If you don't know me well, and I tell you that food & eating is one of the my biggest hobbies, you might not believe me (I'm a bit skinny). But am telling you, since I started living on my own, food and I have a very special relationship.
...this entry is inspired by a new book I bought for myself, for my own, private pleasure (I was shopping for some cook books for my sister and saw this one nearby the cook books and how can I say no to a book with a title like this one...)
Alone In The Kitchen With An Eggplant
Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone
edited by Jenni Ferrari-Adler
Eating became a special thing to me only after I left home where my mom used to make most of my meals (I never ever cooked when I was still in school and back home), all of them vegetarian since I became one at the age of 14 (that's another story all together).
When I first arrived in the capital city after high school in home town, I lived with my sister and attended college. My sister would cook for all of us and I helped with the washing. Meals & eating were just a mundane thing for me, not because vegetarian food is not exciting, but because (I realised now) I was always being served all my food, I was never involved in the process of making food.
Not until I left my sister's house when I got out of college and got a job in Citibank. I moved halfway across town from Subang to Pandan Indah where I rented a room in a flat from this very fair-skinned engineer named Looi. Looi is a typical old-school Chinese guy in the kitchen, it means he doesn't do anything in the kitchen, except maybe boiling water to drink. Though he had no problem if one of his flat tenants decided to cook.
I remember vividly my first trigger, first suggestion for cooking for myself. It was...I can't remember the year but I remember where and who. I just finished singing backing vocals (part-time job outside my day job) for a trip-hop act at some noisy disco, and was sipping some free drinks being served to me, and talking to the other back-up vocalist, Mei Ling, over very very loud house music.
Mei Ling is from north Malaysia and is a year older than me, and very very independent and smart. She too live alone in KL and didn't own a car. I don't know how we started talking about eating...but she was telling me how she cooks for herself everyday and how she shop for the food stuff and how little money she needed to cook for one.
I was in awed with her creativity, and her savvy in taking care of herself. I lapped up all the simple recipes she gave me in my head and told myself, I gotta try them out. Next thing I know, I was making simple pasta out of my flatmates' rice cooker. Come to think of it, I cannot remember now what the first thing I cooked for myself but I have memories of putting the rice cooker on and leave the olive oil in there to heat up, then I stir in the pre-cooked pasta and added in sauce and stuff.
Suddenly I was a person with a new sets of skills and something new in her life, yes, a new interest. Not that I was turning into a sophisticated cook overnight, even today I'm far far from being sophisticated in cooking...but having started cooking, or preparing food for myself, I acquired a new sense of appreciation for food and the act of eating.
I never bought any proper kitchen ware the three years I lived in Looi's flat. I remember cooking a little extra so I could offer a plate of pasta to Looi, he would laughed at my, what he called, "fancy mee-rebus" and gobbled down hungrily.
Cooking for others is always a bit stressful for me as cooking is truly, still a new and under-practised skill for me. I have only ever made `safe' dishes for parties so far, potato salads, pasta salads, chunky mashed potatoes and ABC soups. I guess that is a stressful thing for me because I started cooking for myself, a self-sufficient thing to do. It started as a solitary activity with only myself to please, to make my cooking a communal food takes a lot more...so I stick to the safe, hard-to-mess-up recipes.
Over the years since that chat with Mei Ling in the loud disco, I went through many phrases of cooking and non-cooking periods. There were countless meals that I have skipped due to laziness, mostly also due to the fact I only shop to stock up my kitchen when I'm in the mood, same as when I cook -- I cook when am in the mood -- so no food at home to cook couple with no mood to cook result in many non-cooking and non-eating days.
These non-eating days of course turned into very unhealthy conditions for my body and I blamed getting sick often for my lazy-to-eat lifestyle. When I had a bad case of laryngitis and stuck at home with three cancelled shows, I learned my lesson well. I went to the super markets and stock up my cabinets with canned soups, purees, beans and etc.
So right now my goal is to make it a point to enjoy making myself a little sandwich even when am at the laziest and my bottom is glued to the computer screen all day. I try to make sure I always have bread at home, butter, pesto, pasta...and cheese.
But beyond all that, cooking for myself in my own space has always been a romantic, self-indulgent (however simple my recipes are), fulfilling experience...a satisfying solitary euphoric journey, gives me a sense of independence (in the kitchen found only in my mid-twenties), a sense of real living, being connected to what I put in my stomach.
Cooking for myself is therapeutic, meditative. Alone in the kitchen with no phone calls, no chat rooms, no emails, just cubing potatoes, skinning garlic, slicing vegetables, watching the soup bubbles and tasting...is as good as a session at the spa, what more, at the end of this session, I get to to eat too!
Yes, try this yourself. Kick off your shoes, turn off the TV...get off the chat rooms and just busy yourself with making food in your kitchen.
...actually, maybe you ought to read the book too, a real taste teaser it is.
