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Eat, play, love: When food brings us together
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| Lira |
Damn you, Lira, you got me addicted to cappuccino! 
Ignorance is not bliss. Bliss is all about dem cuddly fuzzy nomful relationships. Cats agree.
When I think about what my diet was like 10 years ago as I left high school, it consisted mainly of what my parents fed me: Pasta, cheese, pasta, cheese, salad, and the ultimate Brazilian combo — rice & beans. Whenever a friend invited me for dinner at their place, it wasn't much different from what I used to have at home, except for a few vegetables such as chayote and yam, which Liras generally seem to despise. If there is a good, he sure isn't responsible for the creation of cucumbers, that's for sure.
Then, In my early twenties, I started hanging out with some friends whose diet wasn't exactly like mine. They'd cook noodles with mushrooms and tofu; soy sauce was ubiquitous; and their rice was even more insipid than the one I'd usually have, and I didn't believe that was gastronomically possible. I was primed for that though, as it resembled my own diet. Now that I live on my own, I see I borrowed much of their cuisine - it's come to such an extent that, when I was in London, I'd have all my meals in Chinatown, and it'd feel like home... the same feeling I'd only have in Italian restaurants a decade earlier. Hooray for noodles!
How about the food that was truly exotic for me? Well, my brother hates tomato, so we'd have pizza without tomato sauce at home - or, when it wasn't possible, we'd just have the plain-vanilla mozzarella topping. As I became romantically involved to someone hooked on margherita pizza, it became my favourite tomato-laden wonder; in retribution, I also taught her to drink things she'd probably never try on her own, such as passion fruit juice with milk... which now has a new meaning for me as well. Coca-cola? Neither of us drank that before we started dating and, thanks to a misunderstanding, we now drink litres of it every month. And, I wouldn't drink any cappuccino until I saw her drink it and decided to have some of it myself. So I'd acquire the habits not only of those with whom I played, but also of those I loved. Was it just me, however?
Last week, as I was hanging out with a friend, she saw me order a big cappuccino at uni, sipped some, and caught the cappuccino bug (or, in igk humour, a capbuggino). I wasn't alone, after all. As my psychologist friend had predicted, friendships do affect diets, and that's clearly a two-way process as he recently found out: ever since I showed him how hot kimchi is, he's been having heaps of it... and, now that he's dating a vegetarian, guess what he's just deleted from his menu? Once again, play and love shaped his diet.
How about the lot of you? Can you think of how your relationships affected your diets? Does food bring us together? Why do you reckon it influences you? (i.e. I know what the scientific explanations are, but how do you experience these changes?). Or, if you disagree with me, why do you believe there's no connection between food, play, and love?
CORe version: Nom is luv. Luv is nom. |
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| aquila |
| I like sandwiches. |
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| kadomony |
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| Moongoose |
I fell in love with Szechuan cuisine during uni which none of my friends seem to appreciate when i cook. Pussies, the whole lot of them. They scream in pain if you even point a chilli pepper in their direction.
Other than that, i have hooked several people on fresh orange juice - such a simple drunk, all you need is three or four oranges but the result is nothing short of magnificent. Its like rainbows comming to life and dancing in your mouth. Also my best friend got me to appreciate red wine, before that i was strictly a beer person. |
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| FuzzQi |
I grew up with Australian parents - and as such I have always felt satisfied with a meal consisting of meat (shags), starch, and vegetable. Living in Saudi Arabia exposed me to the wonderful world of Middle Eastern food, my favourites being:
-Afghani style chicken and yellow rice with raisins in it
-Schwarma (usually called kebab in the west), meat and vegetables wrapped in flat arabic bread. You could buy these off the street for SR1 - which would be less than US$1 I think.
-Falafel
-Nivik, some kind of chick pea and spinach dish
-Turkish Delight (I once attempted to make this on my own, so good even if a little jelly like)
The last two years I lived with my (now ex) girlfriend who was a very Kiwi girl, so back to meat'n'veg, especially lamb. But during this time I acquired a breadmaker and would make a loaf just about every week. Now I use it almost exclusively to make pizza dough for my home made pizzas. I've also had a love affair with pasta, have it just about every day for lunch, and have made potato gnocci from scratch a number of times.
