Cooking 101 (Part Deux)
I was talking to Philip one time and was telling him about the time I helped out my brother with making the fruit salad for his class’ Linggo ng Wika.
“Hey, that’s my favorite! I love fruit salad,” he told me.
I smiled. “That’s good. Don’t worry, I’ll make you one someday.” Sooo not gonna happen. Unless we started moving in together and there is no way THAT’s gonna happen… I just like to make him think that I might actually cook for him. He can always fantasize about watching me toil infront of a hot stove wearing a cute teddy, stilettos and an apron, during those long cold nights.
“Do you cook by the way?”
I shrugged, “Uhhh… no.”
“Why? Haven’t you ever watched your mother cook and then ask her to teach you?”
“My mother rarely cooks, we have a maid for that. And when my mother actually does cook, it’s usually the kind of food that I would never eat, like Pinakbet or Kare-kare,” I said, scrunching my face in disgust.
He looked at me. “You don’t eat vegetables?”
“I do. But I’m picky. I will never eat okra or ampalaya (bitter cucumber) though. I have reservations about stringbeans and eggplant but I will eat them if I really had no choice.”
He smiled. “Too bad. I love a girl who can cook.”
Silence. He’s probably thinking of Midge, who can cook. And I’m thinking of him thinking of Midge, who watches him everyday as he consumes the meals she cooked for him.
Refusing to feel depressed, I erased the sordid image in my mind and beamed at him, “My mother always asks me how will I ever survive when I finally get married and I still don’t know how to cook for my husband and my children.”
“So what do you tell her?”
“I tell her I’ll just find myself a husband who will cook for me instead.”
Philip laughs and finding me adorable, proceeds to hug me.
Cooking 101 (Part One)
I can’t cook.
For the past 27 years of my life, I have never learned to cook.
Oh, I can fry an occasional fish, boil an egg, warm up a can of corned beef, cook rice in a rice cooker (which is basically following the 1:1 rule, no science in that), but I cannot make a complete fantastic meal to save my life. I can make a really fatty atherosceloris-beckoning breakfast though, composed of coking an egg sunny side up, warming up a can of corned beef, frying a couple of nitrite-laden hotdogs and toasting last’s night’s left over rice, if I really had no choice, but a year of that kind of cooking and I’d be the youngest contender for bypass surgery at the age of 28.
I’ve had several cooking mishaps, one which consisted of me attempting to make pancakes which resembled doughy scrambled eggs (which a few of my classmates have witnessed and never made me forget, referring to it as “The Unforgettable Day [Mistress] Tried To Make Hotcakes In the Community”) and another incident where I tried frying hotdogs, only to realize that I had actually forgotten to remove the hotdogs from their individual plastic wrappers and I had managed to make those plastic wrappers curl up as they burned in all that hot oil.
I blame it on the fact that I lived most of my life with a maid, who cooks all our meals for us. My mother, being a working mother for as long as I can remember (and will probably continue to do so, as long as the Philippine government will allow her) rarely cooks except occasionally, on the weekends that our maid has her days off. Actually, even on those days, my aunt, who has never married and lives with us, does most of the cooking so, I never really found the opportunity to ask my mother to teach me how to cook as she toils over a hot stove nor the drive to actually immerse myself in the kitchen.
But I’m really just making excuses. I’m lazy. That’s probably it.
But for the past few months, learning how to cook has provided me with a certain fascination equivalent to Fuck-Me-Boots* (black classy knee-length boots that I dream about but cannot find, afford, nor wear since I have calves disproportionate to my body from all that bicycling during my highschool days) and mountain-climbing (an activity I’d really want to take up but have found no friends willing to do that with me). I found myself checking out websites of other bloggers who cook, salivating over the pictures while wiping my own drool from my laptop and poring through cooking recipes in the Internet of foods that I will probably not be able to make from scratch.
Hence, I have resolved to mentally add this to my list of 101 reasons why I should move out of my parent’s house after I find myself a job: It will give me the opportunity to finally force myself to learn how to cook.
SoSexy, who has officially won the class’ vote for the Best Dinuguan (blood pudding) award, used to tell me that learning how to cook will make my then boyfriend fall for me more. As much as I loved my boyfriend then, I’m lazy guys, hasn’t anybody noticed that yet? So, it is only until recently that I actually started fantasizing about cooking up a romantic meal for some guy – after which, he would be so enthralled with my cooking that with a mouth full of Tequila Lime Chicken topped with Cranberry-Walnut Chicken Salad, he will go down on his knees and look up to me and say:
Whhhhmp mmm mmmpppprrrrhhhy mpphooo?
(Translation: Will you marry me?)
And I’d tell him yes.
Unless of course, I didn’t want him to. Then I’d just shove another spoonful of the Apricot and Walnut Vareniki dessert into his mouth instead and pretend that the wedding proposal never happened.
