Food Associated with the Spiritual World

In the article "Home Run" and "Eating White", both Ahn and  Nicholson used food as a bridge to their spiritual world. More specifically, food could be closely connected with ethnic bearing and the roof of ancients. Moreover, the color, shape and taste of a special kind of food could recall people's memory-a unique time period with special people or special thing. In my point, food as a crucial part of culture, could be used to transmit belief, spirit, ethnic bearing and feelings. Especially, I could understand Ahn's feeling because I have a similar experience as an international student in America.

Furthermore, there are some differences between Ahn and Nicholson's experience. To be specific, Ahn wanted to show the Korean culture to his son by cooking Korean food, learning Korean, dinning in the Korean restaurants. Because he didn't want to lost the connection between his ethnic and family, especially the new generation. Ahn wanted to pass on the traditions from his ethnic to his son. However, Nicholson found and ate "white food" because Nicholson missed his mother who liked "white food" for her whole life. "White food" as a kind of "comfort food" became a path to his mom when he miss his mom.

The two stories from Ahn and Nicholson remind me my feeling after I left my hometown and came to America. To be honest, I didn't miss my hometown a lot in the past 7 month because new things happened everyday in America and I felt excited about all of them. However, everything changed after one of my friends took me to a Chinese restaurant which provides customers Yunnan rice noodle. My hometown (Yunnan. China) is the original area for producing rice noodle. Rice noodle in my hometown is always more resilient and smooth than other area and I always enjoy eating it. I have to admit that the color, flavor, smell of rice noodle here is exactly the same with rice noodle from my hometown. The image that my mom was cooking rice noodle for me came to my mind. Then I felt sad and I told my friend I started to miss my hometown after that dinner. 

I do believe there is a close connection between the food and our spiritual world. Also, food culture need to be passed on and protected. 

If you have a bad cold, you could eat something like what I ate.

Since I have a bad cold during the whole week, I don't have appetite for any food. However, food is the dynamic of our body. Food would be a crucial role in our body, especially when we are sick. I decided to change my diet a little bit during following weeks. If there is anybody who has a bad cold too, you could reference my lunch today.

I had my lunch in the DU (University of Denver) dining hall this noon. The dinning hall was located in the Halls and food was accessible for me in anytime because my dorm was in Halls. My favorite part about the dining hall in halls is the salad bar. The salad bar always provides students various fresh and juicy fruit and vegetables. 

There were 3 kinds of food in my lunch today: tomato pasta, curry tofu and vegetable salad. Also, I chose grapefruit juice as my drink today. As you can see, Vitamin C (VC) was the key element that I was looking for when I had my lunch. Because VC could help people get rid of cold more quickly. Also, oiling food and meat are bad for people who has a cold but tofu is a good replacement as protein.

 I ate slowly because I enjoy the feeling when juice of fruit and vegetable spread in my mouth. More importantly, eating slowly could help us digest easily and keep healthy. Generally speaking, healthy and tasty are always two key standard for me to choose food. I sincerely hope you would like my suggestions and ideas :)