You can't do this alone...

“Ving-suuuung! Come to eat!”

I squint one more time at the annoying lab report half-graded along with the stack of other papers that have yet to be assessed and sigh. I get up from my desk and proceed downstairs to eat dinner.

You’d think that after slogging through five years of graduate school that a guy could manage to land a job and get an apartment, but when you land a job as a tenure-track professor in the city of your childhood, things are a bit different. I had completed my PhD in the depths of the financial crisis so nobody in the industry was hiring. Fortunately, my dad managed to find an open position at SC State that needed a two-year effort to restore their satellite campus program.

I figured I could use that time to build a nest egg to launch my industry career and live with my parents as a bonus. When you’ve been on your own throughout a college career, though, there’s definitely something strange about reverting to the role of a dependent. There was one thing that I definitely didn’t mind with this supposed lifestyle downgrade, though…

the food.

If you don’t enjoy eating, we can’t be friends

I didn’t seriously start learning to cook for myself until my sophomore year in college, but even after eight years upon graduation, I was nowhere close to the skills of my parents when it came to the culinary arts.

Growing up, they kept my brother and me well-fed. Mom obsessed over health. Dad obsessed over taste. Perfect dishes flew out of the kitchen as if it were a vending machine for Michelin star restaurants.

I’ve been cooking for over twenty years now, and my brother and I have come into our own in the craft.

He specializes in baked goods, and I specialize in keeping two boys from eating the pets.

Anyway, the point I’m making is that food brings people together.

• It brings families together, connecting them across generational divides.

• Multiple families that share food bind them collectively into a tribe, a community, a culture.

• A large collection of these groups that share in the bounty become towns, cities, and nations.

At the very core of my identity, my roots, and my heritage, cooking has been something that I’ve practiced and improved for over half my life now. It’s what powered me through my explorations of music, theater, and dance in my effort to figure out who I was growing up.

In fact, I’d say that cooking is right up there with writing in the amount of time I devote to it on a regular basis as a family man. If I’m not writing or thinking about writing, then I’m cooking or thinking about cooking (not just because my kids and pets follow me around waiting to see if something yummy will appear in my vicinity).

I’m just as obsessed with the art of cooking as the art of writing.

Like my parents before me, this tradition as an act of love and devotion is one that I gladly pay forward.

It’s not just to my family, but to my friends and colleagues as well.

• I’ve cooked for dinner parties.

• I’ve cooked for birthday parties.

• I’ve cooked for potlucks and bake-offs.

These days, I don’t get to eat much of my cooking as the rate at which I do it is slightly below the rate of consumption. They say never trust a skinny cook, but you can take a look at their family if you’re not sure…

The saying should’ve been “Never trust a skinny, single, cook.”

• My boys are butterballs.

• My pets are pleasingly plump.

• My wife will kill me if I keep going with this example.

Food is life, is love, is legacy.

You hungry?

This question is a universal invitation to connect in Asian culture. It doesn’t matter which nationality it is. Whether you are Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Malaysian, Indian, the act of offering to go out to eat or food itself is the foundation for conducting business and networking.

Why do you think the Lazy Susan’s are so massive in traditional Chinese restaurants and Dim Sum and Hot Pot joints? Those tables are huge for a reason. That’s where business deals are born and celebrations of marriage, birth, the life of the recently passed all take place.

The dinner table is where communities thrive and grow.

Reflect on your own foodie traditions. Do you cook? What’s one family dish that defines your roots and heritage?

Journal about it or talk about it to someone close. Who knows? Maybe you’ll commit to cooking for your family every now and then? You may even stumble upon a new calling!

My kids are looking at me funny…must be time to feed them.

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!