At noon, the table is set for two: my bowl and my daughter’s.
Mine: soba noodles topped with a fried egg, cucumber slices, and rectangles of Spam, browned at the edges. A drizzle of chili oil goes on top — a taste I acquired later, since my mother never liked spice. Spam was once reserved for New Year’s or school field trips. Now it lives in the category of “processed, salty, and fatty.” I confessed to my daughter this summer that I still love it. My defense is simple: Spam is not only food. It is childhood in aluminum.
Her bowl is kale, cucumbers, tomatoes, tofu, and bits of turkey bacon. It speaks the language of farmers markets and wellness culture. Yet the dressing tells another story: minced ginger and miso whisked into olive oil. She doesn’t choose between East and West. She tosses them together.
Immigrants arrive to fit in, only to find that what steadies the heart are the flavors that refuse to fade. If dinner is In-N-Out, I still need a warm noodle soup before bed. My daughter moves more easily between menus. She carries layered palates. Still, there is tenderness in watching her call white rice porridge and pickled mustard greens “comfort food.” Continuity, it turns out, can be seamless.
At noon, the house grows quiet: cats folded in the corner, dog under the table. I tell her that when I was young in a small mountain village in northern China, eggs went to Grandma, meat was sliced thin to stretch, cabbage and radish were endless, and a piece of pork fat could flavor a whole dish. Yet there was always treasure: Mom’s steamed air-dried fish perfuming the whole house; pickled mustard greens pulled from a clay jar; chicken soup simmered with soaked bamboo shoots; pork lard crisps sprinkled with salt — so good we could never stop. Food was less about nutrition charts and more about how labor turned scarcity into feast. Those flavors live in me more vividly than any recipe.
She’s leaving for college in a week. The suitcase lies open on her…
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