The science of my own cooking

When Oyen was younger I didn’t attempt to teach her how to cook because I didn’t want her to experience what my mom and I went through.  In my mind, I will just enroll her in cooking classes when she gets older or if she so desires she can learn how to cook on her own. This would spare us of the yelling and screaming. No pressure and unnecessary tension will be created that could possibly create a rift between mother and daughter.

My mom was the traditional, old fashioned mother who believed that a big percentage of being an accomplished woman was the mastery of  ironing clothes, scrubbing floors,  hanging window curtains, doing the laundry, removing every fish scale,  whipping up good meals, at the same time earning money from her own business.

My mom’s desire to make sure I knew how to differentiate mechado from caldereta, sinigang from nilaga had all the good intentions.  “Kahit merong mga katulong, dapat alam mo kung ano ang ipinapakin nila sayo”.    No argument there right?  With several maids at home,  I was never allowed to ask the maids to do things for me.   I,  Annie,  had to do things for myself like washing and ironing my school uniforms, cooking my own food, our food, including the maids’ ulam.  My mom just wanted me to learn these things,  you know, part of my job as born female.   Kailangan daw marunong ng mga gawaing bahay.

I loved my mom and until now I still do wish that she and my papa were still alive.   I just wished she wasn’t too rigid.

Like what I always say,  good intentions don’t always bring good results.

Her goal was to teach me with all the household chores including cooking meals.  Nothing wrong with that but the problem lied in the execution.  She was stressed out every single day caring for her family, keeping house, and tending to her micro-businesses.  She was always in a bad mood so when she would involve me in the kitchen,  it didn’t bring about any good thing in my opinion.  She would just yell and yell at me.  For every small mistake that I made like putting more soy sauce or adding more water she would scream my name as if it was the  worst thing.  ANNNIEEEE!!!!!

Either I had sliced the onions too fat, the tomatoes too thin,  or the rice too soggy,  or sunog ang sinaing.  She would just end up getting angrier at me and me hating her the more.  The adobong baboy had too much sauce,  too much ginger in the batchoy soup, the sinigang was too sour, there was always something in the dishes that was not acceptable to her cooking standards.   Dapat may sukat ang suka.  That I didn’t follow her instructions.

The good thing that came out of all this is I can cook.  I learned how to cook but not according to my mother’s standards.  I don’t follow any recipe or measurement guide.  Dapat 1 tablespoon of vinegar lang, dapat two cups of water.  No,  I never measured any ingredient.  I just wing it.  Some call it uwido from the Spanish word oido.

Following a recipe reminds me of the bad old days that I have had in my mother’s kitchen.  All the yelling and tensed moments.  There  were times when she was too pissed that I felt she wanted to hit me for not following her instructions.  So what good did this training do?  Nothing.  She wasted her energy and sparked her negative emotions.  It made me despise time spent with her.  It created a divide between us.

I can never learn how to cook new dishes based on recipe books.  I simply don’t want to follow any rigid step by step instructions.   If I do bad I would feel like someone’s gonna scream at me.  I will just cook whatever ingredients there are,  however I want it.

Sheltering in place in the US without maids gives me the opportunity to prepare meals for my family.  No fantastic Michelin dishes here.  Just simple homemade no-name dishes lovingly prepared and served steaming hot,

If my cooking fails to satisfy my family’s tummy,  there’s always Chipotle and KFC to cover my back.