Modern age has transformed much about our habits of living—be it that how we acquire information, the type of buildings that we live in, or the diverse range of dietary options that make up our daily sustenance. The close ties and the relationships once shared between the people living in such adjacent vicinity in the village have long since become a legacy in the past and the bedtime stories told to our youngsters. Growing up in these particular places is a mixture of bittersweet memories, defined perhaps by the profound experiences during the celebration of the festivals, harvesting seasons, and the coming of another New Year and saddened with the knowledge of inevitability that such childhood experience would have been no longer in existence as our world grew up and grew out of it.
To revive such estranged and diminished nostalgia associated with the heritage house, flavor memories are utilized as an effective stimulant. Here we attempt to retell the stories of the visiting individuals who might have had an experience growing up in such houses by providing olfactory and textural taste stimuli. Powders were created,which were reminiscent of the traditional flavors in my parents' time around 1960s and 70s. Associated visual stimuli were omitted as the goal was to help individuals recall their different childhood memories which were their very own narrative.
I imagined a timeline of events with which each family must have gone through as they had lived and breathed throughout the courses of their occupancy in the heritage house and how the flavors of each event evolved through time towards the more present. I thought about how excited my siblings and I were with jubilation as we pranced around the dinner table, impatiently waiting for the celebratory meals of the New Year to arrive on the round dinner table when we were just wee small. Or how we bombarded our parents with questions on why thin noodles with chicken flavored with black sesame oil were served during the cold days or why the cloudy pig's knuckle soup was served with long noodles that were never meant to be broken on grandparents' birthdays. Or how I could always count on finding on the grandparents' living room table those puffed sweets coated with the toasted black sesame seeds. Or on the Lunar Festival, I could always cajole my beloved mother into making those sweet glutinous rice balls rolled in the most aromatic peanut powders.
On several occasions, I have seen my mother make those pickled vegetable batons of carrot and daikon radish in the sweetened vinegar or its counterpart of fermented nappa cabbage with Korean red chili flakes passionately known as the kimchi. As time pressed onward, each newer generation finds their own new favorites to associate with the national holidays as the resources became more available and the influence of the Western countries became more affluent—a break from their parents' old and common food stable of the delicious stewed pork knuckles or the fat belly lardons on the steamy bowlful of hot white rice.
Pizza, was what immediately came to my mind. Slight variation from the soft Taiwanese bread, pressed into flattened discs, and the addition of the readily available pineapple slices and the squared ham slices found ubiquitously in the breakfast sandwiches easily became the first Taiwanese adapted version of American Hawaiian Pizza. The debut of the TVs and the eventual appearance of the big screen drive-in movies, made the popcorn a trusty companion and perhaps with the soda soft drinks of root beer to quench that thirst.
From the past to the present, before the time of the heritage house, there were many trees; their branches inched forward each day, as the fibrous barks before them thickened for support and as a will for wisdom. The natural cycles took place as the flowering trees blossomed, fruited and seeded. Through the observations and the ancient knowledge, molds that appeared on the fruits were experimented and treasured; their presence aided in the fermentation of the soy beans into miso and a whole range of the fermented food products then came to be, such as the feared, yet delicious stinky tofu.
Celebrating my fondest childhood experiences, through one possible scope of the many that is possible in the context of the heritage house, I have created flavorful powders that powerfully triggered and captured my childhood flavor memories:
I imagined a timeline of events with which each family must have gone through as they had lived and breathed throughout the courses of their occupancy in the heritage house and how the flavors of each event evolved through time towards the more present. I thought about how excited my siblings and I were with jubilation as we pranced around the dinner table, impatiently waiting for the celebratory meals of the New Year to arrive on the round dinner table when we were just wee small. Or how we bombarded our parents with questions on why thin noodles with chicken flavored with black sesame oil were served during the cold days or why the cloudy pig's knuckle soup was served with long noodles that were never meant to be broken on grandparents' birthdays. Or how I could always count on finding on the grandparents' living room table those puffed sweets coated with the toasted black sesame seeds. Or on the Lunar Festival, I could always cajole my beloved mother into making those sweet glutinous rice balls rolled in the most aromatic peanut powders.
On several occasions, I have seen my mother make those pickled vegetable batons of carrot and daikon radish in the sweetened vinegar or its counterpart of fermented nappa cabbage with Korean red chili flakes passionately known as the kimchi. As time pressed onward, each newer generation finds their own new favorites to associate with the national holidays as the resources became more available and the influence of the Western countries became more affluent—a break from their parents' old and common food stable of the delicious stewed pork knuckles or the fat belly lardons on the steamy bowlful of hot white rice.
Pizza, was what immediately came to my mind. Slight variation from the soft Taiwanese bread, pressed into flattened discs, and the addition of the readily available pineapple slices and the squared ham slices found ubiquitously in the breakfast sandwiches easily became the first Taiwanese adapted version of American Hawaiian Pizza. The debut of the TVs and the eventual appearance of the big screen drive-in movies, made the popcorn a trusty companion and perhaps with the soda soft drinks of root beer to quench that thirst.
From the past to the present, before the time of the heritage house, there were many trees; their branches inched forward each day, as the fibrous barks before them thickened for support and as a will for wisdom. The natural cycles took place as the flowering trees blossomed, fruited and seeded. Through the observations and the ancient knowledge, molds that appeared on the fruits were experimented and treasured; their presence aided in the fermentation of the soy beans into miso and a whole range of the fermented food products then came to be, such as the feared, yet delicious stinky tofu.
Celebrating my fondest childhood experiences, through one possible scope of the many that is possible in the context of the heritage house, I have created flavorful powders that powerfully triggered and captured my childhood flavor memories:
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