Long story short–
Took me 22 years to realize that of the many things I wanted to improve in my life – health, sustainability, supporting local community, saving money, self-image, connecting to my culture + learning about others’ etc. – all are connected to food… and to decide I should probably learn how to season with something other than ‘Everything but the Bagel Seasoning’ (no h8 though, it objectively still hits). I’ve definitely got a lot of room to grow, but I learn best by doing and enjoy sharing my progress and teaching others as I go. 🙂 I hope that sharing little tips and concepts within each recipe can make cooking more approachable, spontaneous, and just overall enjoyable for anyone with similar interests or goals. So that’s what this is all about. 🤝
Short story long (you’ve been warned)–
I’ve always loved food, and particularly the act of eating has given me visceral feelings of joy for as long as I can remember. But cooking… cooking gave me visceral feelings of panic and overwhelming incompetence.
Making a meal from scratch (using boxed pasta counts as from scratch to me) generally included inner monologues as such:
– I don’t have this specific ingredient so I need to go buy it. Don’t know what it’s really for, but if I buy it I’ll definitely feel pressured to use it and cook more (*ingredient would remain in cupboard, never to be used again*).
– I feel like I’m cutting this onion wrong. Is there a right way to cut an onion?
– Am I crying because I’m cutting an onion? Or because I don’t know how to cut an onion?
– I’ll be all time efficient and prep the sauce *while* sautéing the onions, I’m so smart.
– …Is there a difference between sautéing and stir-frying?
– Hm.. Nothing’s changing… Maybe I should turn the heat up. And I’ll prep the sauce now.
…
…
Oh FCK I should NOT have turned the heat up.
– I did not appreciate Mom’s cooking enough. I’m gonna text her.
– I should’ve made more for leftovers because I will not be subjecting myself to this experience again tomorrow.
– I’m still hungry. I should’ve made more for right now. How tf is “1 serving” allowed to be a universal definition?
– I feel like a normal person would not have made this kind of mess, this is definitely because I have ADHD.
– I’ll just sit down for a sec and then clean.
…I should’ve just cleaned as I went fml.
I “expanded my horizons” in college by making variations of smoothies, avocado toasts, and salad bowls (if you’re thinking, “wow basic” – I should tell you I also had a lil’ instagram page for my foods, that I was very into).
I was mostly putting pre-prepared ingredients together into meals, and while that is making food, it’s not… ~cooking~.
But everything changed (when the fire nation attacked) when I met up with a friend who, in the two years I hadn’t seen him, had become an established chef out of his realized passion.
I was dumbstruck by the gourmet-tasting meals he’d casually throw together,
(all while fully calm and organized)
thoroughly intrigued by the explanations for each process,
(imagine the repeated “why?” from a child that doesn’t want to do something, and just know I’m much worse when I want to understand something)
and, since he specialized in Asian cuisines, it was annoying that he knew more about my cultural heritage than I did, tbh.
(spite is a powerful motivator (ಠ_ಠ))
I thought, “if he could do it, why can’t I?”
And while I did discover that coordination, time awareness, and patience are
(1) important in cooking, and
(2) skills for which I have no natural ability
…I also discovered some things that (are maybe common sense but) I just, hadn’t thought of.
Like– tasting an ingredient so you have an idea of how it affects the dish (and thus how it could be used in other dishes), having a trash bowl by the cutting board to minimize the mess, waiting for the pan to heat before adding anything so you can properly gage the temperature, and how to cut a fckn onion.
Breaking down some basics and understanding the “why’s”, I found that I could simplify recipes to be as lazy as possible while still tasting good, sub different ingredients based on availability or cravings, or create a meal with random things in my fridge (s/o instagram story viewers iykyk).
AND THEN I REALIZED SOMETHING (multiple somethings, actually).
Quite literally everything I wanted to improve on or pursue in my life (at least one of which I think you’ll relate to) –
- Saving money
- Lowering environmental impact and supporting local community
- Knowing what I was putting into my body and feeling healthy
- Eating intuitively and having a better relationship with food
- Connecting to my culture and appreciating others’ cultures
- Finding joy in the repetitive
– was influenced by cooking for myself. So here I’d been, unconsciously addressing things I’d struggled with for actual years. It was an epiphany moment, of something so obviously engrained into my day to day that I just, forgot to acknowledge it.
I’ve come to believe that the collective loss of connection to what we eat, specifically via the dying culture of home cooking, is the source of many personal and world-scale issues (not to be dramatic or anything).
Food is universal, and cooking is innately human
Learning how to cook, or even more so how to convince myself to cook, was an act of self interest. It was an opportunity I had every single day to affect things I care about (both for and outside of myself). And the more I did it, the more the black box of stress that cooking had always been to me, opened and fell away.
Above all else, I was repeatedly ~shooketh~ by how simple it could be, and I just wanted to share the excitement of these “revelations” with someone else. Cuz sharing is caring.
Enter you: someone.
My premise is that if I can do it, you can do it. I post stuff that makes me feel excited to cook (as someone who is easily overwhelmed), and do my best to explain in a way I’d want it explained to me. Because, I’m still not super comfy in the kitchen, but we learn by doing and we gotta’ start somewhere.
So if you related to that inner monologue wayyy back up at the top of this page, and decide to start – maybe making something at home once more a week than usual (which could just be 1x per week), or adding one homemade thing to a leftover takeout meal – dude, good for frickin’ you. There’s always room to grow. And I’m proud of us for any bit of growth.
So yeah, thanks for being here as that someone. <3
DM’s and emails always open for questions, stuffs you’d like to see, pics of foods you made (plz, my favorite source of serotonin), or just saying hi. c:
And for making it to the end of this post, I giv u kith.
(ɔˆ ³ˆc)