About

A Taste of Home is about comfort food.

Comfort foods have the power to elicit sentimental value and even evoke nostalgic feelings. It’s amazing that the right food can bring a sense of peace and security, and even conjure up memories and emotions that make us feel safe and comforted.

It’s why we call them comfort foods. They comfort us. They conjure up memories of our childhood that we miss and yearn for – even as adults. They remind us of a time when we were ‘cared for’ and life seemed to be so much less stressful.

Cooking comfort foods, was introduced to me in my first year as a college student at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Living on campus in the newly constructed Warren Dorms, our meals mostly consisted of hitting up the on-campus cafeterias with our student meal plans. That was food for sustenance. Food for pleasure was totally different. That magic happened in the dead of night in our dorm room. One of our suitemates brought a rice cooker, microwave, and a hotplate. With that – we somehow made some of the BEST comfort foods a freshman college student could ever imagine. Simple stuff, like fried rice and egg drop soup – always hit the spot. We moved into an apartment our second year and really reaped the benefits of having our own kitchen. We made some fantastic home cooked dinners! From that, I walked away with two profound food understandings 1.) Comfort foods were powerful. 2.) Comfort foods were doable.
 
Fast forward 15 years, I’m married with kids and we make the decision to move from Los Angeles to Kansas City, an Asian food mecca to an Asian food wasteland. We are talking 2009 – and there just isn’t much in the way of authentic Asian comfort foods in the Midwest. And so I embark on this endeavor to cook foods that I remember. Armed with a few Asian supermarkets and a local Super Target – I build on this idea that comfort foods are powerful and comfort foods are doable.
 
Comfort food is not gourmet or fusion. That has never been my goal. I’m not a chef. I’m a dad of six, that likes to eat and loves to cook and serve. I’ll leave it to the chefs to create and fuse. But leave it to me to figure out how to make good home-cooked meals – that are reasonable, easy, and fast.
 
That’s where this idea of A Taste of Home comes from. For every student, newlywed, or recently re-located Asian – here’s some help in battling homesickness and bringing a little comfort into your home. Take me home…even if it’s just for a moment…