Hello fellow foodie and cook enthusiast.
My personal experience is being in the kitchen with my mother or with my grandmother. They have given me valuable instructions and fun loving memories of cooking, cutting vegetables, and tasting different dishes.
After attending my school’s home-economic class, my teacher, Mrs. Williams, she has taught me basic kitchen skills and food etiquette which fortified what my mother and grandmother has shown me in our small hot kitchen.
Preparation, cleanliness, different spices and colorful presentation. Bland dishes can be appetizing for as long the taste combined with other food.
Growing up in an Asian kitchen soy-sauce, fish sauce, spices, sharp ingredients, and oyster sauce to vinegar of all types, allowed me to start experimenting with different combination. Often leading to something bizarre to fantastic dishes.
Only rule from my mother and father, who were supportive, “Don’t burn the kitchen.“
It was not until High School, when asking a good friend of mine to help me with calculus. To repay her tutelage, I promise to cook for her mother, a nurse, her little brother and herself a good home cooked meal. As she has been tired of ordering out as her mother was busy at work. That evening, from what they had in the fridge, bell peppers, ground beef, cheddar cheese, rice, onions, few spices, chili powder, salt, pepper. The idea of something like baked Tex-Mex with bell peppers. She was amazed for my ability to get around the kitchen. That evening for dinner, I made baked Bell Pepper stuffed with ground beef, onions, rice, topped with cheddar cheese. Served with a small cucumber salad with spiced chili vinaigrette dressing. Her mother was very surprised how simple and delicious the meal and easily prepared.
After that, i knew, cooking will be a part of my life. Always interesting, experimental, and often easy the better.
Never stop learning and experimenting.
When my cousins and I visits our grandmother. We would ask her, “Lola, why are you not eating with us?”. Her favorite response, when she cooks lunch or dinner for us, “Just watching all of you, my grandchildren, eating and enjoying the meal. Makes me full, good, and well inside.”
I did not understand what she meant. But after cooking for my good friend’s family. I finally understood what my grandmother meant.
Since the cooking memories of my mother and grandmother are instill in me. I have created this site to help others appreciate how wonderful and rewarding cooking can be to oneself and to others.