**WARNING: Plenty of food pictures at the bottom of the page. Don’t look unless you want to get hungry.**
I was roughly 8 years old when I finally made my dad teach me how to cook. Before then, I spent a lot of time in our kitchen watching him as he prepared our meals. In fact, most of the time, I stood right by him beside our gas powered stove as he mixed the pot or the pan full of ingredients. The whole process was incredible. He took these things called vegetables that were largely grown from the Earth’s nutritious soil and from the free energy of the Sun. He took some piece of meat that was raised by the people at the province and butchered by some butcher at the butcher shop. He would combine them in a pot or in a pan (depending on what dish he was making) with some spices and other natural flavorings. He would put them over the hot stove, mix them every once in a while, taste them so that the flavoring could be corrected, and after an hour or so of tending them the result was always this delicious home cooked meal for our family to enjoy. It was magic.
The first dish he ever taught me was pretty simple. But I was extremely excited since it was my favorite one to eat at the time. I don’t think we officially have a name for it where I’m from. It’s an egg dish with a lot of garlic and tomatoes. What you do is peel and dice the garlic, slice the tomatoes, pour oil in a pan, and then put the garlic and tomatoes in the pan as soon as it is hot enough. You beat some eggs in a bowl, and then mix them in with the other ingredients in the pan as soon as the tomatoes become soft enough. Don’t overcook the eggs. Eat it with white sticky rice. I still make it to this day. And it’s still special and delicious to me.
At the time, I was just glad to learn how to cook since it meant I didn’t have to depend on my dad being home to be able to eat delicious meals. One thing you probably didn’t know about me (or maybe you did) is that I have always loved eating tasty food, even when I was very young. So this was a big plus. However, now that I’m a little older (I still love to eat) I’ve realized that being able to cook is a skill that makes my life richer in meaningful ways.
When I first met Kubo Queen she didn’t really know how to cook. The first time I spent time at her apartment, I quickly noticed that her fridge was full of frozen meals. The ones that come in packages. Things like frozen pizzas, frozen mac and cheese, frozen fries, and so on. To be fair, she did have some foods that were not frozen. Things like eggs, pasta, and multiple bricks of instant ramen. Overall, it was not a healthy sight to say the least. Luckily, she noticed and admired my passion for home cooking early on in our relationship. She began asking me questions about it. And eventually, through our time together, she slowly learned how to cook too. Now, she’s an incredible cook. She even learned things that I’m not as good at. Like making pasta from scratch and baking delicious artisan breads. I don’t think I can take all the credit for it, but I’d like to think I was a pretty good influence on her. And this is one instance of how knowing how to cook made my life richer. I was able to influence someone I love in a positive way, and teach her a cool and valuable skill she didn’t really have before. It’s a win for both of us.
Knowing how to cook has also helped me financially. As a young professional working a full-time job, it can be tempting to get in the habit of buying my daily lunches from restaurants. I suspect that this is what a lot of other people do. However, I have made the conscious effort to continue cooking my meals for the work week in advance. The result is that my lunches during the work week are not only healthier and tastier than the ones people buy from a restaurant, but they are more economical too. Based on my experience, the average price for meals at the cheapest places seems to be around $8.00, and a typical cafeteria meal at work is more. However, the lunches I make and pack from home only cost about $4.00 each. That means I save at least 50% on lunches. And here is the fun part: I eat a lot of meat and buy high quality ingredients. If I ate a more typical diet that’s low in meat and shopped at a budget grocery store, I could save even more money! I could probably make lunch for $1.50 a day pretty easily. This is another big instance of how knowing how to cook makes my life richer. I eat healthier and tastier food for a fraction of the cost! This helps me out financially by having enough money to pay off my student loans aggressively, and with saving/investing for the future.
Another instance of how this skill made my life richer is being able to invite friends and family over to the Kubo for some warm conversations and delicious meals. About a year ago, I found out that a friend of mine was going to be in town for the weekend. And he told me, over the phone, that he wanted to eat some pork adobo. So we met up on Saturday morning for a hike at the local hill. As we hiked, we talked about the things that were going on in our lives and how we felt about them. It was a fun hike. Once it was over, I invited him over to our Kubo so that I could cook the dish for both of us. I sat him down at our kitchen table while I prepared the ingredients. And then we started playing a board game with Kubo Queen as the pork simmered. The board game was a lot of fun. Eventually, the pork finished cooking in the middle of our game. So we stopped playing to eat some pork adobo with rice. It was a delicious lunch (thinking about it as I type this made me hungry), and my friend and I had seconds. When we got full we continued and finished our game. It was a fun day with a good friend. The best part was being able to share with him a tasty meal I cooked myself, and being able to enjoy it within the confines of our Kubo. To me, this is so much better than going to a fancy seeming restaurant with fancy seeming chefs and servers that will hand you fancy seeming menus that has fancy seeming drinks and dishes with fancy seeming prices for the fancy seeming ingredients surrounded by fancy seeming people…
When Kubo Queen and I have a kid of our own I hope that they are healthy. I also hope that they will get interested in cooking too. I hope they will be sitting at the kitchen table watching every move I make as I prepare and cook them meals. I hope that they will stand with me beside the stove as I mix, taste, and season the food I’m cooking. I hope that they will find the meals I make so delicious that they eventually give in and ask me to teach them how to cook. I hope they will see how magical home cooking is too.
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