kitchen cooking

"The greatest animal in creation, the animal who cooks."
Douglas Jerrold (1803-1857) - English dramatist

Chuckle. O ye animals out there, do you cook? If not, prolong no further - pick up a pan and spatula, and find something you can concoct, edible enough for people to enjoy.

Somehow, I don't think frying eggs in a pan can be considered as cooking. Well, not everyday, that is.

"Cooking is like love, it should be entered into with abandon or not at all" Harriet van Horne

I am not a good cook. I am far from being a chef. Brought up in a family full of females, one would assume that cooking is our second nature. Well, surprise surprise! That isn't the case for us because we always had a maid in the kitchen, and some of us went away to study at one point or another. But of course, during celebrations and big dinners, all were dragged into the kitchen to chop the onions, slice the carrots, clean the anchovies, etc.

Today, I cook because I have to. My passion (huh!) in cooking comes from the desire to tantalise the taste buds of my dear fellow eaters, ie: my children. Isn't it wonderful to get them have second helpings and how they are able to lick their plates clean, instead of nagging them to finish off their last mouthful. Mommies out there would know how difficult it is to get children to eat, and likewise, I have been challenged with four picky eaters. Help!

For some, cooking is a tedious process, yet to others, it's an enjoyable act. Imagine a director of a firm or a working mother fixing dinner still clad in his or her working attire. Nothing comes between man and food. Cooking is only difficult or impossible if one thinks it is. In today's modern world, cooking is relatively easy and a breeze. In fact, my recipes are usually those short and simple. All hassle-free. Yet, there would be days when I'd rather not cook anything at all - a normal thing, I'm sure?!

So roll up your sleeves and put on your apron. Be adventurous and spice up your imagination. Vary everything - the size of the chopped carrots, the colour of the capsicums, the portion of potatoes, to name a few. Give your dishes interesting names (Bluewonder, remember what we named ours?) and most of all, enjoy every single moment of it. Oh sure, there'd often be little secret ingredients in special dishes: a pinch of smile, a teaspoon of TLC, a dash of passion, or a cup of love. * do you put these in?

Oh, I so miss our dear friend, mamasarah. With her, we played around in the kitchen fixing cupcakes and cheesecakes. We spent hours decorating our masterpieces with the children, and later snapping photos of the finished products. She has her foodblog, http://pondok-pondok.blogspot.com/, where you'd find interesting recipes of various sorts (however, not updated for quite some time). Other fellow-bloggers like kak elle and maklang, to name a few, are all masters in the kitchen who can snap irritatingly mouth-watering pictures.

Like mamasarah, I too have my own foodblog but it has not been launched yet. My excuse: our camera doesn't do justice to the food. One day, hopefully I will have them published for people like me (I go for practicality). Nothing glamorous, nothing extraordinary. It's just simple cooking!

*picture of my banana toffee cheesecake snapped by mamasarah