In search of my iconic summer food

It is a dreadful task to answer the question,

“What is your favorite food?”

The questions revolving around food have haunted me for the most of my life. I wonder does every person has a favorite food?

I did not.

To enter a writing contest about food?

"Not for me." my mind resisted.

But the opportunity to write would not let go of my mind, or it was my mind would not let go of the opportunity to write. As I open my laptop each morning, I take a glance at the challenge.

“Camp will reward all US-based creators three free boxes of their reimagined summer staple: Mac n' Cheese.”

The once food deprived inner child secretly wants her Mac n’ Cheese. The inner writer keeps nagging me to go for it. As a person who loves anything organic, I cave in to the curiosity to try Camp, a new food brand, whose mission I admire. Why not? There are still thirty three hours left, and today is Summer Solstice, it is a sign!

Here I am, in search of my iconic summer food. I started with checking the fridge for inspirations, the kitchen cabinet, I continued on searching in my memory.

I was three…

I had gone through the care of many at the tender age of three. A nurse, who was a neighbor; the Jia family with two children on their own; an older couple referred as grandma and grandpa Zhao; the list goes on longer. Finally, at the age of three years and six month, I was living with auntie Liu, a woman who gained my parents’ trust.

My journey had begun as a three months old infant, when my mother had to return to work. My parents had to find a new caregiver for me every three to twelve months, for one reason or another.

“I checked on you one time during my lunch break, I decided on the family near my work so I could see you often.” said my mother.

“I tasted the milk in your bottle, it tasted as bland as water! It was just water mixed with a little bit of formula that made the color looked white. No wonder you pushed the bottle away when I tried to feed you!”

My mother reiterated the story about three times a year with a sense of guilt and triumphant, that she was an excellent detective to protect her baby from starvation. As a child, I fantasized that my mother was my savior, she came with a pink blanket and she pushed the door open, the sunlight brightened the darkroom and shined on the little baby’s face! She picked the baby up and put the blanket around her. She carried the baby out of the darkness into the light! We walked and walked, she found me a new home.

“So we had to move you from the Jia family, we found grandma Zhao, you were just one year old.”

I was born at the end of “The Cultural Revolution”, a political reform lasted for ten years in the People’s Republic of China. Many homes were ripped apart. My grandparents were sent to the countryside to be in “reeducation camps". My parents lived in different cities.

Food was in scarcity in the early 70s in China. My caregivers took my nourishments that my parents entrusted to them so they can supplement their own families' need. I don't have resentment, nor do I remember feeling hungry, but I have not developed an excitement for any fancy cuisine, even when I traveled around the world and life has afforded me the abundance of amazing viands.

"You developed a nonchalant attitude towards food. It is a defense mechanism." said my therapist.

"OK." I responded to her with a nonchalant shrug.

Growing up, I made stories to entertain my little brain that my parents were heroes of mine who came to my rescue.

“You loved aunty Liu, you won’t come with me when I picked you up.” my father kept on with his story.

That summer, I remember my father came to see me when he returned from Chang Zhou, a small town in southern China. We visited his extended family. On top of a large table, there was a bowl filled with red fruits just a little bit smaller than ping pong balls. Imprinted in my memory was that someone, the hands of an adult, kept on peeling the fruit and kept on feeding me, as I opened my little mouth to bite into the white, sweet, juicy little ball called lychee, I was content. As the hands put me on her laps and kept spoiling me with the abundance of the fruit, I wished I could stay in one place for a little longer.

“Can I save some to bring back to auntie Liu?” I stopped eating.

My mind travels back to the many trips with my parents, I held their hands as we walked through the narrow street of Beijing, to arrive to the dinner table of an extended family or a friend's home. It was often only one of my parents came to take me out for a day. They took turns, whenever and as much as they could.

When I returned to auntie Liu, I would skip a few steps, as I ran back to her arms with a small bag of lychee. I loved to bring food back to her.

My love of sharing food rooted from that time. In fact, It would be lovely to have a picnic with friends, by the lake, with the Mac n' Cheese, and fresh finds from the farmer's market...

I have never stopped thinking of sharing food with autie Liu... even now she has passed away for many years. Lychee was my first sweet memory of the summer, but remembering the joy of sharing is sweeter than the lychee itself.

