Try Everything (Blog Post #1)

Well, I am not a good cook, but I’m a good gourmet, at least a brave connoisseur of everything. When I was in primary school, I barely ate food in home. My parents always focused on their work but never paid any attention to the food they eat. They seemed not like cooking. It resulted that I often rushed to other people’s kitchens for dinner after school. Since I grew in city, most of my friends and relatives lived near me no more than fifteen minutes bus drive. When I recalled it, I felt embarrassed that I ate dinner in other people’s home almost daily, but it was the best time for me and best experience for my tongue.
The places I rushed to, usually were my friends’ or relatives’. Obviously, first choices is my friends’ families. The better relationship we had, the more frequently I would visit their apartments. Second choices were my cousins’ home. My grandparents’ were always my “final destination”. I went their apartment only if I had found nowhere to eat or had no money in my pocket. Yet I still had my own principle that I don’t visit a person over twice a week. My tongue would be tried of same taste. I wanted to try new dish.
However, there was an exception, my friend Huanhuan’s home, that I went more than three times a week. Later, I even brought my parents to their home for dinner and called Huanhuan’s grandmother grandma.

(Huanhuan's family and my family)

Grandma was almost seventy years old at that time, and she was a every traditional old Chinese. For my tongue, she was the best cook I had ever known world, an artist of cooking. Like most traditional cook of China, she preferred to use a lot of oil in cooking. Although, Huanhuan’s mother always complained about too much unhealthy oil in dishes, grandma still cooked the food with her own style. For her, there is no reason that how much oil should be add in. Her style is free-style. She barely used any modern tool and thought how much spices needed to put; She just grabbed any amount of salty, sugar, pepper by hand. Cooking for her is only a habit, but her cooking was an art. In her view, a good dish did not depend on a recipe, but the instinct. Following the instinct, the intuition would guide her to great cooking.
Her food was the best!
Until now, every time when I thought about Chinese food, the first dish popped into my head was her red-cooked pork. It attracted me not only with delicious red-brown color, but the symphony of smell of pork mixing with bean sauce. I always squeezed the whole piece of pork in to my month. After biting it, my month would be full of juice and sauce. It was the food from heaven. I could demolished the whole plate in ten seconds.

(red-cooked pork, yummy!)

Rushing for food without being invited nourished my talent as a gourmet. Finally, I could tell the different cooking styles from different families. I could guess what kind of food they liked, even which part of China they originally came from.
In contrast to others families’, I gradually forgot my family's cooking style. In my memory, I never saw my father in kitchen, although my mother admitted that he was talented in cooking. I guessed that was just my father's strategy to attract his wife. On the other hand, my mother was a “creative” cook. You will never ever find food that she cooked in any recipe book. Her creations such as potato salad with peanuts sauce and beef soy milk soup, always made me feel like a mouse in a lab.
During my childhood, I had actually tried mostly all styles of Chinese food.
Yet, my father had not only tried anything, but also ate everything. At least, he enjoyed my mother’s imaginative food. He did like to try all new and strange food, sometimes consuming food with extreme tastes: extremely spicy, extremely juicy, extremely bitter or extremely “disgusting”. Among all of his “eating legend”, the most impressive dish was “monkey brain”. Only the name of it had already freaked me out. He used to smile and ask me if I was interesting in monkey.
“Of course not”.
“You should try everything, and don’t mind their taste, Just try!”. Thats my father’s opinions about food.

(You should try, try to eat scorpion and locust pupa）

Two years ago, I came to the US, which has a totally different culture, especially food. The first time, my father called me from China, asking if I adopted to the food here. It took me more than twenty minutes to describe what the cereal is for him.
He smiled “Excellent, I ate the food that I have never seen”.
Although I am not as crazy and brave as my father about eating food, his philosophy of eating did affect me. My English was not good enough at that time, so I had no idea about the English name of food. Reading the alphabets in the menu was just a pain for me, and make me feel blind. Then, I decided to randomly choose something to eat. I picked different new dishes every time. Certainly, food was sometimes terrible, yet I was enjoying.
During the first month in the US, I felt like I was back to my childhood. I explored new dish and fresh favor everyday, like rushing to different families to eat the food I would never expected. Tasting various and unknown dishes and judging them became one way for me to experience American culture.

（Scorpion is delicious, but locust pupa is disgusting. You should try!)

Now, “Try everything”is my motto, not only for eating but for my life. I appreciate this motto makes me never hungry. Moreover, various food shows me different colors of this world.
Remember to keep trying, tasting, and experiencing something new!

Red-cooked pork image: www.zuocai8.cn/article/show.asp?id=7682