My Love-Hate Relationship

I have a love-hate relationship with cooking.

While I love to read cooking blogs (Table for 2 or more...)www.wendyinkk.blogspot.com and recently taken to watching cooking videos of Fabio Viviani when he shows up on my yahoo.com front page; (Ciao Chow!...Fabio, love the accent! and love how you make it seem so easy!); I absolutely cannot, repeat...CANNOT cook for beans. It's amazing when I watch someone create a whole meal out of scratch. I don't mean heating up leftovers in the microwave, I mean seriously cooking. Fabio can make a dish of chicken piccata marsala out of a bland pile of chicken breasts and mushrooms. Unreal.

I think that in every family, there should be one person that is a fab cook. In our family, it's my younger sister. I don't know where she gets the skills from. It's almost like she's got "the touch"! I don't even remember when she got interested in all this kitchen stuff. The earliest I remember is back when she was in college, she took a class that was called something like, "The Science of Cooking". I didn't even know there was a science to it. I always thought it was more like an art!  Who knew??
It was only a few years ago that I realized that in order to measure a cup of flour and a cup of water, it was not even the same cup!! A cup is a cup, is it not? Hmmm. Again, who knew??
For Christmas, she had requested a KitchenAid countertop mixer. At first I was relieved to hear that it wasn't the latest Coach bag that she wanted. Until I went to look for this mixer in question and found out it was over $400. WHAT?! Well, she IS my little sister and she IS one of my food sources.... Gotta keep the goodies coming my way.... Merry Christmas and some Happy New Cookies!!

My cooking skills are akin to survival skills. If I wasn't married with 2 kids, I could be sustained by microwave popcorn and cereal everyday. Food is just not a big thing with me. While I totally appreciate a homecooked meal, I cannot bring myself to spend so much time with the prep work....did I mention I'm also not good at it? I will totally clean up the kitchen and wash the dishes if you'll do all the cooking.

One thing I only recently learned to cook is rice. You may say, rice? Really? Aren't you Chinese? Don't you eat rice on a regular basis? Yes, but being Chinese doesn't mean I like to eat rice. One of my aunts absolutely has to eat rice everyday. Otherwise, she would complain that she didn't have any "Fan Chi"......Rice energy.  Hmmm. Maybe that's what I'm missing out on.

My MIL, (mother in law) cooks rice with a pressure cooker. She swears by it and is such a pro at it. She adds the raw rice, some water, closes it, turns on the flame and within a few minutes, the pressure pot starts tiking and hissing. She times it instinctively and turns off the flame at a set time. Lets it cool down and boom, bam, pow.... instant perfect fluffy rice! Amazing.

When she went to Cali to visit my BIL's family (brother in law), my son, at that time was about 6 years old, started crying. I thought he was upset that Nai Nai was going away. I went to comfort him and told him that Nai Nai would return soon enough. If he misses her so much, he could always call her on the phone.
"No," he said, tearfully, "It's because you don't know how to cook rice and I won't have any until she returns!"  That would always go down in my record books as an embarrassing moment for mother. I didn't know what to say. Speechless......For crying out loud, I couldn't even provide for my own children!

It was then that I decided to ask her how to cook rice.
She was rather shocked. "If you don't know how to use the pressure cooker, you can always use the stovetop."
"Ummm. I don't know how to do that either."
"How about the electric rice cooker?"
"Errrr, not that either."
"Well, how DO you cook rice when I'm not here?"
"I don't. I don't like rice so I don't cook any."
"Hmmmm..." She was pensive.
I could just picture her thinking I was depriving her fav son of a necessary food staple. Did he marry the right girl?? Was I a fit mother to raise her grandchildren??Am I a failure as a DIL??
She gave me verbal directions on how to use her pressure cooker, the one she took with her when she immigrated from Taiwan more than 3 decades ago. (who knows if America has pressure cookers?)  She told me to be careful with the rubber gasket. "Don't break the seal. I don't know where to get another nowadays."  Ok, Mom, will do.

Easy enough. A few days after she left, I gave it a tentative try. Unfortunately, I totally forgot the directions. I only remembered how to measure the rice and water. How many minutes do I have to listen to the tik-tik-tik and the hissing? I had visions of the whole thing shooting up my kitchen ceiling like Old Faithful!
I didn't want to embarrass myself and call her but how to cook the rice for my poor deprived child? I was determined to be a providing mother. Reluctantly, I called her sister to ask. Thank goodness she knew how to cook rice that way too. Phew! Saved! .....Although a few days later, MIL called me and asked how the rice cooking was going. Her sister had a few laughs about my rice-cooking phone call to her.Gee, so much for being discrete!

So now that I got the rice cooking down pat, I was happily experimenting with all sorts of rice combos. My fav is fried rice surprise. Leftover rice, leftover anything chopped up and stir-fried in. The first time I made it, my kids were totally impressed. I was puffed up with pride. Yes, mother cooks! Who knew?? I was over the top with eyes misty from happiness when my daughter said, "So where did you learn this? from Cooking Mama Nintendo DS?" Hmmmm...Note to self....  that'll be $100 deducted from your portion in my will Sweet Child....

More on my cooking experiments.... I mean, experiences later!