Don’t eat for joy

I love a good meal. Then, I become too dependent on it for happiness. Mind you, I’m enjoying life, but I like little bursts of joy to brighten up a sluggish day. So, I fulfill my food desires even if it means making an elaborate Vietnamese summer roll in a weekday afternoon. No, taking the bus for a carrot cake better than the one selling downstairs is no trouble at all.

But whenever my sunny side up sticks to the pan, or a packet of chicken rice is missing its chilli sauce, I become upset and frustrated. My husband, who can usually live with small mishaps like these, also dread them in anticipation of my disappointment. I knew then that I must look for more reasonable emotional returns from a meal.

Considering the other reasons we eat may be a good start. Some of my most vivid food memories, I realised, were about negotiating relationships. I have pleased and appeased or, soothed anxieties through eating. Joy was the last thing in my mind in those instances.

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What I Think About When I Grocery Shop

The colours I typically eat.

What I think about when I shop for groceries? It’s usually not what I want to eat but how I can pack more proteins, vegetables and colours into a few meals. I decide what to do with my purchases only later. The problem with planning a menu is planning. There isn’t always time for that, yet not spending time to condense the shopping list only creates wastage.

That is why I only think about how many meals I’m buying for, and then I pick different items from different food categories until I have enough. I usually buy for two days, and each time I put a rainbow into my basket, say a carrot, burdock and cabbage, or a capsicum, eggplant and bak choy. I try not to repeat these within the next two market visits, because the best diet includes everything.

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The Taste of Contentment

A photo posted by Sheere Ng (@sheerefrankng) on Mar 19, 2015 at 5:51pm PDT

I’ve been thinking about death lately. I am afraid, yet hopeful, about the prospect of consciousness after life. I will like a chapter two to my brief humanly existence, but I also fear, that in this sequel, I will be written into a new plot with completely different characters. I appreciate personal accounts of impending death, be it of one’s own or of the loved ones, as I wanted perspectives, preferably one that can help me see the silver lining to the eternal separations with my parents and my soon-to-be husband. If that’s not possible, at least I wanted to know how others deal with the pain.

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The Most Enjoyable Three-Hour Wait for Food

Slowly inching forward as the restaurant opened its doors.

Is waiting in line for food a pain for you? Try waiting at Franklin Barbecue, which almost every media in America agrees makes one of the best briskets in Austin, Texas or even in the whole of United States. I’m not suggesting that if you haven’t joined the line for Franklin’s brisket, you don’t know what pain is. What I’m saying is, after spending three hours of your precious life out in the rain, snow, or heat, for food that tonnes of other places offer decent versions of, you may actually come out of it thinking, ‘that was pretty fun.’ The people, both inside and outside the door that separates you and your food, can make waiting bearable or even the highlight of a trip. Continue reading →

A Deliveryman’s Ingenuity

NYC’s deliverymen brave the heat, the rain, the potholes, the mad men behind the wheels, and, at this time of the year, the snow. Unless it is a blizzard like today, when the mayor bans all non-emergency vehicles including food delivery bicycles, these men have to put up with slick roads and wind chill. Many refurbish their bicycles to make their job as tolerable as possible, like fitting two furry pockets on the handlebars to keep the hands warm during the ride. The plastic bags, I believe, keep the pockets from getting wet by the rain or snow. Simple brilliance like this reminds me of how little some people have but also how having little inspires ingenuity.