Comfort Food
To celebrate world food day, I want to dedicate this post to tell my story on food. Actually, I don’t really like to eat. I don’t know why it’s hard for me to get appetite especially when I feel so depressed. Ironically, at this time I feel that I just developed a sense of emotional connection with food.
During the pandemic, we have to stay at home to flatten the curve. Hence, most of us become more motivated to explore new things to kill our times such as making a cup of Dalgona coffee, gardening, exercising, etc. I personally loved to make and cook my own food. Previously, I stay in a flat and I hardly make food by myself because I’m too busy with academic works. However, since I go back to the village and live with my family, I have more chance to cook or at least enjoy natural food made by my parents.
I love to make a bowl of egg drop soup for breakfast. It’s actually Chinese food, but I really love it because it’s easy to make. I just need to put an egg in the hot water and add some vegetables and herbs that I get from my own gardens such as spring onion, coriander leaves, spinach, and carrot. It’s so simple and I think it’s the first food that I learned from my father. I also love to have kale juice combined with lemon juice because my farm produces a lot of kale and we often buy lemon from local farmers here. Sometimes I also cook other types of food such as pizza, dim sum, etc.
When I cook something, I feel that I can forget my entire problem. And then when I taste the food, it always tastes desirable even though maybe it’s actually not really good for other people. As someone who doesn’t really like to eat and sometimes get hurt to eat (because often times I need to be forced to eat), cooking and eating my own food is such a delightful experience.
Most food that I cook is not local food (I’m ashamed of myself because of this). However, my mother still loves to make traditional food. What I like the most are steamed taro and taro leaves (Yes, we also eat the leaves!). The leaves are processed with coconut and some traditional herbs and it tastes really soft and delicious. My mother also loves to cook Ayam kampung or free ranging chicken. Ayam kampung is different from conventional chicken because they are grown naturally, so the taste and nutrition are much better. Ironically, I don’t really like Ayam kampung because I’m used to eating conventional chicken, so the taste of Ayam kampung is weird for me.
This reminds me of a scene in a Ghibli movie entitled “Only Yesterday”. This movie is about a short escape to the country side. In this movie, there’s a scene where Taeko’s family eats the real pineapple for the first time. Previously, they have only eaten canned pineapple, but when they eat the real pineapple, they ironically don’t like the taste.
That’s so unfortunate. In fact, natural and local food has much better nutrition and it’s safer for our health compared to canned food. If we explore more about traditional Sundanese cuisine for instance, there’s some fascinating information about it. My mother said that when she was a child, most of the food that she ate is processed through steaming, or in Sundanese, we call it “pepes”. They rarely fry the food because they have limited cooking oil. Even when they need to fry something, they tend to use coconut oil instead of palm oil that is mostly produced unsustainably. They also only eat Ayam kampung or beef when there’s a special occasion such as religious festivities. So, their diet is more into a plant-based diet and it is better for the sustainability of our environment.
Unfortunately, now we are trapped in consumerism and unsustainable food production that’s not only bad for the environment, but it’s also bad for our health. In this world food day commemoration, I want to learn more about our traditional food and learn to cook and enjoy them. Consuming local food is important for our food security. I think I’m going to tell you more about this issue in my next post.
Thank you for reading and listening to my story.
