Karen Tei Yamashita

It's so strange to me that Americans lost touch with food, got fat, found food again, are now fat foodies fascinated by every little soybean or slice of pate that crosses their way. How did we lose touch with food in the first place? Yeah I'm including myself, because I remember the exact sandwich I ate which made me stop to consider the time and effort I put into it, the flavors that it was composed of, how I had accomplished so much by making my own sandwich, how great it felt to have made something that to me at the time was so goddamn gourmet for a 14 year old, and so healthy. It was tuna salad on a toasted pumpernickel bagel with tomatoes, onions, lettuce, probably some kind of pre-sliced cheese. And loads of spicy mustard. I had just discovered it. It was awesome. I ate it warm. I showed it to my mom whose luke-warm response was infuriating at the time: why didn't she understand the effort I'd put into the sandwich? Why didn't she paw at it, unable to reach the mighty tuna bagel in my upheld hands even though she's a good 5 or 6 inches taller than me, and my mother, to boot, who can do anything she wants in any universe because she's almighty. I remember sitting at the bar in my house, watching TV, thinking how easy it was to create something so delicious myself, that I didn't buy, in fact, it was like 203958032958 times better than anything bagel sandwich I'd ever had at the likes of Atlanta Bread or Panera Bread, or any other kind of pseudo-deli-bakery-cafe hybrid thing. What the fuck was I eating before that? How did I stomach it? Weird. That's another story entirely.
Yamashita's essay drove home the point that life revolves around food, literally (duh), metaphorically (no shit), spiritually (riiiiight). She writes from an interesting perspective. I am not that familiar with her family history or ancestry, but I gathered from the short bio that being a Japanese American living in Brazil, she was practically drawn and quartered (thirded, really) between the familiar, the bizarre and foreign, and the utterly boring and bland. Grappling with all these flavors and tastes and cultures surely was a strain, and overwhelming, but she saw the similarities between them, especially the Japanese and the Brazilian, and brought it forth as something really unique and interesting: two complimentary cultures, one of Japanese living in Brazil, one of Brazilians living in Japan, coming to the same conclusions to solve the old problem: whats for dinner?
They improvise, they settle, they sacrifice, they infuse, they baffle the natives. Ultimately, expats from any country make due with the lot they've chosen, were given, stumbled upon, whatever. Survival of the fittest, maybe? Flight versus fight? Adaptation and assimilation? Who knows. I really enjoyed the essay, the recipes, the stories behind them, the cultures.