Foodways

My family does food in a very traditional Chinese way where: the female (my mother) prepares the food, everyone uses chopsticks, every meal involves either rice or noodles, and soy sauce or oyster sauce is present in every other dish. The stereotypical portrayal of Asian meal rituals is the portrayal of the rituals in my family as well (besides the dog part; that stuff is illegal). However, one thing that might differ between my families from of the other families is we exchange thoughts during dinner time. We have discussions as we are eating, that eventually turn into minor arguments due to the huge contrast in beliefs between me and my mother.

My perspective on food and my parent’s perspective of food are completely different. I see food as a source of rejuvenation, and maybe even as a requirement. Therefore I tend to eat relatively quick, compared to my parents. I eat to only satisfy that requirement, and see that if I spend too much time on eating, I’ll be wasting the time I can be using to do something else (by that, I mostly mean video games). My parents, on the contrary, value food and its taste. Therefore they take a little more time, sucking each bone dry, and chewing every piece of food until it’s a liquid. And while I feel like I could be doing something else with my time instead of slowly eating, their “something else” is eating.

In some ways, I can see that I have adopted the typical American food way, which seems to be very involved with haste and convenience. I, along with many other Americans, like to incorporate eating with another action, such as heading to work/school, doing homework, listening to the background sound of the television, or playing video games. Food can be described as “just there,” based on my approach to food and the approaches I’ve observed from the busy New Yorkers and their bagels on-to-go. Food never seems to be the focus of a typical American, from what I have seen in my experiences. People (including myself) are always just eating because it’s a basic survival need, and never really taken the time to fully focus on food. Even when people go out to a restaurant for dinner, their focus is still not on the food; rather it is on his/her date, the occasion or the convenience.