Stir in the fish sauce, green onions, white
onion, garlic, sugar and ginger. Sprinkle the Korean chile powder over the
mixture. Wear plastic gloves to protect your hands and rub the chile powder
into the cabbage leaves until evenly coated. Seal the container and set in a
cool dry place. Leave undisturbed for 4 days. Refrigerate before serving, and
store in the refrigerator for up to 1 month (if it lasts that long!).

recipe is from allrecipes.com

Shanghai General Tso's Chicken

Where there are hungry mouths, there are Chinese restaurants. Here in Kent, we have Wasabi, and, more importantly, we have Shanghai. Shanghai is fine dining establishment located in the Kent Green. While it offers a variety of delicious meals, like Beef & Broccoli or Scallion Pancakes. However, there is one dish at Shanghai to rule them all: The Honorable General Tso's Chicken.

I first tried General Tso's last year. The dining hall was serving some type of Mexican Beef Tilapia Pork Salad for Wednesday lunch. I was not about to eat 2 week old mystery meat, so instead I ordered with a few of my friends who were equally disgusted. I had no idea what to order, so I just followed their advice and ordered what they did. Little did I know, that I had just ordered what can be described as the best meal you can get for less than 10 dollars in Kent.

The delivery man arrived, we paid him, and we got our bags and went back to the dorm. Now, I remind you. I had yet to try the chicken. And I was hungry. We got back to the room, and while I set up the movie we were going to watch (Ninja Assassin), they opened up their plastic boxes, and out came the smell. It is a unique smell, which is unrivaled by any other smells in the room. I sat on the couch and opened up my box. It was my own personal white plastic box of heaven, with yellow rice, broccoli, some peas and carrots, and of course, the glistening, red, sweet and spicy pieces of chicken.

I was told to put Soy Sauce on my stuff, but I ignored this suggestion, saying "Nay, I shall eat this meal as served, and if I do not enjoy the way it is prepared, I will add or remove ingredients as desired.” So I started eating. The chicken was absolutely delicious. It had the perfect balance of sweet and spicy. The warm rice and veggies complement the chicken pieces well. When I was finished eating the hardy, I had one question in my mind. Why did it take me so long to realize that I can eat this instead of what we have in the dining hall? So, whenever the dining hall decides it’s going to serve us some leftovers from a few years ago, I know I rely on the General to provide me with a nutritious meal.

photo courtesy of Google Images

I don’t really know what happened, but this is what people tell me. I was three or four and helping my dad make dinner. As he prepared the mean he also snacked on crackers covered in peanut butter. Obviously I asked for one. After I consumed the treat I began to feel strange. This feeling went from a tingling in my mouth to a tightening of my chest. I had an allergic reaction to the peanut butter. The doctor was called and I ended up fine.

The biggest impact of that night was the medications I soon had to carry. For the longest time I remember lugging around a small bag pack full of medicine. I had inhalers, epipens, benadryl and stuff I never even knew the name of. This was the worst just because of how tedious it was to carry a bag I never needed, but I knew I had to. The only time that the bag pack was actually used was during field day. A friend of mine had some medical emergency and needed an inhaler. When the school nurse came around asking if anyone had one, my supplies finally came in handy.

Probably the funniest part of that bag pack was the translations in it. When I was younger my mom, sisters and I used to travel around the world. We went to China, Egypt, Greece, all over. When ever we traveled to a country that didn’t have English as its first language my mom would mail the Embassy and request cards with warnings about our allergies translated in all the major languages spoken there. I ended up having a note card in over seven different languages in the bag pack that I carried mainly in New York. Even better was the extra bag we brought with us to China. One of my sisters, Nancy, was allergic to tree nuts. My mother was worried that the food in china would always have some form of peanuts or tree nuts in it. To insure we got food she brought an entire suitcase full of American food, like pop tarts, cereal, and chips.

The only event that I can recall with my nut allergy was when I was 11 or 12 at a summer camp. It was make your own Sunday Sunday, so naturally I went for the vanilla covered in everything. As I got to the toppings I found it weird that there was an option for m&m’s and Halloween color m&m’s even though it was summer. I pushed aside my curiosity and devoured my desert. As I inhaled my ice cream decadence I over heard my friends taking about how good the Reese’s m&m’s were. I looked down in fear to see an empty bowl. My heart sank. Before I totally flipped, I realized I felt fine. I decided to wait ten minutes and see what happened. Then 20. Then 40. Then I told my mom when I got home. The next step for me was the great food allergy “Challenge.”

My mother and I went down to Mount Sania on a school day, which I thought was awesome, even though my mom made me do school work. The challenge started with me getting a needle in my fore arm to directly inject epinephrine incase anything went wrong. The next step was me eating a piece of chocolate that tasted like a mixture of soap and peanut butter, each time the piece grew larger and larger. Finally I had a quarter of a peanut butter sandwich, then the other quarter, and finally the last half.

