Food is an inextricable part of my identity.
One of my first assertions of independence and self-empowerment was through the medium of literacy. Naturally, I selected a recipe book. When I first learned how to read, my parents owned a supermarket in Brazil. Our purveyors would often give us promotional gifts, and I clung on to a recipe book provided by Nestle. I still remember it vividly, it was a spiral bound book, about 5x5x1.5 inches, with a dark green (almost black) hard cover with a color picture in the center, and inside, all of the pictures were hand sketched in a teal-green tone. The recipes were divided by categories: savories, sweets, and subcategories: appetizers, salads, main entrees, and petit fours or finger sweets, tortes, cakes, etc. I loved browsing through this book, even though my reading proficiency and vocabulary were not as developed, sometimes I would just guess what those ingredients meant - I would never tire from reading and looking at those wonderful pictures!
If the recipe book was my initiation to the well documented culinary world, my mother's kitchen became my window into the culinary world all around me. I literally grew up in my mother's kitchen. One of the first sounds I remember is of my mom's diligent chopping. And of course, there is a distinct sound for each type of chopping, for red meat, for chicken, for filleting fish, and for various cuts of vegetables. Still those sounds echo in my ears, ever present, ever consistent, and ever purposeful, and bring me comfort. To this day, I feel most comfortable in the kitchen. Every task in the house somehow makes me hover toward the kitchen, where I like to stay and return to as much as I can... When I build a house, I will probably build it around a kitchen; it will be my cornerstone, for cooking and gathering. And my mother's cooking mantras will guide my creations as well as approach to life in general...
I have adopted some eclectic qualities of Cooking and Living. My approach to Food and Life are to consider and integrate elements of the local and global, familiar and experimental, traditional and modern, humanistic and spiritual, fun and sensual. Just like our palate, the result of this esoteric consummation of the senses result in any combination of the sweet, sour, bitter, and salty flavors in life. The combination may be clean or contrasting, but I always learn something new…
