All meals today were in the chilly outdoors and away from all the Valentine crowds. I find it rewarding to not follow what everyone else is doing. It’s amusing to see those who proclaim that they’re expressing their individuality by getting a tattoo, getting giant rims on their cars, making their exhausts obscenely loud, taking selfies, posting pictures of food, etc… Isn’t that what everyone is doing? So rather than showing your individualism, you are, in fact, showing you’re part of this collective way of thinking.

There was a period in my life when I was regularly posting about practically everything I ate. I loved doing it but eventually got disillusioned with it once everyone started doing the same thing on social media. I was taking pictures of my food long before Instagram existed. I’ll confess that I still enjoy photographing food and continue to do so to some degree, but I now feel like I want to guard these special moments from social media. It’s as if I’ve developed a certain reverence for my meals that impede me from spoiling the moment by bothering with social media. On some level, it is similar to how I feel when I’m in the concert hall. I consider the concert hall so sacred that I’ll completely power down my phone.

I don’t mean to turn this into a rant on social media. I just lament that we’re possibly losing many great thinkers to the trappings of following the latest hashtag. Instead of lining up for the latest trending restaurant, try looking up the recipe of a traditional dish and cook it. Cook it again, and cook it some more. Until recently, I had no idea what some ingredients looked like in the produce section. What do they smell like? What do they taste like when they’re raw? Where does it come from?

It seems like cooking traditional dishes is not the trendy thing to do. Take out is far more manageable. You appreciate foods of different cultures much more when you try and cook them yourselves.