This week, I want to pose a question: do you spend your days thinking about food? I don’t mean thinking about what to cook for the next meal or when you’re hungry. I mean like you’re always on the hunt on food, like a hunter-gatherer, like you’re always on the hunt for free food and food, in general. Do you consider this to be a kind of obsessive behavior?

Two weeks ago, as I was driving home from a day trip to Crater of the Moon National Monument and Preserve in southern Idaho, my aunt suddenly asked me, “Where can I get chicks?”

“Probably at the local garden center, why?”

Her next words sent a cold shiver up my spine and horrifying imagery began flooding my brain. My aunt wanted to raise baby chicks in her small backyard to be slaughtered for food. Immediately, my mom reacted, “You will not do such thing!” She began screaming and berate her sister. “Do you ever think about something other than food?”

I wondered about the same thing. Every time I talked to her, she’s either groggy from a nap or she’s chewing or gnawing on something. Then when we’re face to face, the topic always seemed to circle back to food. What can I eat? What’s good to eat? What can I do with this food?

I feel, unless I’m hungry, I should be more productive and think about something else. Besides, we are not living in a hunter-gatherer age. We live in an age where food is readily available, we just need to get up and get it.

There’s a saying that describes the Cantonese people and my aunt perfectly. Even after immigrating to the US in 2018, she still eat some weird things.

One of the weirdest is the leaves of a pumpkin plant. In fact, my mom’s brother, who lives next door to me would grow pumpkins only for its leaves. Honestly, I don’t know how they can eat such thing and call it good. If you’ve ever seen the leaves of a pumpkin plant, you’d probably it has little hairs and sometimes spikes on the back of the leaf. No thanks, I would rather let the leaves do its job and grow me some pumpkins for winter.