Volunteer Explorer

Our feast consisted of crepes, hot and spicy tomato soup, steamed shrimp dumplings, a lo-mein-like stir fry dish, macaroni and cheese, and rice pudding. Ying also brought some dubious looking eggs that were black as night. She and Regina, our new student from Korea, discussed how both their countries hold these traditional pickled eggs in high esteem for special occasions. I sampled one because I am a big fan of most pickled things.  It was unlike anything I had ever tasted. And not really in a good way. "Is it the texture that is odd?" Regina asked, seeing my complicated expression as I tried to swallow. The texture was, indeed, odd. The yolk of the essentially hard-boiled egg becomes liquefied during the long pickling process, while the white of the egg—now a strangely translucent dark gray‒remains fairly firm. The combination of tart flavor and slimy mouth feel hit me pretty hard. Try as I might, I was unable to eat the second half of my portion. I had to work...

"What's your relationship with food?" I asked my ESOL students last night. Yuwei's brows knitted together in his usual intense look of consternation. "Do you eat to live, or live to eat?" We were preparing to discuss an article from The New Yorker that I had sent out earlier in the week, a seasoned food critic's reminiscence of his mother's detailed recipes against the backdrop of revolving food fads. Each student, in turn, talked briefly about how being so busy during the week made it difficult to enjoy food, made a "grab-and-go" mentality a necessity. We all agreed, however, that going to a restaurant on the weekend or sitting down with family on a special occasion for a long, leisurely meal was a treat. Jana brought up some research she had done in college about the change in family ritual from dining together to eating separately, and alone. "This is why there is so much problem now," she said. "Dinner wa...