Eating in the fast lane

No time for food to settle...eeeek!

Ever since I was a child, 5 years old to be exact, I’ve lived a very, very busy life. It was literally life in the fast lane! How can a 5-year old lead a busy schedule? Here’s how…

I started competitive swimming at the tender age of 5. At that early age, my life was tied to a strict schedule of school, after school work, daily 2-hour workouts after school and 2-hour workouts during weekends.

It didn’t exactly help that we lived a relatively near 8-kilometers away from school and the pool but faced one of the worst bumper to bumper traffic areas in Metro Manila every single day. The non-traffic travel time of 15 minutes snowballed into 1.5 to 2 hours for a one way journey! So imagine that travel time already took up 3-4 hours of my day!

Then there was school and school work! I had to maintain a certain grade point average in order to continue swimming. During recess and lunch times, I would often finish the morning’s homework already so that I’d have more time to sleep in the evening after a grueling workout. I know I was such a nerd, but I knew I had to do it to keep on swimming.

Therefore, eating was a grab, a quick chew (or chews) and a big swallow activity. I had to consume the maximum amount of food (I was an athlete so carbo loading every day!) in a minimum amount of time. Letting all the layers of flavors sink in one by one by one was out of the question.

Sadly, this bad habit I carry up until now. I can finish a mountain of steaming rice in less than 10 minutes!

Now that I do want to be a food writer. This habit has to be undone. Very quickly. Okaaaaayyyyy…why am I still rushing? Hahahaha! I just know how crucial it is to get to take pleasure in the eating experience and document it in detail. It will be such a challenge for me to reverse this deep-rooted habit of mine. I would need to enjoin all my will power and discipline to get to switch to the slow lane of basking in the sublime sensory experience that is eating.