the significance of food, the crucial connection to homeland

Reading “Eating White” written by Nicholson, I find he emphasized a lot that his mother was fond of white food when she was alive, which were also considered as his mother’s comfort food. To satisfy his father’s and her tastes, she would even attempt to cook the food with cream, white cornflour sauce and other white seasonings. Because of her mother’s special favor of white food, Nicholson once came up with an idea that white represents purity and being a catholic rendered his mother to prefer white food, that is, she liked white food mainly due to their color. It was just a guess but inevitably explained some reasonable possibilities. Further, white food representing purity was also the cultural significance that Nicholson attached to food. Moreover, as Nicholson mentioned in his article, “If you grew up in England at a certain time in history, your school, on behalf of the government, provided you with a daily third of a pint of ‘school milk’, and we were led to believe we had a moral duty to drink it.”(EatingWhite49) For me, it is likely to be a cultural significance attached to white in England, since British people were fostered to drink milk every day when they were very young, which was a cultural custom; it was also one of the reasons why Nicholson and his mother preferred white food. When it comes to personal significance attached to white food, Nicholson also made the speculation: it was the ration of milk and cream during the World WarⅡthat contributed to her mother’s deep love of white food. Later, because of the cultural and personal significance of white food talked above, Nicholson also wanted to eat Cheshire cheese when he moved house and lived in Los Angeles.

Ahn, a Korean-American, paid more attention on the cultural significance of Korean food. In his mind, cooking and having Korean food represented half of his ethnic roots and recalled Korean culture. In order to gradually cultivate Korean culture to his son, he taught him a little Korean and cooked various Korean dishes with his knowledge of Korean and non-Korean cuisines. Also, he only used one refrigerator in his house instead of two to encourage his son to have Korean food. He strongly believed that Korean food was a crucial carrier of Korean culture and a connection between Korean-American to their ethnic root. His parents died early, so the duty of cultivating his son Korean culture became a hard responsibility for him and his wife.

As for my own experience, “fried eggs with tomatoes” is always one of my favorite Chinese dishes, which is also my father’s best dish. First, scramble the eggs and cut the tomatoes into small pieces; second, mix and fry eggs and tomatoes; then, put some sault into them. It is not so difficult but will often remind me of my father when I am studying abroad. Therefore, “fried eggs with tomatoes” could be considered as the connection between my father and me.