Cooking Adventures

For the past few months, I have cooked my own dinners during the weekend. Nothing fancy, so far I only cooked pasta with bottled Prego spaghetti sauce and udon with prepackaged miso soup.

As I slowly expand my ingredient list to add more spice and flavour to my cooking, handling of each ingredient was an adventure to itself. Two weeks ago I learned how to gingerly take tofu out of its container with a continuous fear of dropping it and seeing a blob of a mess resembling mashed potatoes. Two days ago, I’m starting to learn the names of food stuff as I stroll around the shopping aisles of the food section instead of just gawking clueless at the massive rows of greens and meat (as I did in the past).

And just today I painfully learned the correct heat setting of the induction cooker as the soy sauce dried up the moment it reaches the pan, emitting a burnt smell in the process. Apparently the default setting is only good for boiling water fast. Luckily my fish cutlets (which is actually expired sashimi) was unharmed in the process.

But even as I clumsily prepare my dinners, I still find cooking a pleasurable experience and adventure. In fact I’m starting to buy cookbooks: something that I consider out-of-character myself (since I had bought business books exclusively all the while).

Honestly, I’m really looking forward to the moment I graduated from pasta and udon: they are starting to taste bland to me.