Why we love home-cooked meals<\/strong><\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t always matter what\u2019s being served, as long as it\u2019s made at home.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the view of Nora Rubel, an associate professor of religion and classics.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Rubel is an expert on American Judaism, as well as food and ethnicity. She\u2019s the coeditor of the 2014 anthology Religion, Food, and Eating in North America<\/em> (Columbia University Press), and is working on a book entitled Recipes for the Melting Pot: Reading The Settlement Cook Book.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a great deal of meaning in having someone make a special meal for you,\u201d says Rubel, who recalls taking long drives home to New Jersey to find a pot of freshly made soup waiting for her. \u201cMy paternal grandmother never learned how to cook, yet my father was accustomed to her food, and maybe even harbored some nostalgia for it,\u201d she says. \u201cThings didn\u2019t taste right to him unless they were burnt or ill-prepared.\u201d<\/p>\n Rubel notes that her mother used to make a \u201cweird fruit compote\u201d that included pineapple and curry powder\u2014and she hated it. While feeling a sense of mortality one year, she decided to learn how to make the dish, since it reminded her of her mother.<\/p>\n \u201cI created a narrative [surrounding] that recipe that made the dish important to me, whether I liked it or not,\u201d she says. \u201cOf course, when I found that the recipe was simply torn from a magazine, I gave up on the compote. But the point was made.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014Peter Iglinski<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Kiara Martinez \u201919 As soon as Kiara Martinez \u201919 steps out of the airport in her home city of Boston, she knows exactly where she\u2019ll be headed: a local Colombian restaurant to pick up some lulo juice.<\/p>\n Lulo, a citrus similar to passion fruit, is native to Ecuador, where Martinez was born. She says that lulo juice reminds her of her childhood, when her family would pick lulo off a tree in her backyard.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fruit isn\u2019t grown here, but there\u2019s one place in Boston that makes [lulo juice]; so my mom will always take me there when I arrive,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n When Martinez is away at school, there\u2019s one thing in particular that she misses about her family\u2019s home cooking, and that\u2019s the seasoning. On Thanksgiving, her family\u2019s turkey is sprinkled with Goya spices and always flavored with her dad\u2019s favorite Chilean and Costa Rican sauces. Her mother\u2019s cooking has become a fusion of Ecuadorian cuisine\u2014natural, organic, and spiced\u2014and Colombian cuisine, which she describes as \u201cfood fried twice.\u201d Her favorite meal is her mother\u2019s empanadas<\/a><\/strong>, deep fried crescents stuffed with beef, tomato, and cilantro.<\/p>\n \u201cIt doesn\u2019t even matter what we\u2019re eating,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s honestly the seasoning aspect that I miss most.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jenny Jun \u201918 When Jenny Jun \u201918 returns to Southern California for the holidays, she\u2019s doesn\u2019t expect to be eating at restaurants too often. Jun says her mother doesn\u2019t like eating out, and she\u2019s a very talented cook.<\/p>\n Jun\u2019s mother and father both emigrated to the United States from South Korea. She says her family often experiments with American dishes, but they tend to eat a lot of Korean food.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really nice to just go home and eat the meals that I grew up eating,\u201d Jun says.<\/p>\n The dish she looks forward to the most while she\u2019s home is kimchi jigae<\/a><\/strong>, a Korean stew that her mother prepares from scratch. Kimchi is fermented cabbage. Preparing it can be a time-consuming process that involves finding the perfect blend of salt and spices.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve watched my mom make the kimchi since I was young,\u201d Jun says. \u201cNow every time I go home, I actually try to learn how to make it myself.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Shreya Patel \u201917 After a long day of travel home to Alabama, Shreya Patel \u201917 knows she\u2019ll be heading straight from the airport to indulge in Chick-fil-A. Going to school in the northeast, she finds that she really misses southern-style cooking.<\/p>\n \u201cMy favorite home-cooked meal is definitely fried chicken<\/a>, mashed potatoes<\/a><\/strong> and collard greens<\/a>,<\/strong>\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Patel says being home allows her to have a more balanced diet, and, free from her busy school schedule, she enjoys being able to eat dinner at an earlier hour.<\/p>\n Although her family doesn\u2019t often cook, when they do, her aunt usually takes the lead, alternating between Indian, Mexican, and American dishes.