Look Ma, I’m A Cook! Part Trois

Now where was I? Oh yes, exactly twelve and a half months ago. I confess my cooking ambitions (or rather, delusions) have been a little slow in coming. But hey, you know what they say about slow starters … no? Yeah, me neither. Okay, moving on.

It’s been twelve and a half months and I’m proud to report that, along the culinary curve, I am today … exactly in the very same spot I was over a year ago. Wait, that’s not totally true. At the time of this posting, I have cooked a grand – brace yourself, folks – five times. And this does not include the charcoal chicken soup (see previous post). How’s that for progress?

And I’m neither dead nor violently ill. Yet. Now if that isn’t progress, I don’t know what is.

And to illustrate my point, I shall now display a picture of progress – as in my first attempt at char bihun (that’s fried vermicelli to you bananas) …

EXHIBIT A

… and my second.

EXHIBIT B

In the first, I did something awful to the bihun, which shall remain a secret. Okay okay, if you must know, I boiled the entire clump in hot water before dumping it into the wok, so sue me. I also over-fried everything, quite apparent from the picture. The end result was one big sticky mess that faintly resembled food. I ate it nonetheless. 

The second, I made using leftover ingredients in my fridge. Eggs, shiitake mushrooms, zucchini, choy sum … and it tasted pretty darn good. At least to my somewhat developmentally challenged palate. I was pleasantly surprised.  

I believe congratulations are in order. I’m slowly but surely clawing my way out of kitchen incompetence.

The Philosophy Of The Pot

In many ways, this shamefully disfigured pot represents me: neglected, forgotten, burned beyond recognition. Well, perhaps not totally beyond recognition. Glimpses of its once-shiny, pre-charcoal visage can still be seen if you look hard enough. Ah, faint glimmer of hope. Perhaps – just like this pot – I too can be saved and restored to my former glory.

“Really?” asks the lone reader, eyes saucer-wide with hope. “Can this pot –and by extension, you – truly be saved and restored to its (your) former glory?”

Nah, the pot’s gone to the shit. But me, I want to save from a similar fate.

Philosophical mumbo-jumbo aside, here’s what happened to The Pot: I was cooking soup and I forgot that I was cooking soup and the soup dried up and I wound up with a pot of blackened chicken. I only realised my folly when I detected a faint smell resembling barbecue. I wondered if my neighbour was barbecuing for dinner before it hit me that I had no neighbours.     

I ate charcoaled chicken that evening with chunks of limp vegetables with singed tips. I’m no yogi on a mountain but I must say, epiphanies come in the oddest ways. I realised that I’d neglected myself for far too long. I’ve stopped doing all the things I used to enjoy. Things like writing for this admittedly self-indulgent blog, running and working out, drawing, reading, knitting sweaters for the Maltese I hope to have one day. I’m kidding about that last one.

It’s been over a year. And unless I do something about this sorry state of affairs, I’m going to wind up like The Pot – neglected, forgotten, burned beyond recognition and dumped in the bin with nothing but empty V8 cartons and eggshells for company. So I will do something about it. While there’s still some soup left in the pot.