Been thinking about cooking lately, and about how I’m able to just put together something edible from things that are already on the fridge and the pantry. It’s still pretty impressive. I grew up as a McDonald’s kid and scoffed at my parents’ attempts to teach me to cook. I was kind of terrified of the burner anyway and my parents’ overprotectiveness (I was the only child after all) didn’t help matters. So they left me to not learn the recipes that I ate sometimes anyway. Which means that now, as an adult, I’m trying to (re)learn how to cook proper Filipino food. I’m already a pro at making adobo, and I use a bit more vinegar than I think is normal because I like things sour. I’ve made pancit, and I want to make sinigang, though my experience with the sour soup is mostly from fish, and I haven’t cooked with fish a lot.

When I talk to my mom she’s beyond surprised that I can cook. Just another thing she’d been dissappointed in I guess.

I do like the alchemy that is a home cooked meal. I really enjoyed watching Good Eats when I was younger, and Alton Brown getting into the science of why we do the things we do when cooking was fascinating to me. I still carry a lot of those lessons with me when I’m in the kitchen. And thanks to the Internet, there’s a lot of inspiration to look at for meal planning. I also have a necent collection of cookbooks (because I keep asking for them as gifts for whatever occassions). I like flipping through them and bookmarking the ones that I want to attempt.

I don’t even consider myself a good cook; I just am able to make things that are edible, even if I struggle sometimes with figuring that stuff out. Also struggle meals are a thing and yes there are times when I just have enough spoons to spread some butter and/or jam on some bread and eat that. I’m trying to eat healthier. As I enter the 5th decade of my life, I’ve been trying to buy more fruits and veggies and less junk, but it’s hard when even the government wants a lot of us to just die. I want to have a long, fulfilling life. I have things I’ve never done taht I want to do. Travel. New cosplays. But it’s interesting how something as fundamental as eating can impact your health positively or negatively. I eat junk because of the dopamine hit, because everything in the world is just so awful and the only thing i can control is myself. And I want the dopamine hit.

I’ve had enough health scares over the past couple of years that I should be eating healthier, and I’m trying to take small steps in that direction. I just hope I love long enough to survive this current political climate.