taste
eating with my hands, savoring every morsel
Lately, I’ve lost my sense of smell and taste while nursing my first bout of COVID (in the past 3.5 years—I know), yet I’ve surprised myself at how much I’m still able to enjoy food. My senses and sinuses are continuing to recover as I write, but I’m able to appreciate textures even more than usual, and I can almost imagine the flavor profiles when I dig into an old recipe. I can still make out the palimpsest of tastes when I eat: sweetness still makes my saliva sticky, while sours will wash my mouth with a faint tingle. Chocolate melts over my tongue in a comforting blanket, stirring the most taste buds out of all the foods I’ve been eating.
I feel blessed that I’m able to experience a grayscale of food and love it still. I’m still excited for each of my 3 meals a day, the endlessly renewing puzzle of piecing together a meal, the mundane satisfaction of assembling grocery lists and meal plans (I spent two days putting together my latest Instacart order). I also insist on having all of food groups present during every meal and so for the past week, have carried 2-4 bowls back to my room 3 times a day to have a socially distant, flavorless but far from joyless meal.
A new friend recently asked me what my relationship with food is, a question I don’t think I’ve ever been asked point-blank before. I thought long and hard while someone else answered the question first, because, although I’ve always been acutely aware of my complicated relationship with food, I’ve never put it succinctly or comprehensively together in one place.
This Reel came up on my feed lately, and it moved me deeply. Being second-generation Asian American, I have little access to my older generations or even aunts and uncles, so my childhood experiences with body image were dominated by my mom’s eternal hatred towards her body. She was stunning and slender through her twenties, and I don’t think she ever learned to accept how her body changed after her two pregnancies. Instead, she complained about how fat she was (she’s not), would ask me to compare her to strangers strolling in front of us at the beach, never learned how to eat intuitively and has her own extremely complex relationship with food.
My mom’s exasperation at herself was reversed with me, what with my skinny figure pronounced by my abnormal tallness for my age (well over 5 feet by middle school, when I started growing at a more usual pace). Adults would often tell me, only half joking, to take up modeling. Second semester of college was the first time I noticed anything to the contrary. My belly started pooching, my face started rounding. I couldn’t stop craving food or being near it, and my life spiraling out of control in all other areas left me especially betrayed by my body’s unwanted change. I developed a monthslong eating disorder that I ultimately ditched for a number of reasons, ironically among them that it simply didn’t have the effects that I wanted on my body.
While my relationship with food is now one of my key personality traits, it’ll never be perfect. In the latest season of The Bear, an entire half of episode 3 is devoted to shots of Sydney eating her way through Chicago. It’s supposed to be beautiful, beautiful food, with noodles and doughs and soups and spring onions and fries and meats of all cuts and sizes. I remember relishing with her for the first meal, but growing increasingly sick with each new dish set in front of her, with every up-close shot of her chewing and thinking and eating. The sight of someone ingesting so much food in one day, even in the name of research and inspiration, felt like too much for my tender past.
I’ve found a balance over the years that allows me to finally savor food for so many different reasons, but always with the core belief that it is something to be enjoyed. I can enjoy food for the loved ones that I share it with, for the process of cooking that soothes my soul, for the way that it invokes and creates memories, for the way sauces and textures dance through my mouth. I can enjoy food for how it makes my body feel, for how it can cure me of lethargy or heat or a chill or a craving, for how truly nothing is just calories. I suppose I’ve known this for long enough, but it took me losing two whole senses to write this for you, finally. Until they’re back, I’m delighted that I can still have fun with my food.
