Fight 4 Taste!

 It was my first time tonight making Oyakodon, a Japanese rice, chicken and egg dish. Soy sauce, mirin,  saki and onion lend beautiful savory flavors while the eggs silkiness is almost custard like. My first try tasted great, but it it wasn’t the prettiest. I will improve. This dish is worth it.

 Remember when you were young, and shown like the sun. Shine on you crazy diamond.  -Shine on You Crazy Diamond, Pink Floyd, 1975, Wish You Were Here album. There was something about naivety that made it work back in the old days. $100 trips across the United States while eating food that was absolutely void of taste and nutrition. The old saying, ignorance is bliss certainly had its benefits back then. I cannot begin to imagine the things that I have missed out on. I wonder, did they even exist though? We all know that in the last 30 years, food has been an absolute revolution. The types of food that I long to learn more about did exist. It is traditional foods from around the globe that I find so fascinating. I know that without modern media my learning about these types of culinary discoveries would be restricted to books, and maybe an occasional travel show on PBS. Donna said to me yesterday, “Oh to be 20 years younger!” It was said in the context of all the creative thing...

 What is it that keeps bringing me back to food? Of course I love the tastes. I love the opportunity it gives us to create. But there is something so much deeper. Food brings people together. It is marriages, it is births and deaths. It is healing, and not only physically, but socially. In lands where people are polarized due to global labels and perceived imbalances, food brings love unifying those who are separated by their labels. Estrangement and alienation fall away like autumn leaves when time is taken to be closer to someone that we do not understand. Food is the finest way to bridge the gaps and close the discrepancy. Mother’s all over the world call a truce, everyone laying down their weapons of ignorance to show respect and to finally step into the light of finding we have more in common with each other than we do not. The food placed before me may show me the story of your wars, your famines, your exploration of the seas of the world, your sadness, your joy, your unions,...

It is a far greater thing to truly find where it goes, than to hold on tight to everything you think you have acquired. I feel like it is a broken record of words that we hear on the radio, that we sing in the car, that we wake up and realize. Something so obvious, yet something so obscure.  I saw the sun setting behind me and I stopped trying to steer everything. The world did not stop, it did not fall, and not only that but it flourished and thrived. The sun rose and I watched, and things grew, and in ways that I never experienced exactly. I could see myself in the reflections, and I know that somehow, even when I was doing everything and thinking that I was not paying attention, I was on a deeper level. When I find that this discovery means so much to me, I find that it means so much to them too. Ultimately the mission we are given is to make ourselves obsolete and I guess that is happening. I am overwhelmed with gratitude, pride and love. It has been such a beautiful thing to w...