The Myth of Cooking

The day before yesterday, I tried to make stir fry onions and eggs. (Weird combination I know. That's all I had in my refrigerator at the time.)

I don't know what went wrong. In the end, the garlic was burned. The onions were soggy and overcooked. The meal overall looked disgusting. Everything tasted bitter and smelled toxic.

Yesterday the bf stir fried onions and pork in tomato paste for me after my once a week gym session. When I ate his food, I almost burst out into tears. It tasted so good yet it was so simple. Tomatoes and onions together woke up all of my tastes buds on my tongue and on the sides of my tongue and at the bottom of my tongue. Even the rice had flavors, I said to the bf. He looked back at me in sympathy and I knew it was time to admit how hopeless I was in the kitchen.

When I had to live on my own and cook for myself, I discovered the complexity in making a meal for the first time in my life. I thought to myself in despair, is this what I have to do everyday for the rest of my life? Cooking???!!!! The shock and desperation echoed with the same shock and desperation raised by my first period.

Like the period, I learned to deal with cooking eventually. It is good that I was poor but health conscious at the same time so I didn't fall back to easy alternative like fast food. For a while, I thought I was getting better at cooking, from always throwing everything into a pot and pretend it was deluxe fried rice to making separate dishes like normal people; from stir frying everything on earth to making soup, even steaming fish.

All of it fell apart when the kitchen got crowded, and I got busy at work. Cooking, unlike riding a bicycle, is a skill that if you don't practice you will forget.

People have told me that a good engineer would also make a good cook because cooking is about attention to details and following instructions, to the teeth.
I was never good at doing things step by step due to my short attention span. I always have to jump ahead, skip a step here and there or make substitutions in the receipt.

I guess this means that I am doomed culinarily and professionally.

Good thing is that I have a boy friend that cooks. Now...if only I can get him to take up a second job.