I grew up learning about food from my Japanese mother who was an outstanding cook, gardener, and artist. My father, a North Carolina native, shared his own culinary interests in traditional southern cooking, as did my grandmother whenever she came to visit us. She cooked up pots of beans, cornbread, and my father’s favorites foods.
My mother shared her Japanese food as well as her love of ethnic foods she learned to cook from friends we encountered when we lived in California, Alaska, South and North Carolina, and Germany. Later, I lived in Japan, Utah, California, and now Texas and added to my long list of favorite foods from around the world.
For me, comfort food has always been the Japanese food we ate at home, freshly prepared rice, simply prepared vegetables, and grilled food with my mother’s teriyaki sauce, but I love the new food adventures I have encountered in my own life and my whole-food plant-based way of eating.
