Instead of bemoaning about love… how about food: ever nourishing and fundamental.
Instead of a recipe… how about reshaping how you think about meal prep. Follow your own inclinations combined with the material and equipment at hand.
My “spread of interest” in a culinary sense so far in 2024 has been somewhat disparate:
- Every tournament held at my workplace I have tried to sell food from scratch, that I think cannot be easily made and appeals to badminton participants. My forays have included soup dumplings, tanghulu, brown butter chocolate chip cookies, and nutella pancakes (taiyaki).
- Despite it being summer, I still crave large and filling portions of hearty robust foods. This is not exclusive to one specific cuisine: carnitas, shepherd’s pie, west lake soup / century egg congee, and veggie fritters of all kinds. Cooking in this manner also allows me to take care of dad more easily when mom is away.
- This month I have disavowed snacks to be replaced with lower-calorie popsicles and more savory leftovers when I am hungry late night.
- Before I cook, I think: what am I in excess of at this time? Foods in surplus fall into two categories: less-perishables that have been abandoned OR a bountiful harvest in the garden. As for the former, I would include Ritz crackers, cream cheese, and matcha powder. As for the latter, we have garlic scapes, big flowering scallions, and Chinese chives all from our very own garden.
Why do I choose to blog about food, rather than personal drama or pontification?
I find food to be a universal salve for many of my own anxieties.
I grabbed lunch with a dear friend (a fantastic amateur chef himself) in which we tried to compartmentalize a few different doors I could pursue at this point in time. I ended up deciding on the priority of self; over conventional employment, higher education, charitable work, and independence. One really beautiful loophole is to check off most of those boxes at the same time, i.e. getting paid to do work you love and would do for free anyways!
Cooking, and especially baking, are one of many creative outlets that add to the tapestry of my life. I can look back on what I’ve made and get immediate feedback about its flavor and presentation. Nihilism cannot exist in this space.
Even better, when I can throw profit out the window, I can get the freshest ingredients. If I am my own business, I am feeding back to myself in a positive loop. This is how I would interpret “pay yourself first.”
Lastly, I want to emphasize how important self-regulation* is when it comes to cooking. Before I got overwhelmed with intrusive thoughts about knives, I spent a bit of time working at a local restaurant. The two biggest takeaways that I still use everyday is to 1) place a wet rag under the cutting board to avoid slipping, and 2) clean as you cook so there is minimal cleaning at the end of the day.
* By self-regulation I mean how to be safe, healthy, sustainable without the assistance of other people.
Want a peek into my mind? Kai’s mother has heaping boxes of fresh strawberries. I’d like to use them up, in the following order.
- shortcake w honey yogurt
- milkshake
- panna cotta w balsamic glaze
- fritters w lemon mousse
- macarons
- crepes
xx