So I watched an episode of No Reservations tonight that prompted much thought. Bourdain rounded up a few of his closest collegues to discuss food and its role in society. At one point a topic touched on what people eat, how it defines them, and what goes into determining what we choose to consume. After much deliberation, I came to my own conclusion that perhaps I've been searching for the familiar in what I eat. A food critic can strip a dish and decompile the composition and weigh the value of each ingredient. Yet I can't help but think to myself that regardless of taste, the essence of what we eat transcends the simple act of consuming to satisfy a physical hunger. I asked myself: could a dish or a meal provide an escape we are all too desperate to discover? And how does that encompass what defines us as individuals? More so than ever I've grown accustomed to search for an emotion from the food before me. Sure I eat what I must to subdue primal hunger, but so much more is the strife to fill a deeper void. To feel. To remember. To return to a comforting place -- the familiar. Great food which conjours even greater memories. I miss my grandmother's cooking. I miss the smell of her kitchen, the love and care that went into preparing even the most modest dishes. I'm desperately hungry for what I've been missing and I very well may never get that back. Above all else I miss the company. I may have forgotten the day in and day out of the past, but I could never forget the meals that were shared together. I miss my beloved spaghetti with hot dogs. No matter how hard I try, I could never replicate the dish as I remembered it. I could follow the receipe a hundred times over but blatantly lack what I know I cannot replace, the very composition that defined it. That was when I began to surmise that perhaps I may have been searching beyond what I can taste. It's quite a numbing revelation and it subsequently makes it even more difficult to pinpoint. Could it be a self-perpetuating search? Is it even realistic to believe I could discover something better? And even then could it ever replace what I had once felt before? It's a sobering concept to ponder -- having to live with the all too dispassionate probability that I may not. That alone worries me. A rude awakening; the belief that the very best meals of your life may never again materialize, forever lost in the kitchen of our past. | 
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