I was five...

It was June, a full-blown summer day just like today, I had just came back to live with my grandmother. Our neighbor had an abundance of damask roses that were in full bloom. I must had been staring at the roses for five minutes or more.

"You want me to pick one for you?" asked my cousin, YoYo, who was just a year and two month older than me.

"But we are not suppose to." I answered in a very low voice...

My eyes did not move from the flowers, the dark pink blooms sent their alluring scent, my feet were planted in the ground where it was just about a foot away from the rose bushes.

Yoyo reached out to the flowers, she picked two, right from the top, instinctively avoiding the thorns...

"One for you, and one for me." Yoyo smiled at me.

We both decided to run!

Just as I was turning, I saw a white haired woman appeared from my back and spooked both of us... Yoyo quickly dropped the roses, they fell on the ground.

"Grandma Hu!" Yoyo called the woman.

The woman kneeled down to my height, she put her hand caressed my right cheek,

"You must be Ning Ning (my nickname)! I met you when you were a little baby!" The woman spoke softly.

My mind was blank.

"Roses has thorns, be careful." said she, as she cautiously bent a branch to show us...

"See."

"Wait here." she said.

As grandmother Hu came out from her house, she had a pair of scissors and a basket.

As Yoyo and I handed the basket full of roses to our grandmother, our hearts were pounding, the excitement from being gifted an abundance of aromatic roses is mixed with the regrets for picking the flowers without asking. but the smile of grandma Hu had allowed us to tell the whole truth... Yoyo took the lead, and I added to her story.

I still remember my grandmother's smile, to my relief, my grandmother did not say a word of blame.

As our grandmother asked Yoyo to help her to get the sweet rice flour out of the lower cabinet, she broke the rose flowers from their stems and washed them. For the afternoon, we were in the kitchen... my grandmother kneaded the rice flour into small balls; roses were made into jam; and rose petals were gathered back into the shape of a flower again.

I have not been able to recreate the same sweetness of the rose cakes made that afternoon, in the summer of 1975. I have never seen another rose cake as beautiful as the ones made by my grandmother.

We only kept two rose cakes, one in each plate, one for Yoyo, and one for me. The rest, were put in a box, and back into the basket, on top of the rose cake box, there was a little note my grandmother wrote, and it read,

"Grandmother Hu, we are sorry for picking your roses -

Yoyo and Ning Ning."

In my kitchen cabinet, I always keep a jar of dried damask roses. They are my staples, I put them in my morning coffee, my oat milk, and I pour hot water on them at night, adding a cardamom pod to make rose tea for bedtime.

Before that afternoon, I had always thought that my grandmother loved Yoyo more than she loved me. My mother told me that when my grandmother had to leave Beijing, she took Yoyo with her, but not the three month old me.

As the rice cake dissolved in my mouth, the permission, and the sweetness had opened a space in my heart, I knew my grandmother loved me just as much.

"Forgiveness Is the fragrance flowers give when they are crushed…" said Rumi.

As I opened the kitchen cabinet and confronted by my obsession for the roses, I found my iconic summer food.

The rose cake from my childhood was speaking to me with love that is unconditional. The sweet reminiscence of the flowers brings kindness in the heart that can let go of the confusions from the past; pain transforms into light. The sun rays of the Summer Solstice gently brings peace from the present into the past.

As the veil of the memories of my childhood slowly comes down, I watched the five year old little girl looking at the fluffy rose cake in amazement and joy, as she put the cake in her mouth, she was content with the stability of returning to her grandmother's home. I was tempted to remind her to share the cake with her grandmother, as I realized, only now, her grandmother did not keep one rose cake for herself. The five years old innocent child was mesmerized with her rice cake, taking one bite at a time, she was relaxed and happy. I watched her with a smile and I am content to let her be.

"Forgiveness is the sweetness roses give when they are crushed to make sweet rice cakes."

Alfred Adler said: "A lucky person's lifetime is cured by childhood, while an unlucky person's lifetime is spent curing childhood."

My childhood is cured in finding my iconic summer food.

My lifetime is cured by learning to love the child in me, past or present, just the way she is.