My All Carb Diet

Although pasta may be considered a staple dish in many parts of the world, the diversification of pastas I eat tends to correlate with how I have grown and developed from being a kid solely addicted to comfort food. Since childhood, pasta has always been my “go-to” meal. The variety of noodles, sauces, cheeses, and flavors always makes eating pasta exciting yet comfortable. As a kid, I refused to eat anything but Kraft macaroni and cheese for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And although it was boxed macaroni, it was never dull and never unsatisfying. Just like any young, picky eater, I was not yet into pastas mixed with fancy wine sauces and topped with strange meats, so macaroni was a simple dish my mom didn’t mind making because it was quick and easy. However, as I grew older, I slowly but surely began to mix and match pastas and would doc them up to be more flavorful and different over time.

            In middle school, I became addicted to watching the food channel. Watching shows like Emeril, Paula’s Home Cooking, and Barefoot Contessa made me excited to work my magic in the kitchen, preparing pasta dishes similar to those I saw on TV. I would use our newly purchased Magic Bullet to mix up garlic and spices for homemade sauces to impress my parents with. Most got thrown in the garbage, but once I made a pesto-based sauce we still use in my family today. This experimental time in my life reflected on the pastas I would attempt to make. Instead of eating only macaroni, I began to eat spaghetti, fettuccini, and ravioli, all simple, well-liked pastas with slightly more variety than Kraft specialties from Costco.

            High school was a time when I attempted to remove myself from my bubble and eat foreign, more sophisticated pasta dishes. My friends and I would go out to different restaurants around Cherry Creek, downtown, or obscure areas and try new things. I began to eat Thai pasta dishes, Italian, Middle Eastern, Moroccan, any type of thing I hadn’t tried before. As I became more mature personally, intellectually, physically, and emotionally, I become less self-centered towards the end of high school and realized other options in my life, which would explain my desire to journey to new places and try new cuisines. However, all dishes were continuously pasta. I remember trying seafood infused pasta at a restaurant on Pearl Street. It was bowtie pasta mixed in a creamy vodka sauce, topped with crab, shrimp, and a side of scallops. I also became interested in pasta stuffed with different meats and vegetables, all different from one another but equally delicious.

            In college, pasta has become a symbol of my health, my family, and myself. Every Thursday night, my core group of friends and I go down to Noodles and Company and wind down from a week of school and prepare ourselves for the hectic, rowdy weekend. I order the Whole Grain Tuscan Linguini, trying to choose a healthier option because I have come to realize the freshman 15 is not a myth. It is my staple Thursday night meal; a linguini mixed with creamy wine sauce, broccoli, red peppers, and onions.

            In college, every other weekend I go home to visit my family. For lunch or dinner we always eat my favorite pesto tortellini as a side dish and polenta as the main course. Ever since my grandmother, my mother, and I were kids, our parents would make us polenta, a typical Italian dish brought into our family by my great grandmother. The pesto pasta has been my favorite since middle school and eating it at home resembles comfort and nostalgia as I take a break away from the busy college life. Although polenta has never been my favorite, it reminds my mother of her childhood, so I always eat the cornmeal, gravy, chicken combo without complaint, except now I ditch the chicken since I am a vegetarian.

            Over my lifetime, my all carb diet has provided me with a means of growth, experience, and connection to certain parts of my life. Being young, my variety was small and my life was basic and easy. Over time however, I have began to broaden my horizons and become a more expressive eater. What I eat now resembles both my present life and my past. Pasta has always been a comfort food for me, and eating it both at home and at school forms a bridge between the two. In college, life has also gotten more complex, exciting, and stressful, but being able to eat pasta any where and everywhere keeps me balanced and reminds me of how far I’ve came since eating Kraft macaroni and cheese from the box. 

Family, Food, and Identity

In both personal excerpts, food was expressively enjoyed as a means of connecting with one's family, identity, and culture. Both authors had a strong desire to remain connected with their ethnic roots, one being a Korean identity and the other an English identity. In addition, both authors wanted to maintain a connection with their parents, using food as a memory device and a form of expression. Food served as a memory of their childhoods and their upbringing. The food each individual expressed related to their personal lifestyles and cultures. Nicholson discussed the simple, creamy, "white" foods his mother used to enjoy to prepare and how her cooking related to her family's desires, particularly her husbands chosen diet. Ahn shared how spending time with his mother in the kitchen and learning from her cooking styles has taught him how to add his own unique Korean kick to dishes in order to express multiple parts of his identity. In contrast, while Ahn's story was more focused on a loss of identity, adapting to Americanized society, and how his culture and upbringing would affect his child. When Ahn mistakenly orders the wrong beef dish at a restaurant, he has an epiphany on how truly connected his is to his Korean culture. Nicholson focuses more on trying to obtain his mother's authentic English love for food in America. He discusses the difference between genuine Cheshire cheese versus the processed Cheshire cheese found in decoy British supermarkets. However, both stories share in common how they relate food to their family, childhood, and struggle to adapt in a different society while maintaining their original roots.

College Cuisine

Today I had breakfast in Nelson Dining Hall at approximately 9:30 AM, a meal of cold eggs, Lucky Charms, and 7-grain bread toasted to a golden-brown with butter and honey. I was really hoping for my routine egg white omelet, but my friend Jill was running late as always, so we missed all the good food at the dining hall. So instead, I got all the cold leftovers at the bottom of the pans, but that doesn't really matter because breakfast is my favorite meal of the day anyway. The eggs were not the greatest due to their temperature, but the carb portion of my breakfast was satisfying as ever. The Lucky Charms were a good choice and delicious. Besides, I'd much rather have fake sugar marshmallows over tasteless Cherios any day. I took my time eating my meal because I didn't have class till one in the afternoon. During my typical breakfast, I usually eat a lot, however I didn't each much today because nothing was particularly appetizing, even though I was famished because I hadn't eaten anything since three in the afternoon the day before except for a Luna Bar.

While eating, Jill and I casually talked about our night before and how excited we are for the spring quarter we have heard so highly of. Our daily ritual involves saying hi to our friends at the dining hall and gossiping about our lives over some hash browns. Overall, today's breakfast was your typical, standard, uneventful meal at the dining hall.