homecooking

my mother started cooking for us after we moved to Canada. perhaps just a bit too pampered during modern living in the city that never sleeps, her cooking methodology was unorthodox; long wooden chopsticks poking at half-cooked meat and bak-choy on teflon frying pan, the germ-extermination process lasted about 20 minutes. we teenagers gobbled up whatever was thrown before us, usually in front of American television, while my mother sat with a half-smile and half satisfaction. when we got a bit older, we started to realize our relatives' teasings were not without merits, that mother's cooking was bland like the vastness of Lake Ontario. we laughed and continued to devour the coconut milk chicken and stir-fried spinach and the BBQ pork. the days passed by to the sizzling sound of mother's kitchen.

i started cooking myself when i entered graduate school. Strapped w/ a large-sized apron, 9-inch T-Fal pot in one hand and new-age cookbook in another, i experimented with mixtures of soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil and twenty four Spicies of the Orient from President's Choice. like the accidental flame from the wooden stove that caught the newspaper, i was soon livid and burning in the myriad of over-zealous chemicals that were my own creations. was the sauce the seasoning for the food, or the food a bridesmaid to the now boiling monstrous liquid?

like tiny grains of sand in an hourglass, maybe life's happiness and sorrow are best taken in small portions. it is then we can fully intake the servings, digest the lessons behind the ingredients, and appreciate the workmanship of the maker. i see now that beyond the garlic shrimp and the bitter melon, there is unconditional and unspoken love, and tremendous wisdom in my mother's culinary ways. i am looking forward to my mother's beef stew my next trip home.