Hungry Mole Journals

I have been feeling very guilty and even angry that I haven’t been able to spend time writing for Hungry Mole. Drafts keep piling up and I just don’t have the energy at the end of a long day working my regular job to finish my work up. The stuff that I have written so far covers just the tip of the iceberg and I’d like to be able to explore my topics more in depth.

I told myself on my birthday last November that 2012 will be my year—my year to have the courage to pursue what I am passionate about, my year to make something out of myself, my year of not doubting what I am capable of doing. One and a half month into 2012, I can honestly say that I have quickly lost my confidence. I am not surprised. I have been plagued by self-doubt and a low self-esteem all my life. Do I have what it takes? Do I have a unique view point? Will anything come out of Hungry Mole? Am I really born to do this? When I struggle to keep up with my writing, when my other lives take over the time that I would otherwise spend on HMJ, I get really discouraged.

Last year was a year of many changes. Many of you may know that I was married (three times!) and lots of my energy in 2011 was put into building my new family. My now-husband and I talked quite a bit about our future, as all newlyweds probably do, and we concluded that we wanted to lead lives and careers that were on our terms. For him, this meant breaking away from his successful business to be able to work on his own projects. He is lucky enough to make a living out of his passions in life. In this manner, I guess I’m not as lucky. I am aware of the reality that writing about food may never work out as a paying career for me. Money is not my motivation in writing HMJ. However, I would very much like to make a living out of what get me going everyday. I will always be writing and I will always think about eating. That’s just the way it is.

I guess the big question is what am I going to do about it? I honestly don’t know how to juggle everything. It feels, to me, such an impossible task. I feel guilty that I don’t stay up all night working on HMJ. With every passing day that I don’t fully pursue this, my anxiety levels go up. It’s as if I’m neglecting my destiny. I really don’t want to give up on this.

I can’t think of any other sport event that is more food-centric than American Football, and, most notably the Super Bowl! I mean when the English watch (their version of) football or the Pakistanis watch cricket, is food much of a highlight? 

Having lived in the States for almost 10 years, I have learned the food items that are synonymous to game day such as Buffalo Wings, Nachos, Dip, Chili, Mac & Cheese (the list goes on). I, however, can’t name one football player (well, I know Tom Brady but for other reasons!). Not to mention the very fun tradition of tailgating. 

I did a little bit of googling about this phenomenon. Did you know that, after Christmas and Thanksgiving, we binge eat the most on Super Bowl Sunday? (Recent reports even say that it beats Christmas the 2nd biggest holiday in terms of food consumption.) 

According to one website, The Food Timeline, the Super Bowl menu is mainly composed of so-called “man cave finger foods: easily consumed, plate optional, washed down with beer in mass quantities.” It’s definitely unlike Christmas where the whole family sits down together and shares food, usually politely, on one table, trying to enjoy each other’s company. Super Bowl is a completely different beast, one that I still have yet to fully understand, the day is about the food, but it’s also totally not about the food—it’s about the game. Perhaps for people like me who don’t know anything about football, the day is just an excuse for us to eat junk food. 

Another historical fact that The Food Timeline shares is that the Super Bowl party is a tradition that’s grown in part because of the proliferation of large-screen TVs and hard-core marketing by food business as they seek to extend the holiday eating season for just a little bit longer. Marketers seem to be doing a good job in shaping the way Americans (and the world eat). A few weeks ago when I spoke about Chinese New Year and food symbolisms, I also mentioned something about marketers successfully erasing the religious and cultural roots of Western eating traditions and replacing them with their own agenda. That’s why we see so many chocolate bunnies on Easter. While we ENJOY this high calorie, high cholesterol party (and I stress enjoy), perhaps we should also think about the motivations of our food intake. It’s scary to think that our food habits are very much controlled by marketing decisions, but when it comes to the Super Bowl a part of me feels that it’s okay. When we watch the Super Bowl, we buy into a sort of commercialism. Might as well go full circle and eat all the Doritos and drink all the Budweisers to our satisfaction.

The topics of commercialism of food and the food culture of America will take me years to explore! As Americans, how do you feel about this Super Bowl tradition? For the non-Americans, enlighten me. Is there a similar event in your country that is focused on food? I’m imagining a pig roast or something after an old-school strongman competition.

xo

Hungry Mole

I was just so (happily) overwhelmed with the amount of weird, exciting, informative food news this week. 

