One of my recently discovered joys in life is: eating.
I am in my early 30s, but only now do I look forward to eating as an activity versus a necessity.
Previously, I’d only really look forward to a meal if it were my among my favorites: Filipino or Japanese. But a big factor to that changing is my partner and his family would own the type of refrigerator magnet that says they “don’t eat to live, but live to eat.” Add to that: it’s only in the past two years where I really started to learn how to cook. How crazy is that? Eating every day for the past 31 years and only learning how to prepare for meals at this age.
I’ve been visiting New York every year since my partner moved there and I noticed that whenever I come home to the Philippines, my body usually feels heavy and in need of a detox. Not detox in the sense of juicing or some special diet, but just eating home-cooked meals. It’s only on this year’s trip transitioning home that my body felt normal, lighter; because I was cooking way more recently.
And that’s when it hit me. New York has all these interesting cultures and cuisines, raved-about-restaurants, all types of grocery options (buy a hot meal cafeteria-style, microwaveable food, meal kits for those who like to still cook but don’t have time to gather ingredients, subscription deliveries)… but one thing that makes the taste so different (and lacking, for me) is, time.
Time in terms of preparing.
I’ll never forget how once while I was in Bali, my landowner’s wife was looking stressed saying she was so busy preparing for a festival that she had to buy cooked food—it just wasn’t normal for her. She cooks every meal fresh and her family eats it right after. Their grandmother goes to the market every morning. I believe around 5 AM. As I was only awake that early once to witness the market scene. People quip that phrase “Bali belly” for the stomach aches foreigners usually experience during a visit. But during my three months visit, I never got a tummy ache once. I was eating rice and meat almost every day; but also lots of vegetables and fruits and I think I still felt great because all the meals were cooked fresh. It’s what Filipinos call that cooked-at-home or lutong bahay taste.
Time in terms of enjoying.
A cookbook editor told me that when she sees people eating their meals on the subway, she “almost feels sorry for their food.” Eating, for it to be enjoyed, shouldn’t feel rushed. New York has all these hip restaurants but I find eating in them a stressful endeavor. You need to get an app to make a reservation. If you’re with friends, you need to make sure that everyone arrives the same time or you won’t be seated. And while you are seated, it doesn’t feel like you can stay for as long as you want to. Unlike back home, my partner and his family usually close the restaurant when we eat out, haha! It grinds my gears when I paid a lot for a meal in New York but I can feel the server hawking over our table because they want to get their money’s worth by pressuring me to order more or hurry my ass up so they can accommodate more patrons. I read that the origins of Starbucks were because the guy behind it went on a trip to Italy and got inspired to bring their coffee culture back home. But the culture gets lost in translation when you don’t drink coffee to just drink coffee, but to write off another task on your to do list.
Time in terms of heritage.
I know it’s ideal to run an urban and “it destination” like New York with the pace of an island destination like Bali. People have demanding jobs and a busy lifestyle and that pervades the way they experience food. But what about Japan? They’re just as busy and workaholic, but their food hasn’t suffered. I remember Anthony Bourdain saying after visiting Japan that once you’ve tried their food, “How can you go back?” And that’s exactly how I felt during my visit to Osaka. I could cry after eating their fatty tuna. I could live off of eating from their convenience store. How is their convenience store food so good?? I watched an episode on Osaka’s food scene on Netflix, and a guy in charge of a takoyaki stand was explaining that the job is passed on from generation to generation. Something like, “my dad cooks takoyaki this way, I’ve been working with him for years, and I only hope to get as good.” And he’s probably good enough already, but he admits that his dad is still ahead because of the years of experience.
In the Lower East Side, I had dessert in a Japanese shaved ice place. Chatting with the manager, he shared with me how because of the change of seasons, from summer to fall to winter—summer being the peak season for icy dessert—they’ll probably be needing less people to work. And New York is so transient that employees come and go every season. What results will you get from a restaurant when your food is prepared by different people every four to six months, versus a place where recipes are passed on from family generations; with the cooks only improving year after year?
I don’t have a special diet. I think diets are relative. But I have found that what makes me feel good is to—even if I can’t do it every day—find time to cook so that I can eat a home-prepared meal. I know it’s not realistic for everyone. My sister is a new mother and I have observed that it’s only when her kid started to walk that she’s been able to eat at a more relaxed pace again. Even when I’m busy, I can’t sustain a complete home-cooked meal all the time. So many times I’ve eaten a can of tuna for lunch or microwaveable Yoshinoya beef.
But, I look forward to the times when I don’t.
Deprioritizing time when eating is sometimes unavoidable, but it doesn’t have to be the norm. “One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating,” said Luciano Pavarotti. Maybe if New York paid more attention to that, then its food scene would get really surprising.
Meanwhile, my current marker in life is:if I am too busy to eat, then I am not living.
*pictures from Ubud, Bali and Osaka, Japan below; intentionally placed them after the blog entry because how rare is it to read something online without images obstructing text nowadays?
