P2 Shiffrin

Though some people do not consciously recognize food as a significant part of their cultural heritage it remains a critical part in defining who we are and where we come from. Just think about the association between American love of fast food and its ironically trending obesity problem. The correlation between cuisine and culture is made perfectly transparent in the writings of both Ahn and Nicholson. In Nicholson’s article "Eating White" he recounts a commemorative lunch he has that pays tribute to his deceased mother. He go into fine detail regarding the particulars of this meal consisting of a bland cheese sandwich which he often ate with his mother for lunch. He begins be explain the extensive effort involved in finding Cheshire cheese in California as opposed to how quickly one could locate the same item in Brittan. For every ingredient used to make his lunch he discusses the differences between his childhood memories of Brittan and his experiences of California. He then continues to relate this “white” meal to his homeland and family heritage by way of describing his parent’s lifestyle, which more or less mirrored the amount of excitement found in his lunch sandwich. Now while Nicholson certainly used food as a vessel to describe his heritage he did so by dissecting a single meal and relating every aspect of that meal to his past whereas Ahn uses a much different approach to achieve the same objective of recounting his past by way of food. In Ahn’s article he begins by depicting a scene of his wife and him eating at a Korean restaurant where is accidentally orders a dish that he believed was a separate dish. This concerns him about his ability to pass on his cultural heritage to his new son. He figures that the most effective method in which he can pass on his Korean heritage to his son is through cooking Korean meals. Thus he dives into his past and recalls many memories of his parents and his past much of which is strongly tied to cooking and eating Korean cuisine. 

            The articles written by Ahn and Nicholson where very similar in many regards however they differed in the sense that Nicholson used the details of a single meal to depict his roots as opposed to Ahn’s description of many meals and experiences to paint a picture of where he came from. I do not personally think that the food I eat is inherent of my ethnic heritage. However I do think that the foods I cook for myself and eat are largely representative of who I am and where I have been. For instance I often eat a European style breakfast, which largely consists of jelly spread across a semel which Swiss cheese and salami. I have traveled a lot in my life and therefore do not have much of a singular cultural identity but the many identities that I do have are often expressed through the meals I eat.