Growing up, I was never forced to do house chores which is very strange being brought up in an immigrant household. As many immigrant parents do, mine also worked almost every single day for at least 12 hours a day. Sundays would be their “weekend”. You would think that it’s natural for my mom to ask her two daughters to do chores around the house, but I seriously don’t think I’ve done my own laundry or made dinner more than a handful of times while I lived with my parents. For this, I commend my mom who worked super hard and also felt so strongly that being a mom means taking care of her household. But boy, I wish she would have taught me some things!! When I went away to college, far away from my family, I literally had to teach myself how to do a lot of things. It’s quite embarrassing to be honest, 19 years old and not knowing where to put a frozen pizza in the oven. I think my roommates died of shock when I put the frozen pizza in the broiler, because I saw my roomie’s boyfriend cooking some mussels in there before. This tells you, I probably never used an oven prior to this incident.
So all that to say, I have come a long, long way! Nowadays, my Instagram feed consists mostly of food pictures instead of narcissistic selfies (I still do squeeze some in), and a lot of them are homemade by yours truly! You will occasionally see comments from my college friends on my “cooking skills”, being completely shocked that I actually know where the kitchen is. LOL. Why the sudden change you ask? To be honest, I’m not sure. Maybe it’s the notion of being married and feeling domesticated that started all this. By no means do I think women should be in the kitchen cooking, doing household chores while men bring home the bacon, ain’t nobody got time for that (credit to my bff). I am a firm believer that household chores are to be shared between you and your partner, but I’m also NOT a feminist and love the feeling of cooking for my husband and having the house cleaned, presentable. The house cleaning part is mostly because I’m OCD. But I like seeing Steve enjoy a meal I cooked, and I honestly think that’s the main reason why I started cooking a lot more. Oh and, having nice things to cook with is a HUGE plus. Thank goodness for wedding registry! I still hate the clean up and prep work that come with cooking, but eh, seeing Steve gobble up the food I make is all worth it. And serious props to him for his willingness to try anything I make. I know there were many fails (more to come) to my end products, but he’s a trooper! Of course, I’m DEFINITELY not calling myself a veteran in the kitchen (I’ve only been doing this for less than a year), because I repeat most of my meals and tend to stick to what I’m good at! 😉 However, I have to admit, cooking isn’t as scary as I thought it was. And you definitely get better at it as you do more of it, like anything in life.
Anyway, for our 7 year dating anniversary, I slow-cooked a whole bird for our anniversary dinner per the recipe found on Pinterest, pinned here. I also attempted to recreate the delicious oven roasted herb potatoes we ate in Florence. It turned out fine, but the taste just wasn’t the same. Anyone know the recipe to those potatoes? Please share.
Overall, slow-cooking an entire bird turned out better than expected! Definitely will reuse this recipe in the future.
As for this blog post, I thought I’d spare you of what seems like never-ending pregnancy/baby announcement posts and do something different to add variety to the blog. Hope this post was a refreshing change 😉 Who knows, I may do more random cooking/recipe posts in the future!
-m
Leave a Reply