Food
“A good dinner is of great importance to good talk. One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” - Virginia Woolf, “A Room of One’s Own’.
Food for me is woven with memory, nostalgia and family rituals/traditions. I was fortunate to learn to cook in two very different Indian cooking traditions in both my grandmothers’ kitchens - as an immigrant, those family recipes and traditions became even more important as I missed the food from home. I especially enjoy elaborate cooking projects - making and sharing food with friends and family gives me great joy.
My food essays try to capture the essence of a world in my family’s kitchens, some of which is now firmly in the past as we move to faster implements/methods from a period where people took the time with food rituals and traditions. I also am in a Fermentation Club where we have been trying fermented food recipes from different parts of the world. Fermenting has such an ancient history and it is quite a learning to see different ways that people preserved and fermented things across different cultures.
FEASTSF: SF-based virtual festival celebrating food & eating as art forms. May 23 - May 28, 2022.
Organized, curated and hosted by Virgie Tovar.
Pic credit: Virgie Tovar.
Virgie Tovar, Angela DeCenzo, Peggy Lee and I had a fun conversation about what comfort food means for each of us as a part of this FeastSF event - we brought in food memories, family nostalgia and some of our favorite comfort foods to showcase. We each also gave some recommendations on our go-to SF Bay Area eateries towards the end of the program. The event aired on May 26, 2022.