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does anyone else have a weird meal/s that when you tell people you love they're like, "genuinely what the fuck"?
mine is white bread, spread mayo, and dorito chips. a dorito chip sandwich.
it's one of my favourite meals from when i was a kid, and even today, i crave it a lot even when i now live on my own, and instead of my dad making said sandwich for me, i do it myself.
it's the reason i keep doritos in my house even if i hate doritos as a chip. i don't pack it for lunch, because i always get questions on what the fuck is that, and it's more of an indulgent meal i eat in front of the TV with a side of coke after a long day.
in truth, it's a sandwich that my dad made us when we were young and newly moved to america because we were broke. we lived in our great grandma's house who had settled in america long before we had, and this dorito chip sandwich concoction was because the ingredients were cheap.
to be fair, my dad didn't originally make it for us. my parents would splurge on the occasional deli meats for us because they wanted us to have a full meal. it wasn't until i had once stayed awake past my bed time and i caught my dad having dinner (he would work until 1-2am, so he rarely had dinner with us) by himself in front of the TV, nursing a beer with this dorito sandwich, that i tried this. he had insisted i go to bed, i had insisted i try his sandwich, and it was a back and forth until he let me have a bite, and i negotiated having half his sandwich.
i liked it so much that i would ask for this so much, and my dad would go frustrated on why i preferred this sandwich over one with deli ham and cheese. i would insist that he can have the meat then, and it wasn't until i was much older, and my family had finally moved social and economic classes did i realise why he wanted me to have the different sandwich.
sure it wasn't healthy, but it was also the fact that my dad would eat that sandwich instead, so my sister and i could have a more filling and nutritious sandwich, rather than him.
i found this out when i was making this sandwich in my late teens (i hadn't made it in years, and the craving had come back to me), and my mom walked into the kitchen and she said: why are you making that. we are not poor anymore.
this is not the last time she will say this in my life. when i eat rice and salt as a meal because it reminds me of when i was young, she says the same thing. when i consecutively eat vienna sausage cans with rice because it's all i crave. when my meal serving is on the smaller side because i don't feel like eating, but she mistakes it for something else.
sometimes she tweaks the sentence: why are you eating that. people will think we're poor.
i bicker with her back and forth a lot because i enjoy these meals no matter, but she always mumbles under her breath about something i don't bother to listen to in response.
all of this goes to say, that sometimes i feel funny-- when i crave comfort meals i would have when i was younger, when in reality they were meals born out of poverty and the american dream.
i don't know whether to feel terrible because while these are cravings to me, to my parents they were sacrifices. i think about my dad eating at 2am instead of having dinner with us, and my mom to this day feeling like we have something to prove in our own home, over a decade later.
i think of all the food i am now able to eat and enjoy thanks to my parents. i think about how my parents' love for me has seeped into my life and made a home in the simplest of things, small reminders of their love for me and my sister.
mine is white bread, spread mayo, and dorito chips. a dorito chip sandwich.
it's one of my favourite meals from when i was a kid, and even today, i crave it a lot even when i now live on my own, and instead of my dad making said sandwich for me, i do it myself.
it's the reason i keep doritos in my house even if i hate doritos as a chip. i don't pack it for lunch, because i always get questions on what the fuck is that, and it's more of an indulgent meal i eat in front of the TV with a side of coke after a long day.
in truth, it's a sandwich that my dad made us when we were young and newly moved to america because we were broke. we lived in our great grandma's house who had settled in america long before we had, and this dorito chip sandwich concoction was because the ingredients were cheap.
to be fair, my dad didn't originally make it for us. my parents would splurge on the occasional deli meats for us because they wanted us to have a full meal. it wasn't until i had once stayed awake past my bed time and i caught my dad having dinner (he would work until 1-2am, so he rarely had dinner with us) by himself in front of the TV, nursing a beer with this dorito sandwich, that i tried this. he had insisted i go to bed, i had insisted i try his sandwich, and it was a back and forth until he let me have a bite, and i negotiated having half his sandwich.
i liked it so much that i would ask for this so much, and my dad would go frustrated on why i preferred this sandwich over one with deli ham and cheese. i would insist that he can have the meat then, and it wasn't until i was much older, and my family had finally moved social and economic classes did i realise why he wanted me to have the different sandwich.
sure it wasn't healthy, but it was also the fact that my dad would eat that sandwich instead, so my sister and i could have a more filling and nutritious sandwich, rather than him.
i found this out when i was making this sandwich in my late teens (i hadn't made it in years, and the craving had come back to me), and my mom walked into the kitchen and she said: why are you making that. we are not poor anymore.
this is not the last time she will say this in my life. when i eat rice and salt as a meal because it reminds me of when i was young, she says the same thing. when i consecutively eat vienna sausage cans with rice because it's all i crave. when my meal serving is on the smaller side because i don't feel like eating, but she mistakes it for something else.
sometimes she tweaks the sentence: why are you eating that. people will think we're poor.
i bicker with her back and forth a lot because i enjoy these meals no matter, but she always mumbles under her breath about something i don't bother to listen to in response.
all of this goes to say, that sometimes i feel funny-- when i crave comfort meals i would have when i was younger, when in reality they were meals born out of poverty and the american dream.
i don't know whether to feel terrible because while these are cravings to me, to my parents they were sacrifices. i think about my dad eating at 2am instead of having dinner with us, and my mom to this day feeling like we have something to prove in our own home, over a decade later.
i think of all the food i am now able to eat and enjoy thanks to my parents. i think about how my parents' love for me has seeped into my life and made a home in the simplest of things, small reminders of their love for me and my sister.
