Through Thick and Thin

One of the greatest things about food is that it brings people together. The classic example, of course is the holidays, namely Thanksgiving. It has always been particularly important in my family, since I am Jewish and we always have sort of a Hannukah/Christmas medley. Every year for Thanksgiving, however, we travel to the home of a different family member to celebrate. Thanksgiving is the time when all my family is together from all over the country, to share and eat even if it is only for a couple days.

It's always mayhem in the kitchen, everyone running around doing various things to prepare for the meal. Jess usually takes charge, directing me towards chopping while she prepares the turkey (or as it was in New Orleans 2005, deep fried turducken). We cook, laugh, and eat, and after the meal suffer together from the food coma.

Another tradition that at first doesn't seem to have much in common with the Thanksgiving is the making of the Obento, a traditional Japanese style lunchbox for preschool children prepared by their mothers. Anne Allison had a lot to say about the importance of the Obento in Japanese culture in her article. The concept of this meticulously created lunch creating a bond between mother and child is a foreign one to American society, but at the same time it is another means by which food brings people together. Allison explains that "Both mother and child are being watched, judged, and constructed; and it is only through their joint effort that the goal can be accomplished." So although the actual eating of the meal doesn't bring the two together because the child is off at school, there is a deeper connection involving the mother's duty in preparing a meal that the child will eat in its entirity.

A lot of what there is to learn about food has to do with it bringing groups of people and even cultures together, but this week I've learned that it doesn't have to be good food to unite people. In fact, strange and even downright bad food does the trick just as well. In class on Wednesday we made Obentos. A lot of the food was strange, like the candied fish that are to be eaten whole and all the variations of pickled vegetables. The neat thing about it was that even though the food was not what we were used to, it got us talking together because we had something in common. I even ran into a few of my classmates after class that I normally wouldn't have talked to had it not been for the strange food. The same thing goes for eating the sometimes underwhelming food in the dorms. Yes, my spaghetti slightly resembled plastic, but at least I got a laugh out of it with the people around me. Whether it's gourmet and delicious, foreign, or just downright bad, the truth is everybody eats and has something to say about it.