I cooked tonight. Actually I cheated, the sauce came from a jar, but seeing how irregularly I've cooked in the past few months I'm not going to hold myself to an extremely high level of cooking accountability! I like to cook and I'm not completely unskilled at it, but I certainly wouldn't describe myself as "a cook". It's more that I find it fun and I eat absolutely anything (so even if it turns out bad, I'll finish it!).

Tonight I made chicken and mushrooms in vodka sauce over pasta - nothing too exciting but it was good. I always cook enough for multiple meals, so I'll have leftovers for the next couple dinners.



See the blue glow in the back corner? This stove is one of those flat-surface stoves.. it's a solid black flat surface and it's heated from underneath by infrared light. Infrared light shows up as blue on a digital camera. This stove has the knobs positioned opposite the stove in my old apartment and I haven't gotten used to it yet, hence the wrong burner being turned on!

I like pasta, but I like everything; Hani told her mom that I'm a garbage bin, I just consume anything thrown into my mouth! Tonight's pasta was quickly dispatched.





Hani and I like to cook together and for each other. She cooks all sorts of stuff for me; because my knowledge of Malaysian cuisine is lacking it's often a new experience. Hani is a great cook (I wish I had a picture of her in her apron!) and she likes to fatten me up. When she was visiting most recently I would come home from research on campus to find delicious meals. One day she made chicken gizzards (which I had completely failed to make by myself about a month previously); there's nothing like biking home to find Hani and a plate of gizzards waiting for me! (Ok, really it's all about finding Hani there, the meal was just gizzard-icing on the chicken-cake.)

We have three food-traditions when it comes to me cooking for Hani. First, I cook the steak for a steak dinner and Hani cooks the veggies. I'm no steak pro but Hani loves my beef! (Err... maybe I should rephrase...).

Second, I cook spaghetti for Hani. I enjoy spaghetti so you might imagine I can down quite a few noodles. But Hani? Man, you should see this girl go! I'm barely half way through my plate and she's finished! She loves spaghetti and often times eats the leftovers for breakfast the next morning! Seeing her enjoy it so much encourages me to cook better spaghetti, with better sauce, each time. I want to try making my own sauce base (from scratch - i.e. tomatoes) but for now I just buy the canned stuff and add the veggies, meat, etc.

Third, I cook the Thanksgiving poultry. In case you Malaysians aren't familiar with the holiday, in the US family's get together on Thanksgiving day (in late November) and eat a massive meal. There are a few staples for such a feast: cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and typically a huge turkey. Hani and I couldn't eat a whole turkey so we went for smaller birds; in 2008 I made Cornish hens and in 2009 I made a duck.

In many families around the world the woman does most of the cooking, including the major meal that is Thanksgiving. We sort of adopted this tradition of man-makes-the-bird from my parents; I was born on Thanksgiving day (but Thanksgiving moves around each year) and so my mom, on the verge of labor, was in no condition to be in the kitchen. Unfortunately she went into labor before my dad could finish cooking - I believe the turkey ended up sitting in the kitchen sink as they rushed out the door to the hospital! Ever since then my dad cooks the Thanksgiving turkey (my mom does the rest of the meal) and Hani and I have somehow picked that up.

Back to how great of a cook Hani is! She's made me lots of stuff, like chicken rice, some really good dish with anchovies, spicy chicken and beef dishes, and fried rice. Occasionally I try to make similar dishes by myself but it never turns out as good; either she has some special tricks or I just don't have the gift! I also love to help out while Hani is cooking but she'll tell you that I'm more of a nuisance than I am a help: a lot of the time is occupied by me trying to stir something too much or too often and Hani telling me to let it alone.

I asked for (and received) a kit and book on how to make sushi for Christmas. That is, I asked for it as a Christmas gift, not that it's a book on making Christmas sushi. English grammar sucks! Anyway, I bought the rice, mirin, and seaweed and I have egg and some other things. I need to get some cucumber and carrot and avocado and I'm going to give it a shot one of these days. I have this dream of being able to make delicious sushi whenever I feel like it... we'll see how far that dream gets.

Finally, here's a picture of a big bird that flies around behind my apartment a lot. I guess this isn't related to the subject of this post, but who knows, maybe I'll catch him and cook him for Thanksgiving this year! I say "him" because there's a couple female versions (they're the same size but bright white, not grey) and he chases them around a lot until they hide up in the trees. It's hard to tell in these pictures but this is a pretty big bird. He probably comes up to about my waist.




Well I'm full now, but that doesn't stop me from missing Hani's cooking. There's many reasons why I'm marrying this girl and I've never been hung up on domestic skills, but I have to admit, I love being spoiled by her cooking!