Tag: food

It’s an irony that after I wrote about weight management , diet and healthy lifestyle, I gained a few pounds. When I looked at my recent photos, I could see the fat girl inside revealing. Maybe I was just paranoid. But this afternoon, I checked my weight and I was shocked to find out that I did gain weight. It’s like I swallowed what I said in my previous blog post. I wanted to delete but decided to keep it as a reminder.

How can I not gain weight when fancy dinners are always on my schedule? My friend told me that a pound you gain is a memory you keep. Hence, keep memories and keep the calories as well. Food is a basic need and it is also an experience.

Two weeks ago, my friend celebrated his birthday in Adarna Food and Culture Restaurant. My other friend suggested: “Why don’t you write about this place, about the food in your blog?”

I cannot write a food review for I’d rather write about life, love, family, drama, and philosophical interpretation of the world. I cannot write a food review for what else can I say? I can say that it’s delicious, mouthwatering. I can describe how my mouth opens to fit a burger, how my lips linger for the drops left from drinking fruit juice, and how my stomach feels after eating an exotic dish. But everything I have to say only appeals to my senses. And to speak on what we can taste, smell, and touch is somehow superficial. Photos are enough to say that the fried chicken is greasy, that the vegetables are half -cooked. This is the deeper reason why I cannot write a food review.

If I write about food and rate it according to my taste, I’m afraid I’m going to be biased. I’ll probably like the food because I like the people whom I’m dining with. To say that the food you eat and the people around you are interrelated may sound nonsensical. But food, again, is an experience. For instance, you are having dinner with someone you hate, you’ll probably not like the food. You’ll be in a hurry to finish your meal because the longer you eat, the longer you spend time with the person you hate. But when you dine with someone you like, you’ll spend more time finishing your food. You will slowly chew  that you can almost savor every ingredient in your dish. Probably, you will forget all the details, how bland, how saucy, how salty but what you will remember is the overall experience. Is it pleasant? Is it disappointing?

You must have memorized the taste of french fries and burger of a fast food chain but when you create a new memory, it’s like you’re eating fast food for the first time. An example: Jollibee chickenjoy reminds you of your childhood. You keep coming back not because of its taste but because it brings back pleasant feelings. Perhaps, describing food is a trick of the mind, trick of the memory. It can be classical conditioning in Psychology. It’s more of reconstructing experiences.

So when I like dining in this restaurant, it just so happens that the food is good and the place is great. But it’s more of — I enjoy the company of the person whom I’m dining with. That’s a useful principle for dating and a basic fact of friendship.