Since little, I’ve loved everything about food, both eating and cooking. Whenever my
mother was in the kitchen cooking meals, I would stay by her side and ask every
detail about the cooking procedure. At my home stay in the US, the food became
an issue as I didn’t get easily accustomed to American food, on top of my
home-stay guardian not being a gourmet chef (sometimes the food she provides
makes me wonder what ingredients she could have possibly used). Especially on
weekends, the home-stay kids had to take care of their own meals. Being in such
situation, I was prompted to venture into being the weekend cook for my
housemates. After acting as the weekend cook for a several times, one valuable
thing I learned is how to make the most of resources available, no matter how scant
they are.
One day, I had a craving for Korean-style fried rice. So I looked into
the refrigerator; eggs, leftover spam, butter, and carrots were the only things
I could find useful for my dish. I chopped up the carrots into little bite
pieces while heating up the frying pan with a chunk of butter in it. I then
poured everything in the pan, rice, spam, and egg and started stirring. I put
the heat into medium in order not to burn the rice. If I think about it, there
is not much into this fried rice. But given the situation, it was the best meal
for that weekend.
On another occasion, I found eggs (there were always eggs, thank
goodness!), zucchini, miso paste, and tofu. Again, I chopped up the zucchini
into chunks, put on the beaten eggs with diced green onions, and then fried it
in the pan until I got golden fried zucchini. Miso soup was really easy. I only
had to boil the paste with chopped up tofu. Once again, with miso soup, fried
zucchini, kimchi, and white rice, the weekend supper for the housemates were
ready and it was a blast for kids who had been fed up with greasy cafeteria
food throughout the week.
At first, I thought cooking itself was a joy in itself. The process
itself, as well as the final output, was some form of art in my opinion. But as
I started making meals more and more for my friends and family, cooking became
less of an culinary art but more of service to the people around me. Cooking is
no extraordinary merit, but I feel proud of myself when I see them enjoying my
food. I could see now why my mother used to say with a tender smile, “I don’t
have to eat. I get stuffed just by looking at you kids eating my food.”
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