Love and Cooking

Last saturday, I cooked. I cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner. I cooked penne in tomato sauce for breakfast, monggo and fish for lunch, and adobong pusit for dinner.

Corollary to that, I washed. I washed the dishes during and after breakfast, during and after lunch, and yes, during and after dinner.

It’s ok, I’m not complaining. It was actually quite fun. I discovered that I can cook a decent meal and not just come up with one of those burnt, unidentifiable things that you see on your plate but eat it anyway, believing in the saying that what you don’t know won’t hurt you!

I also learned in the process that you can never have enough of garlic and onions! Half of my life during that faithful day was consumed in peeling, slicing and pounding on those things!

The peeling and slicing went like a breeze, but the pounding required intelligence and creativity.

You see, I don’t have any mortar and pestle (is this term correct? I’m inclined to say mortal and kettle…). So I use whatever works.

Before, I used the cutting knief. It was alright until the edges became dull from cutting and so I decided to use a thinner knief, but razor sharp. Therefore, using it solely for the garlic would be a waste of soap and energy as it would add to the pile of utensils to be washed. I tried a spoon. It was ok for small garlic but not for the large and chubby ones. Then, I tried the wooden flat ladle, which I would use also to stir-fry everything. It worked! Since it was flat and wide, the palm of my hand fit perfectly, allowing me to give the right amount of pressure to squish the garlic. Great.

Moving on…..

While cooking, you’ve got to naturally keep on tasting the food, whether it’s salty or spicy or sweet or not to much of it. So you keep on adding and subtracting…until the taste is totally different from the time you started and you’re suddenly no longer sure whether what you’re cooking is mechado or kaldereta, paksiw or adobo or worse, nilaga or sinigang!

I couldn’t eat much of my own cooking. I already felt full from all those tasting and smelling. Tweety likes it though. She says it’s delicious.

In the end, I would like to thank my Tweety for the appreciation and loving praises, but her cooking is definitely much better! Heaven sent ;)

That's the Cooking part.  You ask what has Love got to do with it?

This morning, Tweety shouted..."Kain na! :)"  Now, that's LOVE!