I love a good meal. Then, I become too dependent on it for happiness. Mind you, I’m enjoying life, but I like little bursts of joy to brighten up a sluggish day. So, I fulfill my food desires even if it means making an elaborate Vietnamese summer roll in a weekday afternoon. No, taking the bus for a carrot cake better than the one selling downstairs is no trouble at all.

But whenever my sunny side up sticks to the pan, or a packet of chicken rice is missing its chilli sauce, I become upset and frustrated. My husband, who can usually live with small mishaps like these, also dread them in anticipation of my disappointment. I knew then that I must look for more reasonable emotional returns from a meal.

Considering the other reasons we eat may be a good start. Some of my most vivid food memories, I realised, were about negotiating relationships. I have pleased and appeased or, soothed anxieties through eating. Joy was the last thing in my mind in those instances.

…

I was 9 years old when I ate an entire pot of rice meant for my parents, maid and I. The first helping was dinner. The second was greed. The rest was a game of dare I played with myself. I sat alone in front of the TV as usual, probably looking for attention when I think about it now. I wet the rice with the herbal broth of bak kut teh and drank it like a porridge, a competitive eating technique (so I learned later).

Dad came home first. Our maid explained why a new batch of rice was cooking. He let out a “wah”, but looked more baffled than impressed. It was anti-climactic. Nobody fussed over me like I wanted. Also, I was suffering from the grains bobbing up and down my throat. Next time I wanted my parents to be proud of me, I just did my homework instead.

…

I pulled a similar but more modest stunt in my teens. This time I was trying to hang out with my friends while getting my father off my back. We no longer had a maid, so he had been cooking dinner and I was expected to be home after school. I obliged because he was fierce. Only when I was much older he told me the symbolic meaning of those meals: they made us a family, rather than mere roommates sharing a place to sleep.

Not knowing this then, I was resentful to be made to skip Long John Silver’s with my classmates. Dad had no idea that after-school gossips cemented the friendships of teenage girls. I feared becoming dispensable to my clique if I wasn’t around much. So I ate out, and then again at home. I tell my husband today that this was how I stretched my belly too big.

…

When I was 20, I landed in the hospital with typhoid from meals that I still might not reject if given another chance. I was an intern covering a story in Arughat, Nepal, a small village in the hills. For three nights I lived with one of my interviewees, Satrughan Shrestha, in his two-storey mud-coloured house. We ate dal bhat (rice and lentil soup) prepared by his wife and teenage daughter.

Dal bhat was a typical meal of the common folks so I was surprised when they offered me fish on top of that. I ate it with mouthfuls of rice and swallowed quickly because it was fishy. My hosts could be offering me the best that they could afford and I did not want to hurt their pride by rejecting it. Alas, we had fish every day.

To go back to Kathmandu, I had to take a five-hour bus ride to Gorkha to transit. Shrestha took me on his motorbike to cut short the journey. Despite having rode three hours through winding roads and rivers where he had to dismount and push the vehicle across, he insisted on buying me lunch before I journeyed on. He didn’t speak English and neither do I speak Nepali. There couldn’t be a more proper goodbye than a meal together. I just wished it wasn’t the fish.

We ate it at a tiny but crowded restaurant beside the bus station. As we tucked in, I felt a wave of nausea and pain in my abdomen. I wanted to get through the meal without alarming Shrestha, so I took a bite whenever I could bring myself to. After lunch, I went to the toilet thinking that I should pee before the long ride. Instead, I threw up the entire meal, but felt much better after that.

Two nights later in Kathmandu, the pain came back and even moved around my torso. I was admitted to the hospital, where I learned that I contracted typhoid. Maybe I became complacent since I recovered quickly, but it felt good that this happened because of a meal (or meals) I ate to show others gratitude, rather than for my own joy.

…

I also eat when I don’t have much to say to others present. I don’t fancy melon seeds because it is too much work for a tiny bit, yet I always reached for the ones at a Chinese wake. Experts could crack the shell and pull out the seed with only their teeth. I do that unsuccessfully, and then battle it with my fingers.

But struggling buys me time to think what else to say to strangers across the table. Even in the company of familiar faces I sometimes would rather space out. Pretending to be keen on melon seeds allow me to do that without being rude. I’m not sure why it’s a tradition for people to provide the snack at wakes, but it sure is useful for breaking awkward silences.

…

There have been other reasons why I eat — to heal, to fulfill or understand — each of them more desirable in many circumstances than gaining pleasure. I still look forward to a good meal, but maybe not expect joy, because it is overrated.

The colours I typically eat.

What I think about when I shop for groceries? It’s usually not what I want to eat but how I can pack more proteins, vegetables and colours into a few meals. I decide what to do with my purchases only later. The problem with planning a menu is planning. There isn’t always time for that, yet not spending time to condense the shopping list only creates wastage.

That is why I only think about how many meals I’m buying for, and then I pick different items from different food categories until I have enough. I usually buy for two days, and each time I put a rainbow into my basket, say a carrot, burdock and cabbage, or a capsicum, eggplant and bak choy. I try not to repeat these within the next two market visits, because the best diet includes everything.

At home, I pick one protein but may use two or even three vegetables for each meal. I’ve combined chicken thigh with carrot, burdock and rice, but a baked salmon needs only stir-fried bak choy to make lunch. The protein helps me decide the vegetable to eat it with. All the more so if I’m planning a one-dish meal, because the type of cuts determines the cooking method which then narrows down the appropriate greens. I like to make soups when I have a whole chicken, to which I add almost anything like napa cabbage, corn or potato. But if I have only breast that I want to make a salad with, I use cucumber, carrot and coriander.

