My mom is very good at two things: lying and cooking. My instincts in the kitchen stem from watching her sauté fish, boil stew and cook rice. I marveled at her ability to unravel the skin of apples with one curling stroke of the knife. She’s the stereotypical AsianMom™: overtly judgmental, critical of my eating habits, and she exercises Korean logic, which is to say no logic at all (y’all know about fan death, right?)
But she also had stacks of cash lining the bottom of her dresser drawers. I played in empty refrigerator boxes as she took me around Seoul, peddling cheap appliances from the Army commissary on the black market. Strange men came to our home every week to play poker—for a fee—identified years later as members of the Korean mafia. When she missed our yearly phone call on my fifteenth birthday, I spent the rest of the night Googling Jane Does in the area as the next logical step to find her.
What does this have to do with food?
I often struggle to write about my mother. I convince myself that I need perspective. Months and years go by and I still fail to put her into words. My approach is all wrong. Whenever I try to convey a certain gravitas about the insanity that surrounds her, it all feels overwrought. I need to filter her through something that’s easier for me to talk about…
So this is the start of a new series. Growing up in white suburbia, I pushed my Korean identity so far down that it barely existed. I want to get in touch with my roots and to do that I want to start by learning how to cook Korean cuisine. I have no real knowledge beyond what I’ve finagled together over the years. Food blogs tend to provide expository prose to accompany a recipe, some meaningful (or convoluted) way to connect the two. I’ll be sharing stories from my weirdo childhood, my mother’s zany schemes, and my experiences as an adult trying to connect with my culture. Consider this a fitting exploration of my identity through food. 건배!
I so wish we’d hung out when you lived in Columbus. My Palestinian family is eerily similar and food was my best connection point when I craved the culture but needed to distance myself from my actual family to protect myself and my sanity.
I wish I hung out with so many awesome ladies when I lived in Columbus. You all just need to meet me in NYC! I fully understand what you mean. My fondest memories of my mother all revolve around food. It’s a bit of a safety net in that regard.