Food Story (Or, a Cooking Apprentice Blog)

Tuesday, September 1, 2020

People close to me know I enjoy eating. 

A lot. 

Like you wouldn't believe. 

My older relatives call me food gremlin or food monster at home sometimes. 

My mum always enjoys reminding me that she had to go through a C-section to give birth to me because she was eating so much through my pregnancy. 

In fact, what ultimately forced inspired me to learn how to cook was because neither I nor the people around me could keep up with my appetite! Mum has a great story where I, barely a year into life outside the womb, cleverly managed to roll my wheeled crib over to the dining table to snatch pieces of freshly-cooked, piping-hot food from the plates that she or her younger sisters placed them on. 10/10 would do again honestly, but apparently that's terrible behaviour in a restaurant. 😂

I'm not going to put up some disclaimer saying that I'm thin, because I am overweight. Not obese, but definitely not able to fit into my shorts or my jackets as well as I used to. For someone of my height (5 ft 2.5 in, or 160.02 cm) I am, and with this pandemic raging, I've actually gained more weight. To wit, in May 2019 I weighed 135 lbs (61.24 kg) in the mornings, but since May of this year, I weighed 145 lbs. Yikes.

I have been dabbling in yoga and Ring Fit Adventure, but I only find the bandwidth to do so for less than 30 minutes every day between household chores, job hunting paid work, (volunteer!) social media management work, and now this return to writing. But with my coordination, constitution and eyesight being relatively poor since birth, my body can hardly keep up with even beginner yoga stances and a fair number of actions.

Anyway, I am proud of showing off the few things I have cooked. I have my favourites among them, but to be honest, any homecooked meal I make is an accomplishment since I am still getting used to chopping and using the knife faster. I prefer to create full meals because I grew up with these. By contrast, my husband prefers the ease of one-pot meals which don't always provide the best nutrition, but at least he enjoys much of the food I make. 

For starters, I am especially proud to be able to cook omelettes with patience. The fluffy, yellow beauty of this baby below and of others long since eaten are worth the wait. While this was inspired by Gordon Ramsay, I actually began cooking omelettes because I wanted to have breakfast in peace with a husband who equates runny yolks of eggs sunny-side up and poached eggs with food poisoning. 😂


Some fun facts about this next album: 

  1. I am surprisingly patient in cooking my food, where in most other pursuits I just throw my hands up and let go.
  2. For some reason, all my food has a brownish tint, I'm not sure. 
  3. That said, I need to improve my plating and photography skills.
  4. This is mostly food inspired by existing recipes. I actually prefer just reading the words in a recipe while I'm cooking, even if it already provides the visual I need to follow in order to prepare or cook the meal properly.
  5. Related to the previous item, I actually like freestyling and substituting some ingredients when I cook.
  6. These dishes were all cooked in the space of three (3) months. 


This next post was an experiment that just fell into place by some miracle. While it's still not the same as actually enjoying the Jollibee Burger Steak of my childhood, it is more than delightful to the palate. At the very least, my spouse approves of it! 


Speaking of my American spouse, I was OVERJOYED when we bought an Instant Pot during our first summer as husband and wife. I've made so much use of it across the seasons! This dish was a request from him since he's predictably got a more Western palate. I have used it to make Filipino dishes like kare-kare and sinigang, as well as a pre-roaster for lechon kawali and crispy pata. 

 

Between the two of us, I'm the one who's trying to find new ways to incorporate healthy ingredients into our daily meals. Being from the Philippines, I've been exposed to many different types of cuisines and cooking styles, as well as different dietary adjustments. I really enjoy seafood and vegetables, and I believe that variety is the spice of life. Here's some of my favourite dishes! 

 

This next dish is a special one, and also a bit controversial (sorry Italy, I love you but you didn't even come up with savoury noodles first). Filipinos like me normally enjoy our spaghetti on the sweet side, and use ketchup a lot since tomatoes aren't native to our country; think Neapolitan spaghetti or pasta here please. My mother, though, elevates this to have more than the prerequisite hotdog-as-sausage meat filling by adding boiled eggs to the mix! This is literally the dish of my childhood, and with the coronavirus pandemic officially announced on my birthday in 2020, I knew I had to make this dish as self-care. At least my husband had no complaints, ha. 

 

And now for a drink break! Another pandemic trend is dalgona coffee, popularized by the hallyu (Korean pop culture) wave. With everyone stuck at home missing their favourite desserts and caffeine potions, we all had to make do with cafe.  


 

 

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