Food for Thought

Food for the mind, food for the body, food for the soul

the best of Kansas City beignets

Food for thought

Food for fun

Food is a thing for everyone

A cupcake for you

Spaghetti for two

Lee-Sang for the New Years

Fire noodles for the good tears

A little bubble tea

with a dash of sesame

From the market to the kitchen

The kitchen to the plate

The plate to the table

to serve the food you ate

-Zoie Hing

Everything about food can be inspiring.

Food served as my scrapbook for my first young adult adventures. This past year I began not only documenting my trips around the country with photos, but with photos of food. Everything from the weekly cups of coffee to the jumbo hamburgers were captured on camera.

Nothing reminds me more of Kansas City, Missouri than the eye-opening taste of my first beignet, stuffed with apple jam and crispy fried chicken, all dusted off with the iconic blanket of powdered sugar.

Food was there to teach me what being Malaysian meant.

I learned more about Lunar New Year traditions from one plate of Lee Sang (essentially, a Chinese version of coleslaw) than an entire week I spent preparing for the festival. Supposedly the dish serves as a symbol of luck and good fortune.

A wild group of friends and I gathered around the round table, eyes held on the Lee Sang and chopsticks in hand as we tossed the pile of shredded carrots and radishes high into the air. Strands of white and orange ended up everywhere, but no one cared. The higher you tossed, the better your fortune for the year.

Food was a new take on art.

People do crazy things when it comes to food. Across Instagram you can find pastry chefs whipping up the worlds' newest creations, from chocolate piñatas to mirror glaze cakes. I wind up spending hours watching people prepare dishes with such meticulous detail it seemed as if they were performing surgery. The end product is worth it too; the dish looks as if it belongs in a museum of modern art.

Everything about food can be aestheticized; the dishes they arrive on, the performance as they are prepared, the taste, the sound, the texture, the artistry can elevate food.

And of course, food was my constant companion.

Forget boyfriends or exams. In times of need, or when you are at your worst, food is always there for you. Coffee is there to pull us through finals. Ramen is there to hold us through financial struggles. Mac and cheese is there just to make us feel better about nearly everything.

We all need to eat to survive -- its a primitive requirement. Why leave food at its minimum potential though?

Food has the capacity to do so much more.