The Food That Made Me

6/24/2025

Kids, cooking dinner after work is tough business.

I think that I’m noticing a pattern that I haven’t been enjoying the cooking process as much as I desire to.

There are a few scenarios where my engagement and energy levels aren’t as high as I want them to be.

• Cooking dinner at night
• Meal prepping on the weekend
• Cooking for church
• Making a dish for life group
• Cooking for friends
• Making random experiments for my family

Ok, this is basically all of my cooking situations. I’m someone who gets stressed pretty easily. And, as a result, I deliver a product that is not up to my high standards. And, even if I have ample time, I think the outcome is mediocre because I am my worst critic. So, I’m trying to figure out how to have more self-compassion and how to set myself up for success.

Here is what happened last night:

I got home 5 pm and it wasn’t the most positive day at work. I gave Emi some belly rubs. I finished my weekly call with Uncle Butters while washing some Bok choy and okra. My plan was to boil the bok choy and noodles and then add them to the soup, cut the pork spare ribs up, and then half would be boiled and half would be stir-fried. And finally, to ferment some okra.

Washing veggies just takes forever. There is so much dirt and little bugs in some cases. Clean them thoroughly and with salt, and your tummies will thank you later. After everything was clean, I prepared the sauce for the pork. Anyways, after a while, it was 6 pm. Shucks. I needed to hurry. I used scissors to cut the spare ribs. I heated the bowls of chicken soup up. I boiled some of the bok choy. Boiled the noodles. Turned on the heat on the wok. Used my infrared thermometer, and it was 400. How else would I know that it’s almost to its smoke point? And, golly, I do not want the smoke alarm to go off. I opened the door for airflow. Threw the pork ribs in and heard a nice sizzle. That was a good feeling – I needed something to go right. At least the pork was going to be browned.

So, mommy came home after Emi’s doggie walk with her best friend Teddy. I was in red alert mode. Bok choy and noodles are done. I threw some of the pork to boil. I was going back and forth, checking if the pork was boiled and stir-frying the pork. The meat thermometer has two parts: the temperature reader and the metal stabber that you put into the meat. The metal part is either lost somewhere in the house, or it is at my sister’s. So, it is not available for me to use. As a result, there were a couple of times of taking the meat out of the pot and then realizing that it was still pink and then throwing it back into the pot to be boiled. The high note is that the stir-fried pork turned out pretty good. The sauce broke and was really oily, but we both really enjoyed the flavor: white pepper, soy sauce, and shaoxing wine.

Mondays are date nights. This was not a good start to it. Mommy was trying to check in with me and my emotions were not having it. One of my chopsticks fell and I wanted to snap it. But I threw it in the sink instead. We finished dinner and got ready to go to my sister’s place. Lucky for me, just before we left, I received a package that helped de-escalate my frustrations. My new cookbook, The French Laundry, had arrived, and my night was going to turn into a good night after all. So, when we got back home, I spent a few minutes perusing the book’s beauty. And, I had a good conversation with mommy. Sometimes it is the little things in life that help us ground ourselves.

Thoughts for improvement:

• Read the recipe a couple of times before making a new dish
• Clean and cut some veggies ahead of time.
• Mise-en-place as much as possible.
• Don’t try to make too many dishes at once.
• Remind myself that it is ok not to make something perfectly the first X times.
• Ask if it is a realistic timeline. Oh, I have learned that I’m pretty timeblind. For some reason, I think that I can do 3 hours of work in an hour. I’ve probably been watching too much America’s Test Kitchen. Lord, grant me speedy hands!
• There are areas of frustration that I should research more about, such as knife skills (doing a bear claw on a piece of garlic is so hard) and why things are sticking to the wok.
• Maybe just stick to listening to podcasts rather than sneaking peeks at videos.

Thoughts are easy. Following through is hard. Emotions are even harder. Maybe I’ll try two of these next week.

Also, have I mentioned that I was recently diagnosed with ADHD?