Food is a great way to connect with others and one way we can nourish and look after our bodies. This blog post will explain different ways I enjoy food and what my favourite types of food are when eating out and cooking at home.
Why food is so important:
I find food is a great way to connect with others, bonding and talking over a meal is a great way to share life with others. In the religion I follow: Christianity, Jesus did this often as a sign of hospitality and care, for example in the Lord’s supper and he often ate with the outcasts of society.
It is very important to me that the God of the universe cares about the outcasts and the rejected in society and that this is something on his mind.
On another note, whilst in the UK there is more of a culture of drinking together, in places like Asia or China eating food together is common to socialise together.
My favourite restaurant food:
My favourite restaurant food is mainly Chinese. As growing up as a BBC I discovered my tastes in the food which I enjoy the most which seems to be more Chinese and Asian food.
Thankfully there seems to be a large Chinatown / Chinese quarter in my city where I can enjoy a whole variety of Chinese food. I think that it’s a great space to socialise and to eat great food with others.
Some of the best places to eat seem to be places such as China Court & Chung Ying regarding Chinese restaurants. For Chinese café style restaurants places such as Peach Garden is where I like to eat food as well.
My favourite home-cooked food:
Generally, I enjoy cooking many types of food – many European and now trying to get more into Chinese cooking.
Generally, I find the hardest thing about Chinese cooking is sourcing all the ingredients used to cook these. This is because many specialist ingredients in Chinese cooking aren’t available in traditional UK supermarkets (although it’s getting a lot better now).
So I find European food such as British food etc much easier to source the ingredients for. As such, I am thinking for example of learning Italian as I enjoy Italian food.
However, due to living at home, I do have access to a large range of staple Chinese pantry options which allow me to cook Chinese food with greater ease – with the option to visit Chinese supermarkets such as Day Inn or Wing Yip now and again which is a good option.
Most recently I’ve realised how much I was relying on and using recipes to cook so for the last few weeks I have decided to cook on the go without a recipe in front of me. As a result, I have used up many more pantry ingredients and can create tasty dishes from scratch without the need for a printed recipe in front of me.
Cooking at home vs eating out:
I enjoy both cooking at home and eating out. However, I find that eating at home can be vastly superior to eating out at restaurants in terms of cost and health/ingredients. However, restaurants win most of the time when it comes to being able to eat good and tasty food with friends or family.
I think also eating out too much isn’t economical especially here in the UK, so I find that it is near impossible to eat out all the time, so cooking for oneself is vital.
However, when you eat out you don’t have to worry about preparing a meal and can enjoy the company of your friends or family. Also, this can work the other way around where the preparation together of different dishes communally can be a great way for people to bond together.
Conclusion:
Overall, I feel that eating together is an experience and in a lot of different cultures can be a way to socialise and catch up – which is almost as or as important as the meal itself is.
What about you? What is your reason for eating?
Let me know in the comments below.
