My Favorite Topic: Food

One of the great things about going to the University of Wyoming is the surprising diversity in the music department here (at least concerning the graduate students). Many of my colleagues are from different areas of China and South Korea, and it’s been a lot of fun talking to them about the many differences between their home countries and America. One of the big differences that I like to talk about is in the style of teaching, both in the university setting and in the private lesson setting. Since I’ve spent the last five years of my life at college I have a pretty firm understanding of how American institutions tend to work and it’s just really neat to think about how it works in different countries.

But more importantly there are huge differences in food and diet. For some reason since I’ve moved to Laramie I have become a food monster, I’m always hungry and I’m always eating! The logical part of me says its because I’ve been lifting a lot more and working out a lot more than previously, but it still seems a bit odd to me. Anyways, the fact that I focus on the food differences between my friends and I won’t come as a surprise to any of them.

So what of these differences? Well, a couple of weeks ago a group of us got together and we had our friend Stephanie make some authentic Mexican food. That wasn’t exactly the plan; we were breaking in my new ice cream attachment for my beautiful new stand mixer (thanks mom!) when Stephanie decided she wanted to contribute to the food as well! It was great: the food was delicious, we had a blast helping Steph prepare everything, and we just had a lot of great conversation. So naturally I decided that this was something that needs to happen more! Even for my American friends (which actually aren’t very many here as Ashley and I are the only two American graduate students in our year) we all come from different environments. We all grew up eating different things; we have different tastes and skills. So why not share it? Which is super exciting, because that means we all get to get together and eat! What an excellent idea!

So for tonight we will be going to Mei’s place and indulging in some homemade Korean cuisine. I have no idea what’s on the menu but I am really excited. Especially since my boyfriend and I recently broke up, I’m looking forward to going on and seeing people—maybe we’ll go out for a few beers afterwards! (: The interesting thing about Mei is that she is Korean but grew up in China. She retained her Korean culture but also absorbed some of the Chinese, so this is going to be an even more unique insight into her life.

I’m not trying to say that food can reveal everything about a person, but it does say a lot. The cliché is that you are what you eat, and I think it has a point. How you approach eating says a lot about how you take care of yourself. If you don’t care about yourself and your body, what says you will care about me and mine? Obviously this is a generalization—enjoying fast food on occasion is by no means a deal breaker, but if McDonalds is your idea of a daily lunch, then we might have a problem.

The cultural differences in food can be a great eye-opener for many other differences. When eating with my Korean friends we don’t all have our own plates, instead we order a variety of plates and share everything on the table. Korea is a very collectivist place, fitting in and working together is far more important than being an individual and this is revealed through how they eat. When eating with my friends I learn many things about them because it gives me space to relax and just ask. Perhaps the straightforward act of sharing a meal makes you feel closer to someone, or maybe that’s just me. Regardless it’s something I love to do.

So tonight we will continue the new tradition of enjoying each other’s cuisine, company, and stories. I look forward to it and I’m glad that food is something that can bring us all together.

Salsa

Today I made salsa. Not just any salsa, but the homemade salsa recipe that my mom has perfected over the years. However, I did add a few unique touches: i.e. jalapenos and spicy taco sauce! It was and/is some of the best salsa I have had in a long time and greatly surpasses Applebees’ recipe. (Which means that I get to save some money this week by not going to get half off apps after nine.). Salsa is surprisingly healthy- my recipe is straight up just tomatoes, peppers, onion, and cilantro. Veggies and more veggies. Unfortunately I don’t have a food processor so it’s usually quite chunky, until today when I realized I could throw it all in my blender. Which was quite successful, might I add.

This is a good reminder to me about what I eat and why I eat. Obviously one eats to give the body sustenance and to enjoy the flavor. But I’ve recently been thinking more about how what I eat makes me feel. Ever since I was a small child I have been plagued with migraines, and from a very young age I was told to be very careful and aware of what I was eating. Because for me my migraines are triggered by food—too much dairy, too much candy, too much protein, too much happiness. It seemed to me that everything I ate was a “trigger” and that there was no way I could give it all up, so instead I simply continued to eat what I wanted to eat, when I wanted to eat it. Flash forward a few years and you will see that my migraines never got any better, although I got a bit better at functioning when they struck (minus the vomiting part, you can never really get good at that).

Recently though I have realized something. Something I probably should have realized a long time ago, but alas…I’m a slow learner. When I eat a healthy amount of food and am very careful about what I put inside of my body, I can splurge on candy and treats—all the things I’ve always eaten, but now can eat without succumbing to the migraines of doom. If I haven’t eaten breakfast and I have a pop tart for lunch (something that happens at school sometimes), I can expect a full blown migraine by the end of the day. Even if I eat some healthy food after the treat, my body will just shut down on me.

So lets flash-forward to today. I have been lifting weights and working out three days a week and I have been focusing on what I eat. Not because of some new years resolution, not because I hate my body, and not because I am trying to look like what society expects a woman to look like. Instead I have been eating healthy because, shocker, doing so makes my body feel better. I have been lifting weights because I want to be strong, confident, and I want to feel good about my body. Sure my body has been changing, and I’m not going to lie, I think it has been changing for the better, but that doesn’t mean I will reach some sort of goal down the road and quit lifting. I lift three times a week because that gives me three times to add more weight to the bar, to pull myself up higher, and to squat a little bit lower. My self-esteem has shot through the roof and I’m noticing changes in my body that I never would have noticed had I resigned myself to mindless cardio for the rest of my life. (Not that cardio is a bad form of exercise, in fact I can’t wait to start running outside again, but rather cardio was never effective for me to make me feel good about my body and myself).

If only I had realized sooner that in order to feel better about myself I simply needed to alter the way I treated myself. It seems like such an obvious solution but it has evaded me from twenty-two years. Luckily I have a full life ahead of me, one that I will fully enjoy after finally realizing how to reach my full potential.