One other related subject to food that I find interesting is not just what we eat, it's how we eat it. I hadn't really thought about this before all the racefail stuff of this year, because it was just something we did, that how we eat changes in front of white people and "our" people. It's not just the use of chopsticks -- we all know how to use them, but my family doesn't tend to use them unless we're in a Chinese restaurant, or occasionally at home if someone makes Chinese noodles. We usually eat with a spoon and fork. I *think* this is more of a Filipino custom (so is eating with one's hands, but we mostly don't do that). Outside, with white people, we eat with a fork and knife. It seems to be considered uneducated? infantile? in American/Canadian white culture to use a spoon and fork to eat? It wasn't ever really a big deal or anything, we all sort of just picked up on it and adopted this new way of eating. Ordering food in restaurants was harder to learn, because whenever we went out, it was either my parents or grandparents who ordered for everyone, and the dishes were put in the middle of the table and everyone ate some of everything. Ordering a meal just for yourself, or even everyone ordering one dish to share, that was very strange to me. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing or anything like that (autonomy as a child! who knew?), but it was certainly different.

Sorry. I didn't think I had so much to say about this.