I some how outgrew my allergy, and since that day I have been trying to make up for time that I couldn’t eat Reese’s or Butterfingers.

rep

image from http://www.google.com/imgres?q=no+nuts&um=1&hl=en&sa=N&tbm=isch&tbnid=lmM1xLiD9LvunM:&imgrefurl=http://twinsmummy.wordpress.com/tag/nut-allergy/&docid=2ALaEXgy_7yEnM&imgurl=http://twinsmummy.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/no-peanuts-sign.jpg&w=352&h=340&ei=IETmTufMKIj40gH8nuTBBQ&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=71&sig=115692783868291216596&page=1&tbnh=131&tbnw=136&start=0&ndsp=21&ved=1t:429,r:6,s:0&tx=91&ty=51&biw=1221&bih=649

Sunday Meal

My mother is a very good cook. She cooks all sorts of food very well, and I usually like the food she cooks, over most of the food I eat out with my family and friends. Usually, my mom would cook for the sake of eating healthy food that is not loaded with preservatives and nutritious food over the fatty food that I eat out with my friends. She used to cook almost all three meals a day for me, sometimes starting off with a continental breakfast with eggs and sausages, and pancakes and waffles with tons of maple syrup. Other times, she would brew Kimchi stew or Sagol Stew, which is cow bones boiled in hot water for 12 hours, which kind of taste like chicken noodle soup. For lunch, she would sometimes make me namul, side dish vegetables, japchay, noodles with sesame oil and vegetables, and ddakggochi, chicken, pork, and beef marinated in spicy sauce and cut up into pieces then assorted into a chop-stick like stick. There was no doubt that I loved my mom’s cooking more than any other food and it also came with the benefit of being very healthful.

My dad was a horrendous cook. He would sometimes try to cook for us, but usually ended up burning all the food and making the frying pan into an unusable black disfigured mess. He would add too much water when he attempted stews, that tasted like water, with a hint of the actual stew. He would overcook the meat, so that it would stick to the pan and I we had to scrape it off with a spoon or knife. His effort was evident, but there was no dispute that he just couldn’t cook compared to my mom. He would attempt to cook a lot, but usually failed without avail.

However, one day, my dad discovered one type of food he could cook without failing. It was a type of Korean packaged noodles, called japaghetti, which was very easy to cook. He would take two cups of water and start boiling it. After it started boiling, he would add the vegetables and meat flakes and shortly after add the noodles. After the noodles were properly cooked, he would drain almost all the water and add the black powdered sauce, added the olive oil packet and started mixing the noodles, until the powdered sauce turned into a paste-like substance. After mixing the noodles thoroughly until the sauce was well-distributed, he moved the noodles into a dish and brought out the Kimchi from the fridge, spicy red cabbage. As my entire family ate the food my dad prepared every Sunday, I felt proud and relieved that my dad found a food he could cook more deliciously than any other person, even more than my mother.

Image: http://cfs13.tistory.com/image/31/tistory/2009/02/02/10/27/49864c0737a68

The Dining Hall

As I sat at my kitchen table enjoying a home cooked meal over thanksgiving break, one question came up that always seems to surface when I am home. It was my mom who asked “so how’s the food been?” This immediately brought my mood down a level and I looked at her in disbelief because she already, in fact, knew exactly how the food is. She has heard over and over for years the complaints by myself, brothers, and the friends we bring home about everything from meatless Monday to the Cheesburger pie they make surprisingly just a day or two after hamburgers are serve. Not to mention, it’s no coincidence that my SC and credit card bill seem to get higher and higher each year I am at Kent, so one would think that my parents could connect the dots. Instead, I turned to my Mom and answered, “Great.”I am not one to complain about many things, but after four years of growing discontent it seems like this is something that I needed to get off my chest by the time I graduate. My problems with the dining hall are not with the staff, they do a good job with what they are given, but rather with the people behind the scenes ordering and organizing it and the lack of funding. At this point, when I or my fellow four year friends see most meals (tacos, sloppy joe’s, fish, pasta, noodles), or any meat for that matter with the exception of chicken burgers and tenders, it is a sprint for the sandwich or pizza line. Not to mention, the line for hot food is sometimes too long to even wait in if I have a practice right after dinner. Anyway, here are some things the dining hall does well.

1) Chicken burgers

2) Cereal

3) Cookies (on a good day)

From then on, it’s a lost cause. You may find yourself even occasionally picking up a fork or plate that is questionably cleaned, pulling out a hair in your taco salad, or other things that you should never have to experience (like the quality of the eggs in the morning). I have seen all of these happen first hand, and the worst one I ever saw happened last year during the spring term. My friend Eric and I were in the dining hall on a hot summer day about to enjoy what we thought to be a delicious pulled pork sandwich. I saw Eric chewing on something and when I looked over his eyes widened as he opened his mouth to see what clump of pork was the problem. This was no pork. After seeing the faces of dozens of kids around the tables, we went over to ask Mr. Smith, an ecology teacher, if we could identify what we had found. It turned out to be an aorta from a baby pig, no joke. Clearly this isn’t something that the staff could have seen but rather shows the quality of the food sources we get our food from. So with that, students and faculty, enjoy your meals this break and stay away from pulled pork sandwiches when you return.