• Seems like we’re winning the seemingly impossible battle to have healthier school lunches for our children (link)
• Apparently more people cook at home than I thought (link)
• Should I even care? Paula Deen’s publicist quits. (link)
• Something that I think about everyday. How do relationships with people who don’t share the same food ideologies with you work? Two weeks ago, I shared a link about foodie vs. non-foodie couples. This week it’s living as a vegetarian in a non-veggie family (link)
• I just love reading about how Chinese people eat. My people really push the envelope or, better yet, they push marketers’ envelopes. Let’s see how Oreos made itself China’s best selling cookie (link)
• I’m obsessed with people obsessed with one particular food. Connoisseurs like tea-crazy Sebastian Beckwith, I would like to imagine as sort of idiot savants of food. Is there a better term for this type of people? (BTW Idiot savants are another fascination of mine) (link)

It’s two o’clock on a Saturday afternoon and, as my husband pours milk in his afternoon cup of coffee, I read the sad news that Milk Thistle Farm, where our milk comes from, has shut down its operations. Even with all the good press about them being one of best milk in New York, sworn by the Momofuku culinary empire, the small farm still couldn’t financially compete with bigger companies like Organic Valley. It was a sad day for me not because I particularly love Milk Thistle Farm’s milk, but because I love what the farm represents— a reminder that farms are ran by people, not machines, that food is grown, not manufactured. It was an exciting shift in how we think about food in America, where there is a disconnect between what’s on the plate and its origination.   

It was only last year when I read the uplifting news that regional small farms are on the rise stateside (link). Talks of a new generation of farmers, a return to small-scale sustainable agriculture, smarter more knowledgeable consumers got me excited. But then I hear news like this and I wonder if I was being too naive. Who am I kidding? We live in a Wall Street dominated world where corporations trump smaller entrepreneurs, where people forget they are target audiences to the brainwashing of marketers. As a wild guess, I would posit that those who support Occupy Wall Street are the same people who are more likely to support small businesses like Milk Thistle Farm.

I suppose what happened just got me thinking about how the food conversation is going to evolve in America. Are eating healthy, local, sustainable just buzzwords or will they stick? Do small farms have a chance to survive—Will they have the demand? Are we moving further and further away from the culture of loving food and having it as an important part of our lives? These questions are particularly difficult to answer because I live in such a foodie bubble. I really want to know how the rest of America (and the world) feel about food. Loving food, loving good food shouldn’t be a niche, should it?

The irony of being born with a hungry mole is that I was also born with a bad stomach. It truly is, to me, the saddest combination.

Ever since I was born, I was in and out of hospitals because of some gastrointestinal infection or another. It plagues me regularly till this day. As a matter of fact, I’m home sick right now from all the symptoms you might guess from a gastric problem. It gets frustrating and it has made me think about giving up on the yummies so I can feel better. I just can’t spend another day debilitated by my condition. The doctors I’ve seen so far can’t help me. I’m out of ideas other than finding what foods make me sick and eliminating them: very anti-hungry mole.

It’s kind of laughable that I start writing these journals as I also begin my journey of transitioning towards this lifestyle change. Perhaps, being less food greedy will make me a better, less-biased observer of this food world. My biggest fear is that I am lactose intolerant, gluten intolerant, and all the other dietary-intolerant buzz words that you can think of. 

Xo,

Hungry Mole

- Browse through these photos just to see the enormity of the Chinese New Year holiday (link)

- Expecting another hangover this weekend? A Chinese tree could be the antidote you are looking for (link)

- Have you been eating aborted human fetus chicken nuggets? Read this story to find out (link)

- Picking up on my post about food symbolisms this Monday, this is an article that shows how extreme these symbolisms can get. Seems to me that sometimes, people make up these traditions to literally suit their taste. While eating dogs is now more and more considered bad luck the Chinese, this tradition still goes on in many parts of Asia including Northern Vietnam, where people think that eating your puppy would chase away last year’s bad luck. (link)

True to the spirit of Chinese weirdness, we have plenty of odd recipes that we eat on the Lunar New Year. My favorite (and quirkiest) of all contains something I’ve, till recently, only known as “hair,” well, because it looks just like hair. See below. Doesn’t it just look like your pothead neighbor’s dreadlocks? Yummy.

What it is though is black moss (Wiki it)or, in Chinese, Fat Choy. As with many Chinese dishes, things are eaten because they serve some kind of auspicious meaning. With this particular recipe, the names of the ingredients Fat Choy and Ho See (which are the dried yellow looking oysters you see see in the pic below) are homonyms to greetings people spread for prosperity and luck on Chinese New Year! Kinda dumb right? 

好事發財 (Ho See Fat Choy)

So does it taste any good? I must admit I kinda like eating hair. The microscopically thin and elastic texture is quite fun to eat and it tastes like nothing but oyster sauce or whatever ingredients they put in this dish. (Dried oysters are another - vomit - story.) 

Part of me feels so silly to be taking part in such an extreme tradition, eating food just because their homophones have a certain meaning. Makes me wonder if this is solely a Chinese or Asian kinda thing. According to the BBC article, Food symbolism: Why do we give food meaning?, we’re not alone. Food symbolisms also exist in Western cultures, many of which have to do with religion. Lamb eaten after Easter, for example, symbolizes the religious Lamb of God. But with religion playing less and less a part in modern people’s lives, so do these traditions. Food Historian Annie Gray says that the religious and cultural motivations of Western (I assume) eating traditions are now being replaced by marketers’ motivations. I guess, this is true, because at my husband’s family’s Easter brunches, there’s no lamb in sight, but there are plenty of rabbit and egg shaped chocolates. Having read the article, I guess I feel somewhat proud that the Chinese have not abandoned eating hair for good fortune or noodles for a long life.