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I\u2019m at school, I really miss my aunt\u2019s homemade tacos,\u201d Patel says. \u201cThey\u2019re hard-shelled, and packed with beans, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, sour cream, fried tortilla, and taco sauce.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Chris Horgan \u201917 Although the place Chris Horgan \u201917 calls home is only an hour\u2019s drive from Rochester, he usually only sees his family during breaks and holidays.<\/p>\n But each time he makes the trip from the University to Medina, located just outside of Buffalo, he knows that a warm dish of chicken cacciatore<\/a><\/strong> will be waiting for him.<\/p>\n \u201cI just feel like the food from home has more soul and love,\u201d Horgan says. Smiling, he adds, \u201cMaybe that\u2019s not fair to say\u2014they put a lot of love in the food here, but it\u2019s just the variation at home that I miss.\u201d<\/p>\n Even though he knows that his first meal home will be Italian, both his parents are actually of Irish descent. His favorite meal, without a doubt, is corn beef and cabbage<\/a><\/strong> with potatoes.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Irish part of our meals is that they always seem to have potatoes involved,\u201d Horgan says. \u201cMy mom is a wonderful cook. You\u2019re making me miss her food as we speak.\u201d<\/p>\n By Lindsey Valich<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cOne of the main values of growing and cooking your own food is that this gives you control and awareness about where your food is coming from,\u201d says Leila Nadir, a lecturer in sustainability and environmental humanities at Rochester. \u201cThe more we can take control over what we put in our bodies, the more awareness we can have of our own health.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Nadir, increased consumption of processed foods and mass-produced meals not only means people often don\u2019t know what they\u2019re eating, but it also denotes a break from basic, do-it-yourself food preparation skills such as preserving, pickling, and slow cooking.<\/p>\n She\u2019s partnered with Cary Peppermint, an associate professor of art and art history at Rochester, to help people rediscover endangered food and environmental practices. Their project, part of the ongoing initiative EcoArtTech, is designed to eliminate what they deem \u201cindustrial amnesia\u201d\u2014a neglect of do-it-yourself practices of growing and preparing food, caused by industrialization.<\/p>\n The project includes workshops on the process of fermenting, such as turning cabbage into sauerkraut<\/a><\/strong>; communal meal preparation and dining experiences; and work with SeedFolk City Farm<\/a><\/strong>, which invites youths in the city of Rochester to practice urban farming at sites throughout the city.<\/p>\n Nadir further lauds the environmental benefits of growing your own food, buying locally sourced ingredients, and eating fruits and vegetables that are in season. Such practices help reduce resources used to package and transport food from distant locations and decrease the use of pesticides.<\/p>\n In addition to the benefits of home-cooked meals, Nadir says many people believe that the emotions of the person cooking your food are manifested in the actual meal.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen food is made by a machine, you possibly might not have the same experience as you would if someone who loves you creates your food,\u201d Nadir says. \u201cOur culture has a saying that food tastes better when it\u2019s made with love. We laugh about it and joke about it, but maybe it\u2019s more real than we\u2019d like to admit.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When you head home for winter break, what are you hungry for? Dani Douglas \u201917 poses the question to four of her classmates, and provides links to recipes for these home-made favorites.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":682,"featured_media":204662,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[22372,34582,22502,16072,93],"class_list":["post-204612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-community","tag-department-of-religion-and-classics","tag-environmental-humanities-program","tag-nora-rubel","tag-school-of-arts-and-sciences","tag-sustainability"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nSurprisingly, the quality of the cooking doesn\u2019t always matter either.<\/p>\n![\"Kiara](\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Kiara-Martinez-630x630.jpg\")
\n<\/strong>Home: Boston, Massachusetts
\nMajor: economics<\/p>\n![\"Jenny](\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Jenny-Jun.jpg\")
\n<\/strong>Home: Fullerton, California
\nMajor: health policy<\/p>\n![\"Shreya](\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Shreya-Patel.jpg\")
\n<\/strong>Home: Jonesboro, Alabama
\nMajor: general engineering<\/p>\n![\"Chris](\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Chris-Horgan.jpg\")
\n<\/strong>Home: Medina, New York
\nMajors: political science and creative writing<\/p>\n
\n![\"students](\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/fea-fermentation-workshop.jpg\")
Home cooked\u2014and home grown<\/h2>\n