City of Corn by Allison Fritz '22

CITY OF C RN

ALLISON FRITZ '22

Thinking about Ohio, the stereotype is that all we have is corn. As an Ohio native, I think it’s partially true. Not just in the country landscapes, but in our supermarkets too. Corn Flakes, Popcorn, and anything with high-fructose corn syrup. I have no idea why, but the words “City of Corn” came to my mind one day, and I feel like this describes Cleveland, Ohio pretty well, as well as many other areas in the MidWest. I started thinking about food from other cities, and times that I’ve been to restaurants around the world, envied how they had so many dining options. There’s one country I’m especially familiar with, one that happens to have many choices for food.

Every summer in Taiwan, I used to get viciously bitten by tropical mosquitos, and would scratch so hard each time that it would draw blood. The older members of my family that live there always said that it was because my blood was “too sweet”, and mosquitoes were attracted to it. That I should eat healthier to balance it out.

My face used to puff up too, and faded red spots reminiscent of an allergic reaction appeared on my skin. Apparently, I did have some kind of allergy. I would rub my eyes until they got itchier, and everytime I sneezed my eyes watered excessively, to the point where I sneezed once and people asked me why I was crying, which gave me much confusion. Maybe it was the change in humidity, or maybe the pollution in the air, but when I was younger, I always thought that I was allergic to mosquitos. I tried to prepare myself, with anti-itch serums, insect-repellent stickers—that would burn your eyes if you touched them with the peppermint-scented substance that covered them—and some kind of herbal medicine from the local doctor that was said to help the swelling. Despite this, my mom said that people thought I looked like a doll when I was a toddler. I personally don’t remember this. I just know that people would comment on how big my eyes were. As I got older, I never quite knew how to react when my mom would be talking to someone, and they would ask her if she was my host-parent, because I looked like a foreigner. I started realizing that I was sticking out, different. It wasn’t as if I wasn’t accepted, but it was still a somewhat awkward situation. So I tried to blend in a little. It wasn’t as if I intentionally rarely spoke English, but because no one could really understand me anyways, and I really wasn’t the type to purposely try to stand out, I just never felt the need to go out of my way to use it. Perhaps I tried to become less picky with foods the older I got, so I could be seen the same way. I accepted things like daily morning chicken broth— made by my grandma and placed in a glass bottle on the marble kitchen counter— and I would try barbequed “rice blood cake” (which I’m pretty sure is the vegetarian version of pig’s blood cake but honestly I’m still not sure). These were just a few of the food related cultural differences I experienced. One somewhat unpleasant food experience involved fish bones. When I was around four years old, my mom was out one evening, and some other family members were feeding me a meal of fish. I do enjoy fish, but being raised in America, I really didn’t understand at the time that “food fish” was a living being that had vertebrae, because all I ever knew was salmon belly from Heinen’s, with all the scales and little bones picked away. So that night, I innocently ate the fish. Soon I realized that it was not just smooth meat, but instead, dozens of little thorns that I was supposed to pick out. I didn’t know this. When my mom came back home, I ran to her right away and cried out “They fed me fish bones!” Everyone laughed at me, since serving the whole fish is normal. But I’ve always had a minor fear of a sharp bone getting stuck in my throat, because my mom always told me that you can choke on these bones.

Another disappointing – now somewhat laughable – experience was when I saw this questionable animal organ-looking item in the kitchen one day. It really shocked me when I found out that this was edible. My grandma, wanting the best for us, kept encouraging my cousin and I to eat it, because apparently it had health benefits, but it was incredibly hard for me to accept. I think eventually we were forced to eat it, either out of politeness or having it literally shoved into our mouths, but all I remember is that this was the worst taste I had ever experienced. What surprised me even more was that after that day, I never expected to see it again, as I had never seen it before that time in my life, but one day, our extended family members and some friends gathered in a restaurant for some kind of dinner celebration. All I can remember is that the organ-thing appeared again, this time, on top of a plate of steamed vegetables and there were eight of them, sitting on that plate like it was some kind of everyday meal. I knew I wasn’t the only odd one out because my cousin, who was born and raised there, also admitted that she would never eat that. Since no one seemed to turn their attention towards that dish, I let out a sigh of relief. That is, until some great-aunts started grabbing the squishy orbs with their chopsticks, and my cousin jokingly mentioned that I liked eating them, with a mischievous giggle. I quickly said no, but it was too late, the chopsticks were coming, and the orb was about to go onto my plate. Again, I insisted that I was okay, and again the aunts insisted back, as there is a culture of hospitality and they believed I was just declining it to be polite. It ended up sitting on my plate for the whole night but I never touched it, and I’m not sure what happened to it, but I’m so glad I didn’t have to eat it again. A more light-hearted experience was at a sushi restaurant. There is a type of candy wrapped in transparent rice paper that resembles plastic. Everyone always told me that it was edible, so I didn’t ask people every single time I ate food with this paper. At the restaurant, the massive sushi I ordered came perfectly rolled, with a thin layer of that paper wrapped around it. It was impressive how similar the paper looked like saran-wrap. I quickly gobbled up all the pieces, enjoying my meal until my aunt suddenly turned to me and asked me where the plastic was. “Plastic?” I asked. “What plastic?” It was at that moment when I realized that they did not use rice paper for sushi, that was just for the candy. What bound the sushi rolls together was indeed saran-wrap. However, despite these rather questionable experiences from when I was younger, the food choices in Taiwan are still amazing. Brown Sugar Pearl Milk Tea on almost every street, iconic Beef Noodle Soup, mango shaved ice and radish cakes were staples that I would be excited for the whole year. Not to mention cuisines inspired by other countries such as steak teppanyaki, spaghetti from Ikea, and a stack of sugared fruits on top of waffles and ice cream. And all of these delectable items could be accessed in surrounding areas twenty minutes or less from my grandma’s house, where we stayed.