食物/喜爱

For me, personally, the greatest gift I can ever receive is the gift of food. Food is so basic, it's a need, not a want, something so simple yet so gratifying. I feel like one of the most sincerest forms of love is when someone cooks something for me - I feel like they took the time to make something with their hands that provides me nourishment, satiety, or simply the feeling of pleasure as a result of endogenous opioids, leptin, ghrelin and NPY.

Food can say so much. A feast can mean welcome to our household, just as much as it can mean I am sorry for your loss. Bakery can be given to say I was thinking about you or I love you, just as sausage can be given to say thank you for being my friend and happy birthday. Rarely is anything edible depicted with hatred, perhaps with exception of the odd comparison of a person to durian, brussel sprouts, chopped liver. Give an Asian family oranges and you say thank you for inviting me over or I appreciate what you did for me. Give a child a bowl of strawberries, and you say I care for you. Give a starving man in a third world country rice, and you don't have to say anything at all. Food can say everything; food is synonymous with love.

I remember reading parts of Fugitive Pieces by Anne Micheals, one of my favourite books, and she probably understood food the best out of all the authors I have read, even those who write cookbooks. She described food as beauty, how putting plums in an orange bowl as opposed to a red one can change the ambiance of the room. She talked about food as a surprise, when in the war a crate of oranges exploded and people found fruits everywhere. One man found an orange in his shirt pocket hanging out to dry, a woman found a flock of oranges nestled underneath her car. Here were starving Jewish people finding treasures hidden in the most peculiar places, smiling at the delight of pulp and vitamin C. Food can be desperation, as one man was accosted by another holding a package of lamb, he said. Lamb! Imagine lamb during the war, enough to feed his whole family and the love they would share from this simple meat. The man gave him all his savings, but it was worth it, it was lamb! He took it home to his wife, who was delighted, and they opened it up to find a dead dog.

Food can hold so many emotions, but I would argue the one it holds the most is that of love. My friend brings me a pineapple for my birthday, I bring Mag BP's lasagna after a hard day's work, Poh poh brings over wings and mushrooms and sticky rice. When I listen as I savour flavours, inhale wafting aromas, I hear:

"Thank you for being in my life."