At the moment I live with my best friend who is from India so I am picking up Indian cooking off him. His mum makes awesome food as well. As far as spice goes, I can handle spicy but if the recipe doesn't call for it I won't add it - he adds it to EVERYTHING. My current girlfriend is most certainly a foodie and has really inspired my interest in food, especially asian dishes and burgers.
 FOOD
Cor version: my social context has definitely influenced my diet |
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| Lilith |
I still make a point of finding the time of making a family roast on Sunday as a legacy of growing up with my grandparents that thought it important that we spend a sit-down lunch time meal at least once a week to catch up. That is a very a-typical (for both England and Australia, to some extent South Africa) of roast meat, usually lamb, beef or sometimes pork or chicken, roast pumpkin, potatoes and steamed greens (beans or peas) with gravy.
Desert would be a traditional bread and butter pudding or saffron cake.
Being widely travelled and open to new ideas I've tried a bit of most cultures foods, not enough to pick a favourite though, I do like most asian and arabic cooking I think in preference for it being not as 'heavy' in the stomach and the freshness of the ingredients.
Over the last few years with a SO, Italian dishes have featured quite prominently, I'm not really a master of them as some are labour intensive to do properly. |
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| tubularbills |
i enjoyed reading your post. i too, am a major fan of anything pasta/noodle related (please, save your gay responses for me saying "noodle"; grow the up lunar and igk)...and whenever i have had friends over in the past i'd make a large (sometimes too large (that's what she said)) pasta bake with tons of cheese.
then i moved to Louisiana. upon going out for dinner i noticed some folks eating "red beans and rice" and i thought to myself, "what the , that sounds so boring...just beans and rice? really?"...well, sure enough in time my curiosity got the best of me (again, knock it off w/ the gay jokes, s) and i tried the dish myself. instant fan. who know something so simple and red beans and white rice could be so delicious! since then, whenever i have friends over for dinner or if i bring a dish in to a potluck dinner, and i know there are going to be southern folks there, i always make red beans.
friends and company have introduced me to coffee as well. growing up i occasionally would try the coffee my folks would drink and i thought, "this tastes like burnt water...gros...i'll never drink this". well, then of course came the wonderful world of Frappuccinos. although not really considered "coffee" , per-say, it was a coffee like beverage i tried when going out w/ friends and became an instant fan.
over the years, my tastes for coffee have definitely grown and now i drink it plain black without any sugar, milk, cream, etc... i'll still get an occasional frap, but when it comes to coffee at home, it's just regular Community Coffee (a brand from the South, once again).
southern living also taught me about the wonders of seafood. growing up relatively poor, my idea of seafood was fish-sticks (again, stop it you tards)....but who knew how great blackened catfish would be? and sea-food gumbo? delish!
i was hoping to have some kind of new food "epiphany" when moving to Oklahoma. like there would be some kind of new dish to eat that i had never eaten before. alas, i have yet to find it. sure, the steak and BBQ is good; it's nothing new. darn :(
but, lira, i have to ask....passionfruit juice and milk???? talk about curdling in your stomach dude :wtf: |
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| FuzzQi |
| quote: | Originally posted by tubularbills
i enjoyed reading your post. i too, am a major fan of anything pasta/noodle related (please, save your gay responses for me saying "noodle"; grow the up lunar and igk)...and whenever i have had friends over in the past i'd make a large (sometimes too large (that's what she said)) pasta bake with tons of cheese.
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Noodles!?!? I question your sexuality sir.
:p |
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| Arbiter |
Hmm...
Well, when I was a kid my dad used to put way too much onion in pretty much everything he cooked, so I developed a strong distaste for onions which persists to this day.
And I suppose that my brother's love of all things spicy has introduced me to a few meals I now eat regularly that I probably would never have ever tried otherwise.
