I'm made of the stuff I've breathed, drunk, and eaten. So I'm made of the Japanese powdered milk in a can with a photo of a gigantic baby grinning ear to ear, for my mother didn't produce enough milk when I needed it. I drank that powdered milk in my grandparents' house in Tokyo. There my mom also fed me with lots of mushed tofu and mushed green peppers when I was ready for solid food. She fed me tofu and green peppers partially because they're nutritious, but mostly because she hated these items. When she was in school, she had to suffer through many a school lunch that included these ingredients. She didn't want me to suffer from the same experience, so she trained me to like them when I was barely a year old. Now I love tofu and green peppers--and she can now transfer her tofu and green peppers to my plates if the need be.

I'm also made of the Pad Thai and Pad See Ewe that Ms. Panya cooked for my lunch when my parents were away from our Bangkok apartment. Thai noodles of various shapes stir-fried in sweetish sauces, these became my childhood favorite. Not hamburgers, not spaghetties, but Pad Thai and Pad See Ewe. Right before my father was transferred back to Japan, my mom tried to learn the recipes from Ms. Panya, but her Pad Thai and Pad See Ewe were never as good as Ms. Panya's. Something was missing. It might have been the ingredients she had to substitute, or it might have just been the climate. We went back to Japan when I was 7, and I spent the next ten years of my life longing for the Thai dishes in my new, rural hometown of Kakamigahara.

I'm also made of the Goldfish Rice, an item on the (mandatory) school lunch that horrified me enough to play hooky that day. My fake headache didn't work; I was sent to school. All through the morning classes, I pictured bits of goldfish sticking out of a mound of steaming rice. Flowing fins, delicate rib cages, bulging eyes. The imagination almost made me genuinely sick. At lunch time, though, the dreaded Goldfish Rice turned out to be just seasoned rice with bits of carrots, the carrot being the proud produce of the half-farming, half-suburban community where we lived as newcomers. Goldfish Rice wasn't particularly tasty, but it was far better than rice with real goldfish bits, so I ate it all. Now all the carrot bits are a part of me.

I'm made of those falafils I had at a little hole-in-the-wall Lebanese restaurant in Chicago, too. It was a year and a half or so after I moved from Tokyo to Chicago, when Patrick took me to that restaurant. I'd had falafils before, in a hyped-up Middle Eastern restaurant in Tokyo--those were bland, oily and suffocatingly dry. Plus they were god-awful expensive. I was convinced that anything that involved chick pea flour and oil were evil. With a considerable dose of suspicion, I bit into the falafil sandwich in the dimly lit restaurant on Foster. One bite, and the Lebanese tourism posters on the wall and a few hookahs on the top of the shelf disappeared--the falafil was so good. The complex yet not-so-overwhelming flavors of the herbs, the subtle sweetness of the chickpeas, and the crunchy shells were a perfect match. Add creamy and sesamy hummus and a pita, and it was divine. With just one bite, falafil ascended from one of my most hated foods to one of my favorite foods in the world.

I'm made of countless other things, too--things my mom cooked and taught me to cook, things I had at good and bad restaurants, things I had overseas, things I had in the neighborhood. In essence, this blog is a space for me (and sometimes Patrick) to ruminate on what we've eaten, what good eating means, and what eating specific food means to the broader scheme of things. If you live in Chicago or have a plan to travel here, you'll find pretty good, user-tested list of good restaurants and fun stores. If you don't, I hope you will--and if you still don't, I hope you'll enjoy the vicarious experience of Chicago food life without all the fat and cholesterol in your blood stream!