I Love Food, and Food Is Love

Eating good food is almost as good as sharing good food.

I talked in my last article about how I would be the tourist that travels to major tourist destinations looking for good food as opposed to tourist attractions. I just want to clarify that I love so many different types of food and am eager to try more so I can know what else tastes good.

I am an amateur cook, but I love trying new recipes. I’ve got a wide variety of family recipes to pick from, but those are almost all Italian or American-style dishes. My dad was the cook in the family, and he cooked what he liked. More importantly, he didn’t cook what he didn’t like, which generally meant that I grew up without ever trying certain American staples.

There was no meatloaf (he thought it was just a second-rate giant meatball) and no homemade mac and cheese (my mom would make it occasionally, but so infrequently that I have no memories of it). We ate a lot of Mediterranean foods, particularly Italian and Sicilian dishes that he had perfected at his restaurant, and he was a bit snobbish about a lot of other foods he deemed inferior.

As a result, I grew up with a taste for good food, but a somewhat limited palate. Not until I moved out did I start experiencing other dishes as prepared by my now spouse, with who I had moved into an apartment before we got together.

My partner grew up in less than optimal circumstances. As a result, she was forced to be an adult long before she was 18, which meant doing lots of chores to take care of household upkeep. One of those chores was, frequently, cooking.

When I first moved in with her, I didn’t want to “take advantage” of her cooking meals for me. However, she was taught to cook by her grandmother, who taught her to cook for a large number of people, so she insisted that if I didn’t eat her food, it would go to waste.

Having grown up in a lower income bracket than my family, she was used to making a lot of dishes that were more “traditionally” American. She knew lots of uses for leftover rice and smoked sausage and sour cream because those things were all inexpensive. I was also introduced to mac and cheese as a main dish because it was also cheap to make in large quantities and could be bulked out with protein and a vegetable.

Our apartment had a small kitchen with barely enough room for two people, but after living with her for a while, I enjoyed learning more about cooking from her. We would periodically spend part of the evening cooking together as she taught me many of the basics I didn’t have the time or energy to learn from my father, much as he tried.

Over the years, I’ve developed a fairly large repertoire of dishes that I can cook across many genres and continents. I have my family recipes, although I don’t make very many of them anymore except my spin on our red sauce. One of our comfort foods lately is a chicken, mushroom, and cheese pasta casserole. I’ve also discovered a love for vegetables that I thought I hated, simply because my parents always boiled their veggies and I’ve since learned to roast them with seasonings instead.

We make so many Asian dishes that we have a rice cooker that is rarely put away for more than a few days and have started buying rice in 50-pound bags for long-term storage. I know how to make several Japanese and Korean dishes from scratch, and we often keep a lot of uncommon ingredients in our fridge like mirin and hondashi.

I’ve experimented with a variety of dishes across many cuisines and cultures, both with cooking and through restaurants. I was introduced to Indian food a few years ago and have developed a liking for it. I’ve had lamb, veal, and goat, among other proteins I never thought I’d try (again, dad thought those were distasteful).

I’ve tried Vietnamese and Thai cuisines, spent hours sharing a Chinese hotpot with friends, eaten a lot of Asian fusion stuff, tried some more traditional British dishes, eaten barbeque styles from across America, and sampled a smattering of foods from across the European continent. My partner and I (and several friends) love going to specialty grocers that stock foodstuffs from across the world that you can’t find in American stores. Sometimes, we just look at all the tasty foods we haven’t tried yet and make plans to learn how to cook them.

I wrote an article lately about how I don’t live to work, I work to live. Well, with food, it’s the opposite. I don’t eat to live, I live to eat. For me, food is not just about sustenance, it’s about enjoying yourself and the company of your friends.

It’s also about making food for the people you love. Except for a few months early in the pandemic, my partner and I have spent most Fridays over the past few years at a friend’s house for game night. One of his many joys in life is sharing a meal with his friends, whether that’s cooking something homemade or getting takeout gyros at his favorite Greek place.

My partner and I have been like this for a while. She’s always shown love through cooking and baking, and it’s definitely rubbed off on me. For a long time, we would cook together, with one as the head chef and the other as the sous chef, making meals in concert to share and enjoy together. We don’t do that as much anymore — her physical abilities have diminished due to chronic pain, so she can’t always help like she wants to.

Honestly, I think that’s what it boils down to: the premise that food is love. Sharing a meal with people I care about is one of the highest forms of love I can express to someone, whether I prepared the meal, we are eating at one of my favorite restaurants, or we ordered pizza. It’s something I associate with my grandma, as my wife associates it with her grandma.

Honestly, it’s something that is commonly associated with grandparents and older adults in one’s life — the notion that coming to visit entails getting fed. I know several people for whom that is true, and many of them have inherited that notion. There are many people in my life for whom food is love, which I guess says something about how I choose my friends.

One of my biggest regrets in life is that there is so much good food out there that I will never know about, much less try. Having grown up with a limited palate, I have since become adventurous in my search for yet another tasty dish that I might eat. I love good food, and I love sharing good food with good friends; I hope that I may continue to do so for years to come.

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