Why is it called "What You Want to Eat"?

 I'm guessing the first thing most people will think of when they see the title of the website is, "wait, why is it not 'what DO you want to eat?'", and I totally understand the confusion. Or, you might be thinking, the stress is on the want part, as in "what you want to eat is ___, (and not something else)". Whatever way you interpreted it, you would be kind of right. I would like to take this time to enlighten you all on where this name came from.

Unfortunately, it's not a direct quote from someone, so this backstory isn't that simple. Rather, this phasing of "what you want to eat" comes from the Singapore dialect of English, colloquially called "Singlish". My mother is from Singapore, but she's spent most of her adult life in America, so she only has a slight accent. My Ah-yi ("auntie") on the other hand, has lived all her life in Singapore, so she has a much thicker accent and speaks Singlish much more fluently. "What you want to eat" is basically "What do you want to eat", but in a more Singlish accent. 

A little fun fact about Singlish (because I got my undergrad in Linguistics), it's constructed from primarily Chinese (and probably Malay) grammar, and then translated into English. That's why the phrase "what you want to eat" is said without the extra "do"; it's because Chinese and I'm assuming Malay both don't need one grammatically. Any Singaporeans or Malays reading this, feel free to comment and agree or fact-check me haha. 

To wrap things up and keep things short, the title of our recipe website is "What You Want to Eat" because I want to pay homage to my Chinese/Singapore heritage, as many of my favorite foods and recipes come from my mother and her culture. If you read it the second way, (this is) "what you want to eat",  you would also be right, as I thought about that meaning too when coming up with our website title. I thought it would be fun to have a little ambiguity in the meaning of the name of the website so people can think of their own interpretations. (It's only fun because -again- I studied Linguistics, humor me a little bit, haha). 

Either way you interpret our name, I hope you enjoy our recipes and have them be something you want to eat more often. I also hope the next time you hear someone ask, "what do you what to eat?", you think of us too~

:)