Wifey's "Intelligent" Thoughts:
Starting out as an undomesticated housewifey
I learned how to cook rice only after the wedding. I learned a gazillion other stuff AFTER the wedding--the type of stuff you'd probably want to know before getting married or before living on your own when someone else has been doing all the chores for you since you were a kid. If you can already manage on your own, good for you! But I didn't. Hence, this blog.
I've been cooking consistently for about a year now, but I'm not particularly passionate about spending tons of time and effort for a dish that could be gobbled up in seconds anyway.
In one of our breakfast get-togethers (just like a 5-year-old, I'm proud to declare that I was the one who prepared breakfast that time), a friend remarked that cooking seemed to come naturally for me--perhaps it was because of the way I had carried myself, looking quite poised in the kitchen. Seriously now, I was surprised at his comment, since I'd never seen myself as a "natural cook". After some thought, I replied that maybe it's because I'd been watching a lot of cooking shows and I hung out in the kitchen occasionally while I was growing up, observing household help prepare the veggies. I'd sometimes help in slicing tomatoes or removing the ends of green bean pods. And so another friend asked, "So that's all it took for you to learn how to cook?"
Yeah, I think so, I replied.
I started out fumbling, and then I just sort of got used to it. When you're already starving, you have no choice but to survive through the cooking.
What I didn't tell them, though, was that sometimes when I'm cooking alone, I'd say the ingredients and each
step aloud and pretend I'm on a cooking show talking to my audience. "Next, we add two
tablespoons of salt to our ground pork mixture, and allow it to simmer in the pot for 5 minutes until it becomes tender and has wonderfully absorbed all the flavors..."
Several weeks after that incident, I realized that although I didn't come from a family of cooks and had no formal training whatsoever, hey, I've had a lot more "education" in cooking than I'd thought! Watching what my mom watched on TV, my exposure to cooking shows started when I was very little, with a consistent dose of Wok with Yan--I fondly remember Stephen Yan exclaiming "wondah powdah!" And this Chinese woman's show. She was probably in her late 50's and I couldn't understand a thing she said (but I still remember the music played right after each dish is done--it's a variation of "Popcorn" by Gershon Kingsley). Later on, during summer breaks, apart from Jem and the Holograms, I'd find myself watching Jacques Pepin, quite amused how he'd say the word "orange" in his French accent ("aw-RAHNZH"). When I'm not watching TV, mom would occasionally encourage me to learn how to cook, so I'd go down to the kitchen to just stir all the ingredients together in a pan, at our household cook's direction, after she had prepared everything else. In high school, we had one semester of cooking and baking--although my groupmate did most of the cooking, while baking was kind of unmemorable. In the summer before freshman year in college, I took a mini-job as a server/ kitchen assistant in a Mediterranean restaurant, even though most of the time I was mainly a waitress and all I ever did in the kitchen was tear lettuce leaves apart and peel garlic while chatting with the cooks. I took another summer job the following year as a barista in one of the popular cafés in town and it was kinda cool hollering out people's names after preparing the concoctions. My first corporate job after graduation entailed me to learn how to make (ultra-fattening, as I found out) donuts, and to teach new employees how to make them. And thanks to all these years of being couch potato, I've watched dozens of cooking shows hosted by likes of Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson, Bob Blumer, Giada de Laurentiis, Wolfgang Puck, Mario Batali, Bobby Flay, Kylie Kwong, Rachel Ray, and then other shows like Iron Chef (both the Japanese and American versions), Top Chef, and yes, even Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (the part with Ted Allen, the food and wine guy, and oh, he's also hosting another reality show called Chopped). And when I finally got married, my mom-in-law stayed with us for around a month and a half, and so I used all that time to observe her intently as she cooks, getting some practical tips and new ideas. And whenever my best friend would come over my place, I'd gain a few indispensable tips from her since she took up a course in culinary school.
Notice that I've just been rambling about cooking. What about other household chores? Like cleaning? Organizing stuff? Laundry? House maintenance? Pest control? Managing expenses? Let's just say that among all the household chores, cooking is the least of a burden for me. For the rest of the chores, I hate and I disappoint. I dread doing them almost as much as I dread writing about them
Going back to cooking, you may now be thinking that I'm not such a bad cook. Well, "Anyone can cook!" as Chef Auguste Gusteau said in the movie
Ratatouille. Hubby even tells me I have talent. Then again, maybe he just says that to make me feel better. This
blog, together with a dozen burnt sausages, proves that sometimes when I cook, I terribly suck.