As I mentioned in my Chinese New Year post yesterday, this holiday is a big deal for the Chinese and a strong sense of togetherness can be genuinely felt in this week-long celebration.  This unity is at the peak of its significance at the dining table as families around the world, chopsticks-a-clicking, celebrate the company of their loved ones and, I think, more nobly the longevity of Chinese traditions.    

P.S. If you want to read more about food symbolisms, here is the BBC article (link)

Happy Chinese New Year everyone! For those who celebrate, what did you and your family do to ring in the new year?

Sadly, ever since I moved to NYC, I haven’t celebrated CNY with my loved ones. That’s more than 10 years ago :(. During the prime of my childhood before my grandfather passed away, this holiday was an elaborate affair that all of us children looked forward to. It was a feast to all the senses. We were bombarded with colors red and gold, scared away by the huge fluttering eyes of dancing dragons, deafened by noise of drums and the loud crackle of fireworks, but comforted by the sing-song of well wishes and, of course, the generosity of red envelopes.

Last, but not the least, we have the 團年飯 (tun nin fan), literally, the yearly reunion meal where you get-together with your family, a happy gathering.Think about it as the Thanksgiving or Christmas Eve dinner of the Chinese, but with less talk of drama and family tensions (at least in my usual drama-filled house!) Perhaps, because the focus is on the sharing of food.

Why is it that most major holidays are centered around the dining table? And do these food centered holidays mean different for food lovers and food haters?

Would love to know your thoughts!

Xo
hungry mole

• French Women Do Get Fat - Apparently 1 in 3 French are now overweight. They’re calling out for Jenny Craig. (link)
• A Q&A with famous food lover, Josh Ozersky (link). Shocked to learn that his wife hardly eats all, which then made me think of this article. Can foodie and non-foodie marriages last? (link)
• Paula Deen, diabetes, blah blah, outroar
  • How Paula went public with her disease (link)
  • What advertisers are saying (link)
  • What health fanatics are thinking (link)
  • And, finally, what Anthony Bourdain said …

I bumped into this Culinary Curio while reading one of my favorite food websites, The Kitchn. At first glance, these Swedish sandwich cakes look like they are a good idea and an awesome alternative to, say, a birthday or (insert celebration) cake especially for a a savory girl like me. The more I look at it, however, the more it looks unappetizing. 

Are Smörgåstårtas part of your tradition?

Thanks, TheKitchn (link)

The fun thing about food shopping when traveling is seeing (weird) products that you don’t get to see Stateside. Check this culinary curio that I found at a supermarket in Hong Kong! “Eggs laid by hens eating Kimchi” I love it! 

Do these eggs taste pungent and spicy like how Iberico ham tastes like acorn? I wish I had tried one just to give you an answer. I tried googling and found some shocked mentions but no reviews of what this thing actually tastes like.

Have any of you ever tried this product before? Is this a viable product idea for all our hipster farmers out there?

It’s no accident that I’m writing Hungry Mole Journals. You can say I was born to do this. According to the Chinese Almanac, the mole on the right side above my upper lip, signifies what we Chinese call “Sik Fuk,” literally meaning Eat Luck. I quickly googled if there is some truth to what my mom has been telling me all these years and, for once, I found out she was not lying to me! Proof? This website (http://www.wofs.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=106&Itemid=38). It explains that my mole (see position 21) “is a good mole, as it suggests plenty to eat and drink throughout your life.” I can attest that there’s some truth to this. I search and live for the yummy yummy yummies.

This blog is an ongoing homage to and a celebration of my Hungry Mole. 

Thank you, HM, for my food luck. I will never get rid of you. 

Here are some pictures of me and my hungry mole.

P.S. Apparently, my mole also brings fame and recognition. I’ll be waiting :P… 

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day! Actually, this post was supposed to be for a Happy New Year but things happened; I got sick; My appetite for writing was shot and so here I am sending you my first post for a blog I’m calling, Hungry Mole Journals.

Hungry Mole has been in the works for quite some time now. I just haven’t had the courage to start writing mainly because I don’t know how good I’ll be at updating it. :/

What is Hungry Mole Journals? Well, obviously, it’s about food. I see it as an anthropological journal that explores human behavior in regards to eating. The idea for this project came about as I observed how the subject of food divides people. It’s a phenomenon that I have personally been a part of and, as both an observer and participant, it fascinates me. Throughout this blog, I’ll explain more about this fascination. A big part of this blog is my attempt to answer the following questions: Why do people love food so much? Why do people hate food so much? Why do people who love food hate people who hate food? Why do people who hate food hate people who love food? This journal could have easily been kept private but, as a greedy and selfish researcher, I’m curious to know what your opinions are about the topics that I’ll bring up and I’m looking for your help to point me in the right direction.

Peppered throughout this journal, you’ll also be able to read my gastronomical opinions, obsessions, and recollections.

I don’t know where these journal entries will take me, but hopefully somewhere good and insightful.  

P.S. For more random thoughts on food, follow my twitter (@hungrymole)