My Fast Food History

Ban Xeo

From when I was a little girl, my mom would always cook home cooked meals. She would always cook mainly fish, rice and vegetables. She would only cook breakfast on Sunday mornings. On school days, we would basically make cereal for ourselves, and she would give us lunch money. The only time we had fast food was when my mom would be too busy to cook that night. She would make this one special dish that was my favorite dish of all (Ban Xeo). It’s sort of like a Vietnamese quesadilla, except it doesn’t involve cheese. It is a corn meal texture, crepe like outer core, and it is filled with pieces of pork, shrimp, and bean sprouts. You eat it with like a fish/chili sauce and I used to be so excited when I would see her preparing it.

 

I used to be afraid of eating fish and rice because of an incident that happened. One night, I was eating fish and I didn’t take out all of the fish bones, so I ended up swallowing a big fish bone. I guess I swallowed it horizontally so it ended up being stuck in my throat and it hurt every time I swallowed. So I was scared but my mom and dad knew what to do. I see my dad walking over to me with a big ball of rice, he told me to swallow it without chewing it, and I was thinking to myself “ How am I supposed to swallow this big thing?”, but then I tried and the next thing I know, the fish bone is gone. I was so amazed but now I still am hesitant to eat fish.

I can look back and see when we began to eat fast food almost daily. It was when my dad first left. Once he left, my mom was left to raise me, my sister, and two brothers by herself, so she was tired a lot. My brothers and I would mostly just go to McDonalds or Del Taco because it was close to my house. From then on, I would eat fast for a couple of days out of the week. One I was in Jr. High, I would most likely get fast food after school, that is until I saw this documentary about fast food and the bad things that go into the food. I can say I was pretty naïve because I would say “How can something that tastes so good be so bad.”

Now that I’m basically on my own, I’ve been eating fast food like the first week of college, but now I’m trying to eat a lot healthier. My friend would always nag me and say that it’s not good and she would always say that I’m getting fat, even though I’m not! :( I’m tired of her nagging me all the time so I’m trying to eat healthier foods now. Instead of going to fast food restaurants, I would just go to Subway and buy a foot long. Although I’m trying to eat healthy at Subway, I still prefer my mom’s cooking because I am beginning to miss a home cooked meal.