Food: Love and Guilt (and then some)

Unfortunately I was not the creator of this picture- some pastries from Laduree in Paris.

Mmmm... Magnolia Bakery's banana pudding with a tall glass of milk is so good.

I love food. Even when I was little, I had this ridiculous obsession with food- at least the visual aspects of it. My favourite story books had mice eating strawberries or drinking tea, a Parisian bakery shop, a plot line on a boy who hated carrots but was tricked by his babysitter into eating carrot cake, or another boy who took over the yucky school cafeteria and served the most splendid and imaginative specialties he could concoct from his head.

I blame it on my cousin. We used to go on some kind of picture art program and just print off pictures of food that we liked. Ridiculous I say, but she'd also illustrate both of us in some ice cream parlour or sitting in front of the couch with food all around us, and I'd colour it all in. This was when I was in grade 2 or so.

And in some ways, I haven't changed. As I'm compiling pictures of the events in the past few months, I realized that they're all of me and food or something I've made that I thought was ridiculously adorable and had to photograph it. Living in New York City has just made my love for food, even more extreme especially because every street in Manhattan has some kind of restaurant and they're all trying to compete by making the most unique restaurant out there. Yesterday my friend, the Welcoming Ministry leader, I went to a restaurant that sold specifically made to order fries and you could choose a dipping sauce: from mango chutney to wasabi to pomegranate teriyaki. I got roast tomato. :P A couple of weeks ago, with the same friend, we went to this place called 'Rice to Riches'- sold specifically rice pudding- many flavours of rice pudding (cappuccino, vanilla, honey graham, almond, coconut, classic, tiramisu) and you could put toppings on it. I got cheesecake rice pudding with oatmeal cookie crumbles and shredded coconut. Omg, it was like a dinner.

I love food. If you eat, I think it should be not only for nourishment, but for enjoyment. If we didn't enjoy food, we wouldn't have to go out of our way to pick a good restaurant to satify ourselves or choose a specific cuisine. If it was only to keep us alive, we could live in simple rice, steamed vegetables and some kind of meat. But because we have made food into something more, divulged meaning out of it, we want to enjoy it because it is a necessity. What is necessity has now become an art. If we can afford it, we should just give thanks for the ability to purchase beyond our human needs and just enjoy its taste, texture, fragrance and visual beauty. A cupcake: a fluffy cake bottom with a perfectly round top, in a cloud of icy pink pastel frosting and lemon yellow sprinkles lightly kissing the surface. You can see the traces of the spatula swirling round and round the surface of the muffintop; you can smell the faint scent of the vanilla cake and the sharper aroma of the frosting itself; now, you can carefully peel off the waxy paper cup that surrounds it, sinking your teeth first into the icing that has a slight granular feel to it, and slowly the body itself, gives way, crumbling, melting in your mouth. Your tongue rolls it around, savouring the decadent creamy goodness of this small treat.

Wasn't that just so satisfying? So good? So childlike?
So why, if food is so wonderful, do we constantly have to harp on how it adds to our weight?!?! Perhaps it's because I go to Parsons: practically an all girls school. Every day I hear at least one girl complaining about her weight, and how fat she's become or how she has to diet. It is really killing me. I hate being around people who are constantly so self conscious about their own weight- their own guilt and shape in their own body is infectious: I start to examine myself and find the physical flaws on my body. It's not to say that I don't feel these things myself or have no concerns about my weight, but when I am around company, we usually go out to eat as means of finding enjoyment in something we all need (and hopefully love), in order to bond and strengthen relationships. But when I know the other person is worried about their own weight, I feel obligated to be conscious of what I should order and in some cases, what I should give them as gifts. I like to give gifts. Sometimes I bake because everyone likes homemade goodies of some sort or I sometimes buy a cupcake or a cookie or something of the sort. But sometimes when I give it to my roommate, I feel like I'm adding to her guilt although I want to give it purely out of good will. And it becomes a little stressful. I have a friend who is trying to pursue a career in modeling. Although she is not naturally as thin as a typical runway model, I remember we used to go to Second Cup every day and she'd order a large white hot chocolate. Now she eats like a squirrel: no real desserts, only vegetables, cereal, a little fish of some sort. No bubble tea, no cake, no fried rice, no dim sum. It's a killjoy. It's really depressing because food is something we should all enjoy together. It unites people- every time we did something together during the summer be it Bible studies (unless at church building), or went out to the movies or celebrated a birthday, food was always present. We cooked at Steve's, Rin, Angie and I went on a taro milk bubble tea tasting at seven different locations (I am craving some Torontonian bbt..NY is crap), I made tiramisu for Angie's birthday/photoshoot, Robyn would artfully arrange fruit and cookies for Bible studies at her place and we had a Love Feast for Eliot and Casey.

People should, especially girls, relax a little. Your metabolism is only this fast for a while and before you know it, a decade later, it will slow down another 7%. So enjoy it while you can. :P

While on the subject of food, I have every intention of dressing fabulously like this to Balthazar or some French cafe in Soho:


Okay not in all white but in the style of that. Or something like this:



If you didn't see or understand before, now you see why I always say I will die fat, alone and be senile in my singlehood. I will be wrinkly like a raisin with only a devastatingly beautiful closet to keep me company since I will have no children and no need to save money for overpriced tuition. I see that in my near future I will probably end up looking like this:



Or this:



HAHA. God, as you can see, I need a boyfriend. And preferably soon. XD
Or maybe I can be the next apostle Paul
but in better clothes.
puahaha.



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I know Henry Cloud says to go out on Friday nights, but I actually am having a lot of fun on my own doing very Sam things. Anyways tomorrow I am venturing out of Manhattan tomorrow to a little placed called Brooklyn. LOL. So I prefer to stay in tonight and knock down some homework. I'm already done Tuesday's homework and now I'm starting on Thursday's (because I am stuck on Wednesday's).