Food and cooking

Alright, so if anyone still reads this thing, you'll notice that the sidebar on the left linking a whole bunch of other blogs indicates that almost nobody I know writes with any regularity anymore.

BUT NO LONGER!

A few days ago, my post about jaffys and feeling old recieved a new comment. A NEW COMMENT.

C.H. from http://welcometocincity.blogspot.com.au/ actually has an incredibly insightful blog delving into issues regarding racism, bullying, relationships, as well as a few crazy videos here and there. Check it out if you have the time, it's well worth the read :) (any BHS/MHS/Melb Uni folks out there, she's Alice's cousin! Crazeh small world.)

Anyway so the latest post from C.H. is about her cravings for Western food, which is interesting considering I've been cooking my own meals for the past two months and it's almost entirely been Western-style stuff (or at least Asian food for Western palates).

"There should come a certain point in your life when you put your chopsticks down and go: "No, I cannot take any more bowls of plain white rice, bok choi and sweet and sour pork.  Give me pasta, lasagne, pizza, steak, chips, gravy, mashed potatoes and pavolova okay not really that last one."" - C.H.

But the reason I have been cooking lamb chops and beef rump and burgers and lasagna and carbonara and mini-pizzas and stirfry for white people (it comes out of a packet?! Wtf?) is mostly to satisfy my younger sister, who's less than enthusiastic about the Asian food that my mum cooks. Any opportunity for something different, she'll grab it with both hands.

Bit of background about me, I'm the eldest in my generation on both sides of my family, and my parents were pretty strict in my Asian upbringing. Maybe it's that, but I consider my sister's rejection of my mum's cooking almost unfilial in a sense, as well as being a rejection of an integral part of her culture. Whether she likes it or not, she IS Australian-Chinese. Now, I'm not saying that that alone is sufficient reason to actively enjoy Asian food, but it should at least be enough that you don't complain about it.

The thing is, though, I've never felt as strongly about food as some other people do. My idea of "good food" and "food I like" are synonymous with "food I will eat". Anything that I don't dislike eating, I will eat, and I will consider it good food. My food tastes don't so much sit on a gradient as they do on a dividing line between food that sucks (eggplant, asparagus) and food that's great (just about everything else that we eat here in Australia). I'll just as happily tuck in to a packet of instant noodles as I would a Big Mac from Maccas, or a $50 steak in the city. Food is food, and as long as I'm willing to eat it, that's good enough for me.

I mean, hell, I ate sandwiches for lunch for a solid 13 years, from prep right through to Year 12. My mum, who made the sandwiches, complained about it more than I did. "Don't you ever get sick of sandwiches?" she'd ask. Sometimes she'd pack a meat pie or something for me instead, but never by my request. I was content eating the same thing, day in, day out, for over a decade. Food, after all, isn't all that important in the bigger scheme of things. As long as I'm getting the sustenance that I need with a relatively acceptable taste, I don't really mind what form that sustenance takes. It's a tool to make sure you can keep going, but it pales in comparison to things like the Federal Budget, or religion in US politics.

So despite this three month hiatus from Asian food, when mum gets back I'll fully embrace her Asian cooking. After all, nobody's cooking tastes quite like mum's.