My degree project has a simple motive: Get people to savor their food.
When I really want to spoil myself, the first thing that comes to mind is, "What should I eat?". Food, especially living in Boston, has always been a big part of my life. I grew up eating classic, hearty Chinese food; my grandmother's congee, dim sum dishes, winter melon soup (not a favorite, to be honest), fish cooked with heads and eyeballs intact, and a veritable bevy of other staples. Some are bizarre, others monastically simple in taste and preparation.
The period of time between my teens and freshman year of college, I fell into a pit of bad food. Fast food, instant meals, indiscernible cafeteria mystery meat. Honestly, I couldn't tell you what sort of crap I was eating my freshman year...and I was living in New York, the biggest smorgasbord of cuisine from all over the globe! Youth is definitely wasted on the young.
Sophomore year, I wised up. I was in a dorm with a kitchen and was determined to make some use of it. Broke as a joke, I made up for the lack of artisan ingredients by constantly playing with flavor and pairings. I learned, in some lowbrow manner, how to mix and match what odds and ends of ingredients I had to make dishes that were at least a half step up from cup noodle and questionable Midtown Chinese takeout. On days off, I would stroll through Chinatown during street festivals, breathing in the smells from street vendors and indulge in soup dumplings from Shanghai Cafe and fresh lychee from the markets. When I was looking an extra kick to the balls of flavor, I'd wander over to Curry Hill on Lexington, where the small markets were perfumed with aromatic spices.
Still, I was a green novice in the world of gastronomy. I needed a few years for my tastes to mature a bit, because what does a 20 year old know about anything, really? So I did some growing up. I kept experimenting with new food, with cooking, and even reading about food. It wasn't enough to just taste the food: I read up on the cultural significance of ingredients, their historical background, usage in literature and media. Lobsters used to be considered disgusting, sea cockroaches, you know? Nobody would eat them, and now you would have to pay upwards of $30 a pound for a steamed sea cockroach.
But I digress...
I can be a bit excitable on the topic. The short of it all is that I love food and I want everyone else to love it as much as I do, maybe even more. But whats holding us back? Us, being the centennial American generation; modern, metropolitan, ambitious, but also easily distracted. We are bombarded with a million different things in a single nanosecond, our attention stretched to the limit with the full weight of our hectic lives.So you're thinking, "That's an interesting statement and all, but I thought we were talking about Chinese dumplings and sea cockroaches." Its all related. The issue is that we don't always give our meals our undivided attention. But they really deserve it. Not just the five-star birthday dinners, but even the slice of toast slathered with grape jelly. Its about slowing down, mentally and physically, taking time to appreciate flavors, thanking your food for all the good it does for you, and allowing yourself to partake in a small indulgence.
In my degree project, I'll be studying people as much as I study food. How do they interact with their meals, what do they think about, what do they want, what do they hate? Are current food and food-related products conducive or detrimental to the act of savoring? What practices and products ARE conducive? Wine tasting, dark chocolate, fancy packaging, Pinterest?
All I know is that I'll just have to test a lot of things, and somehow that type of work doesn't seem too unpleasant.
