For a variety of reasons food became an enemy. I didn’t know what I could eat, and I didn’t want to eat. So, I pretty much didn’t. For months. A lot of months. Even when given the task of adding a new food to my diet, I couldn’t muster any enthusiasm, and instead would find reasons to put it off, or to reject it altogether. The smell was nauseating, it tasted bad, it didn’t taste at all, or I was just plain afraid it was too closely related to an already identified “bad” food. Food, that binder of family, tradition, and comfort, was now only a source of anxiety, stress, and fear.

So, for a long time I wasn’t interested in eating anything, and I listlessly figured that this might be my new normal.

But then Strong Woman Do Bong Soon’s Min Hyuk found himself in the hospital recuperating from a knife wound and surrounded by Bong Soon’s noisy family. It was not Min Hyuk that caught my attention though, and it also wasn’t Bong Soon and her family. By this episode the drama was beginning to lose my interest, and I was watching out of habit, but then someone brought out a giant metal bowl of…..I leaned forward.

What is that? I thought.

There was rice, there were vegetables, there was a sauce, some kind of oil. When hands reached in and started to mix it all together, I had another thought. That looks good.

That looks good

For the first time, in a very long time, I wanted to eat, and I wanted to eat that giant bowl of bibimbap.

It took a while before I could actually eat a bowl that resembled what I saw on screen. One ingredient at a time I worked my way towards finding which I could use, and what might have to stay out of my bowl. Gochujang was a revelation that rocked my taste buds and opened a new food world. A fried egg on rice? Yes, please. And the different Korean side dishes? Oh my gosh, where have they been all my life?

Korean drama gave me food back. It might not be the food of my childhood, and it might not be the food that others around me want to eat, but it brought back hunger, taste, and satisfaction. Most of all, that simple bowl of bibimbap pushed away the fear, and it gave me new foods to love.

Love, February
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