Below is a sample of her scribble and mine. I honestly think hers is much more spontaneous and creative (and therefore much better).
Julia's Scribble
My scribble
Monday, June 30, 2008
Scribbling with Julia
Julia is doing a lot of scribbling with her crayons, pens, markers and pencils these days. The pile of paper filled with her intriguing scribbles is growing everyday. I often wonder what's going on in her mind when she draws and why she chose the colors that she had used. When I asked her about it, she answered me in her matter-of-fact tone - "Juyia drawing house"; "Juyia drawing circle"; "Juyia mixing". Such simple but amazing answers.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
The Art of Eating
I have often looked at food as something that I needed, to help nourish my body and one that gives me energy to live. A lot of times I took it for granted, either mindlessly filling my mouth with whatever flavor it wishes to have or cramming everything in to ease the pain of hunger after hours spent on things that occupy my mind.
Seeing how my "canadian" uncle and aunt ate during the first weeks we spent with them and how the Canadian people eat here, have changed the way I eat nowadays. It seemed to me that because the environment here is not as hectic and fast paced, people get to spend more time selecting, buying, preparing and eating their food. And they buy it fresh from the market almost everyday, with the market being just a few blocks away. And given the variety of produce available from all over the world, most frequently people end up getting a little of everything which then ends up into being cooked into a little bit of every dish.
I am reminded of this little-bit-of-everything way of eating when I was on one of my business trips to China and my engineers took me out to a really nice restaurant where they served food by batches and with each batch having more than 6 varieties of dishes. They had done the ordering so I didn't know what was coming and when it was coming. I was just picking little pinches of food here and there, sampling every dish as it came, taking 2 pieces at the most for each dish while laughing and having a great time talking and next thing I knew, I was already very satisfyingly full. I was surprised at how I could have been full, when I was just eating a little piece of each dish and they haven't even served rice yet? For me, if there' s no rice, I wasn't eating yet. I was just sampling to decide which dish I would heap on my plate later. Eating, for me meant having my plate full with rice (or pasta or noodles or anything packed with carbohydrates) plus 2 or 3 big servings of side dishes and gulping them up with the help of a drink on the side. It was unceremonious, a little territorial maybe as the food needed to be safely stocked on my plate and not too much variety as having more than 12 different kinds of "little" samples of food in one sitting.
Here in Canada, it is similar in some ways. It's having a little of everything mixed in a way that each food goes well with the other dishes served. The servings can be small ones but it has a lot more variety offered within each meal. Having a fruit for me use to mean just having a piece of banana, but here it seems to mean, having a banana, a small bowl of grapes (green and violet ones), slices of pears, and a few pieces of cherries. I noticed this with my co-workers, they have their sandwich, then some fruits and then some cutlets of cheese and a coffee or juice. If it was me, I had stopped at just having the sandwich (which already has the lettuce, mustard, mayo, turkey and tomato to boot anyway) and the juice.
Last weekend, we had dinner at my uncle's house and he had prepared roast beef. Roast beef was served with a paste of creamed radish on the side (not mustard, as my uncle pointed out, creamed radish was far better and healthier than mustard), mixed vegetables (composed of pine nuts, celery, green beans, onions, peas and mushrooms - pine nuts as uncle puts it, is good for you), soup with noodles and then a variety of fruits and then a choice of red wine or chinese coffee. I was finishing my red wine when I was struck with that moment - the moment when I realized deep in my wine filled heart, that there is an art to eating and that I fully resolved to living the rest of my life savoring this art form. It meant not just cooking rice and cooking 2-3 other dishes to go with it to ease my hunger but giving thought on every little detail and having the right little bits of food on the table that just explode with all these different flavors when chewed together in the mouth.
Until now, I still savor the moment when I was chewing that tender roast beef with just a hint of creamed radish and red wine tiltillating my ignorant taste buds, in the company of family, with the sun setting nicely outside our window and with just a touch of chill reaching my warm throat - such a luxurious pleasure! (I beat my head for having been stuck with my old eating habits all these years that not even the occassional watching of international food shows have made me realize how life -and food- should have been savored). Happiness do come in the smallest of things and in this case, it comes from having a little bit of everything (on the table :).
Seeing how my "canadian" uncle and aunt ate during the first weeks we spent with them and how the Canadian people eat here, have changed the way I eat nowadays. It seemed to me that because the environment here is not as hectic and fast paced, people get to spend more time selecting, buying, preparing and eating their food. And they buy it fresh from the market almost everyday, with the market being just a few blocks away. And given the variety of produce available from all over the world, most frequently people end up getting a little of everything which then ends up into being cooked into a little bit of every dish.
I am reminded of this little-bit-of-everything way of eating when I was on one of my business trips to China and my engineers took me out to a really nice restaurant where they served food by batches and with each batch having more than 6 varieties of dishes. They had done the ordering so I didn't know what was coming and when it was coming. I was just picking little pinches of food here and there, sampling every dish as it came, taking 2 pieces at the most for each dish while laughing and having a great time talking and next thing I knew, I was already very satisfyingly full. I was surprised at how I could have been full, when I was just eating a little piece of each dish and they haven't even served rice yet? For me, if there' s no rice, I wasn't eating yet. I was just sampling to decide which dish I would heap on my plate later. Eating, for me meant having my plate full with rice (or pasta or noodles or anything packed with carbohydrates) plus 2 or 3 big servings of side dishes and gulping them up with the help of a drink on the side. It was unceremonious, a little territorial maybe as the food needed to be safely stocked on my plate and not too much variety as having more than 12 different kinds of "little" samples of food in one sitting.
Here in Canada, it is similar in some ways. It's having a little of everything mixed in a way that each food goes well with the other dishes served. The servings can be small ones but it has a lot more variety offered within each meal. Having a fruit for me use to mean just having a piece of banana, but here it seems to mean, having a banana, a small bowl of grapes (green and violet ones), slices of pears, and a few pieces of cherries. I noticed this with my co-workers, they have their sandwich, then some fruits and then some cutlets of cheese and a coffee or juice. If it was me, I had stopped at just having the sandwich (which already has the lettuce, mustard, mayo, turkey and tomato to boot anyway) and the juice.
Last weekend, we had dinner at my uncle's house and he had prepared roast beef. Roast beef was served with a paste of creamed radish on the side (not mustard, as my uncle pointed out, creamed radish was far better and healthier than mustard), mixed vegetables (composed of pine nuts, celery, green beans, onions, peas and mushrooms - pine nuts as uncle puts it, is good for you), soup with noodles and then a variety of fruits and then a choice of red wine or chinese coffee. I was finishing my red wine when I was struck with that moment - the moment when I realized deep in my wine filled heart, that there is an art to eating and that I fully resolved to living the rest of my life savoring this art form. It meant not just cooking rice and cooking 2-3 other dishes to go with it to ease my hunger but giving thought on every little detail and having the right little bits of food on the table that just explode with all these different flavors when chewed together in the mouth.
Until now, I still savor the moment when I was chewing that tender roast beef with just a hint of creamed radish and red wine tiltillating my ignorant taste buds, in the company of family, with the sun setting nicely outside our window and with just a touch of chill reaching my warm throat - such a luxurious pleasure! (I beat my head for having been stuck with my old eating habits all these years that not even the occassional watching of international food shows have made me realize how life -and food- should have been savored). Happiness do come in the smallest of things and in this case, it comes from having a little bit of everything (on the table :).
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