In 2019, I traveled to Thailand on my last big international trip before lockdown, though of course I didn't know it at the time. I had plans the following year to visit Scotland and to cook on the Hebridean island of Eigg (something I'll be doing next June instead), and to visit a handful of other places. And while my travels were delayed, the time in one place also offered me space to reflect on how I experienced that trip through the lens of a food writer. And, it allowed me to reflect on how I seek out and understand balance in food during my travels more generally.

I'm still working on my own personal definition of 'balance' when it comes to describing food. Though imperfect, I tend to come back to the idea of a harmony of flavors, rather than too much of one thing. But even there we run into an issue because balance in this sense is subjective. Then there's the fact that we approach balance differently depending on the traditions we're drawing from and our own personal tastes. Is there a universal idea of balance, then? Can there be? Or is balance, like so many things in life, largely contextual?