For the most part, though, I'm one of those people who considers 90% of what most of the world eats to be inedible or at least borderline, so I just try to stick to the remaining 10%. As a result, there are relatively few opportunities for others' dietary habits to influence mine. |
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| Halcyon+On+On |
I like to think that anything sensational can have a very significant, social value attached to it. Indeed, here all of us are, on a website sharing the written word with one another, originally regarding a music scene absolutely founded on social arrangements and gatherings as per the culmination of sonic devices. We gibber endlessly about this syncopation over that syncopation, as though it does not even sound exactly the same to people who are not emotionally or socially interested in that particular, little niche, all the while pollinated with advertisements specifically contrived to appeal to our little demographic, in order to perpetuate the sub-society that can be profited from on a number of different levels, both by intrinsic and extrinsic investors. I'm hard-pressed to locate any true differentiation from other now-industries such as sports, or television, beverages, country music, jazz, country-jazz, rock-climbing, cardboard boxes, bizarre sexual fetishes, birdwatching, etc.
I guess the more interesting question from this dynamic would probably be: Is it simply in the nature of the social imperative to establish emotional-nostalgic resonance given a varying subset of communicable conditions, or does there exist something intrinsically resonant of certain rituals and activities? It seems to me that if the latter were true, this could be conceived as an additional sense in the first place, a sort of spirit or essence, if you will - or perhaps this is experienced when satisfyingly communicating with another human - or even animal - whether that be positive or negative on a relative emotional level. The concept of God as a spiritual subtext could conceivably be the transposition from agrarian tradition to consumer culture, this communicable transition being the very conveyance of spiritually-exclusive activity personified- you probably see where I am going with this.
Food is easily one of the most truly sensational things in the world of Man. Truly. We have conceived of an innumerable different combinations for its preparation and even presentation, it symbolizes an innumerable different sociological values that can innumerably vary by region just as the dishes might, and to top it all off, it's something every living human must partake of, if they value their continued state of being. Food stands as an introduction to communication and mannerisms - it is why something like Kobe beef could have meaning to denizens of the c0r - it is why dinosaurs needed perfect teeth and we, humans, do not - it is easily the most developed invention of necessity there is, possibly even out-doing sex. But on that note, it is also all-too-often inextricable with sexual congress as well: there is little that can compare with a full belly when it comes to those sticky rituals of fertile arrangement, despite the fact that ing on a full stomach so rarely turns out as well as you'd hope. The bounty of substantial provision says "be attracted to me, for I am a provider!", and this is pretty much irreplaceable among the flow of both fluids and, in turn, further generations.
Perhaps essentially though, it's most attractive attribute is in how it brings people together on this spiritual level I was referring to before. And it's not a niche, it's not a special interest kind of thing, it is, as I mentioned, something essential to everyone, and takes precedence on a tribal-wide scale. It is one of the things that brings the interests of the family or society to both the literal and proverbial table, or to the campfire in distant times or, unfortunately, to the television in more recent ones. And most every healthy person alive loves food - this brand of love is inseparable from the spirit mumbo-jumbo I have been espousing, and the same reason why people might love music or love dancing as well. Food is just one of those things vital to both survival and to life, as we experience it - two generally different things in the context of the human condition.
In conclusion, cocks. |
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| Halcyon+On+On |
| quote: | Originally posted by Arbiter
Hmm...
Well, when I was a kid my dad used to put way too much onion in pretty much everything he cooked, so I developed a strong distaste for onions which persists to this day.
And I suppose that my brother's love of all things spicy has introduced me to a few meals I now eat regularly that I probably would never have ever tried otherwise.
For the most part, though, I'm one of those people who considers 90% of what most of the world eats to be inedible or at least borderline, so I just try to stick to the remaining 10%. As a result, there are relatively few opportunities for others' dietary habits to influence mine. |
And this is why you're automatic! |
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| Ygrene |
| I try very hard to keep emotions and socializing separate from my diet. From a purely physical aspect, I try to view my diet as a means of survival. On the other hand, I typically develop very strong emotional bonds with friends and tying food in with that (and thus developing strong emotional bonds with food) is not good for me. |
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