A Reflection of Who I Am on Every Plate

The eloquence of food never fails to move me. You can express so much with food! The offer of a glass of water, or beer/ wine, even the type of roll you pass around your table. Food is an everyday part of your biography. What kind of biography are you writing?

I, for example, have some wonderful (homemade) chicken stock in the refrigerator right now. I could do so very many things with it. Soups, sauces, bases and bastings of shapes and dimensions heretofore unheard of in this kitchen could be created in the blink of an eye. In this particular instance, however, I believe there is a chicken and rice dish that has been repeatedly requested which will be elevated by the addition of my homemade stock.

A casserole is classic Americana. Few have missed the Donna Reed look-a-likes with their oven mitts and creepy Stepford smiles, manicured hands protected as she retrieves from her harvest gold oven The Bright Red Dish, almost uniformly yellow-ish on top. While this is a part of my narrative, I assure you that the classic homemaker image has nothing to do with my veggie-and-quinoa filled one-dish delights.

Tonight, for dinner, I will be making Bo Luk Lac. Vietnamese food is, far and away, some of the most fun in the world. I am certainly aware that some chefs, Anthony Bourdain amongst them, consider Vietnamese the epitome of fusion foods. Formerly French, with some US thrown in, and a lot owed to the last half-century of political shaping.... Vietnam has a lot to offer, from a culinary vantage point.

Bo Luk Lac is one of my favorite dishes. The translation is actually, "Shaken Beef." Cubes of beef are shaken in a wok (or in my case a really big, high-sided pan), after marinating in such tasty treats as oyster as well as fish sauce! Rice, usually accompanied by sliced tomato and occasionally cucumbers, etc., wait for the main event to join them on the plate, creating for me a deceptively simplistic plate whose complex and nuanced flavors apparently turn me into William Faulkner.

I sincerely hope that my food narrative is never boring. If I'm doing something 3 times a day, I am not the type of person to be happy doing it exactly the same way without fail. I embrace the history of the dishes I love to make. I also know that the choices I make with the knowledge I have is key in leading a healthy life. My casseroles are not what Donna Reed would recognize, and there will always be a place for Moroccan, Vietnamese, Peruvian dishes in my kitchen and on my palate. Have you been keeping your food journal? Look over it. What do your food choices come together to say? What's your food narrative?

A Change in Comfort

Comfort food has its place. I do not mean to suggest that eating fried chicken because you miss Fluffy Joe who was your next door neighbor years ago is the best possible remedy for your pangs of missed swingset chats. There are many people in this world for whom the expression of emotion through food becomes a completely unhealthy expression.

On the other hand, meals matter. I've written before about how Food Effects Mood. I've also written about how my conceptions of food change as my associations with food change. There was a time when my world could only be bettered by macaroni and cheese. My appreciation for mac-n-cheese continues to this day, but the idea of more than a half a cup of it at a time makes me nauseated. I have finally learned the lesson: good things should be measured as carefully as bad, and valued for their own merit, not as a bandaid to avoid what's wrong.

Last night I made grilled ginger and white pepper chicken, with rice and sugar snap peas in a teriyaki sauce. I thinned down the teriyaki sauce from traditional to more of a lightened salad dressing consistency. Tasty, fresh, refreshing and rejuvenating. I was comforted that I had found tastes I enjoy, that did not make me feel worse after eating.

I made food I am proud of, and that was far more satisfying than macaroni and cheese had ever been.