I never worry about missing a scallion or a lettuce, because vegetables are easy to get in my neighbourhood. However, items that tend be fresher at farther markets and supermarkets, like meats, fish and leafy greens, I make sure I already have them in my fridge. It helps to keep dried goods at home to expand the menu and I can’t do without shiitake, scallops, shrimps, cuttlefish, chilli, lentils, bonito, kelp, beans, spices and various types of noodles. I also have condiments for every mood, including fish sauce, fermented tofu, mustard, mayo, miso, gochujang and sambal.

Of all the meats and fish, chicken has been particularly good to me as it is versatile and easy to handle. I’ve done several things with it, and I’ve organised them here the way I think about my cooking: starting from meat cuts to cooking methods to the vegetables or sauces that complement.

WHOLE

Roast

• garlic, olive oil & lemon
• duck fat
• soy sauce & worcestershire sauce

8 PIECES

Soups

• black pickled radish (老菜圃), dried liquorice root (甘草), rehmannia root (熟地)
• chinese yam (淮山), codonopsis root (党参), solomon’s seal (玉竹), chinese angelica root (当归), rhizoma ligustici (川芎), red dates, wolf berries
• carrot, celery, potato, onion
• cabbage, dried scallop, dried shrimp

Stew

• potato, curry paste, coconut milk

16 PIECES

Steam

• salted fish, ginger, oyster sauce, rice wine

Stew

• shiitake, ginger, sesame oil, soy sauce, soy bean paste, rice wine

BREASTS

Soups

• carrot, celery, potato, onion
• dried scallop, century egg, spring onions, rice
• boiled egg, coriander, sesame seeds, somen noodles

Salads

• cabbage, carrot, coriander, cucumber, fish sauce, lime, chilli
• apple, celery, raisin, mayo

BONELESS LEG

Baked

• garlic, olive oil & lemon
• soy sauce & worcestershire sauce
• miso & butter
• honey, soy sauce, garlic

Stir-fry

• onion, egg, dashi, rice
• burdock, carrot, shiitake, soy sauce, rice
• scallion, onion, shiitake, soy sauce, sake, mirin, bonito flakes, udon
• black fungus, wolfberries, soy sauce, rice wine

Steam

• chinese sausage, salted fish, shiitake, soy sauce, oyster sauce, rice wine, rice
• salted fish, ginger, oyster sauce, rice wine

I’ve been thinking about death lately. I am afraid, yet hopeful, about the prospect of consciousness after life. I will like a chapter two to my brief humanly existence, but I also fear, that in this sequel, I will be written into a new plot with completely different characters. I appreciate personal accounts of impending death, be it of one’s own or of the loved ones, as I wanted perspectives, preferably one that can help me see the silver lining to the eternal separations with my parents and my soon-to-be husband. If that’s not possible, at least I wanted to know how others deal with the pain.

***

“One day—May 30—you’re in Brooklyn Fairway doing a big food shop to prepare for your husband’s return from climbing Mt. Rainer; the next day, the National Park Service is calling to say your husband has been killed… Life changes fast. I took the first flight to Seattle, and life as I knew it ended.”

Writer Lisa Kolb shared this story in Remedy Quarterly, a food magazine that accompanies all its recipes with personal stories. Kolb contributed a recipe for the chocolate chip cookies that her husband brought with him to his climbing trip. It was the last thing she ever made him.

After her husband was gone, Kolb wrote, she lost her appetite and her ability to cook, as she didn’t know how to do so for one. She ate more over time and she relearned, more slowly, the pleasures of cooking. She stopped preparing large, heavy dishes that she used to do for her husband and instead made salads or even just a glass of lemonade for herself. She still ate cereals in place of a proper meal, but that’s okay, she said:

“I have not regained all my weight. I cannot throw out a strawberry yoghurt—his strawberry yoghurt—that remains in the refrigerator. There are still bowls of cereals. But that’s OK. I will get there. For every bowl of cereal in front of the TV, there is a lovely soft-boiled egg breakfast at the table with the Sunday paper, or a warm mug of chickpea stew, hearty and fragrant, cradled in my hands as I read a book. I still make too much food, but that’s OK. I will save the leftovers for another day.”

***

I never baked, but I made Kolb’s cookies in honour of her husband. My biggest gripe about death is that life goes on for millions of others as if the deceased never stepped on earth before.

The cookies turned out to be rock hard — not unlikely to break a tooth if a popcorn had done that to mine. I screwed up because I used a blender, instead of a cake mixer, to cream the butter. I also measured flour, oatmeal and sugar by sight.

But that’s okay. The man I am about to spend the rest of my life with voluntarily reaches for my cookies-gone-wrong for breakfasts, and, whenever I dilly dally in the kitchen.

My food doesn’t always turn out well, but that’s okay, because this special someone would eat with so much glee I wonder what I’ve done to deserve him.

I still cannot imagine, after reading Kolb, how life, or death, would be, alone, but I learnt how to be grateful for the present.

Slowly inching forward as the restaurant opened its doors.

Is waiting in line for food a pain for you? Try waiting at Franklin Barbecue, which almost every media in America agrees makes one of the best briskets in Austin, Texas or even in the whole of United States. I’m not suggesting that if you haven’t joined the line for Franklin’s brisket, you don’t know what pain is. What I’m saying is, after spending three hours of your precious life out in the rain, snow, or heat, for food that tonnes of other places offer decent versions of, you may actually come out of it thinking, ‘that was pretty fun.’ The people, both inside and outside the door that separates you and your food, can make waiting bearable or even the highlight of a trip.

Two weeks ago I was in Austin to escape the winter in New York but ended up battling the southern city’s biting wind. On the coldest day of that week, at below freezing point, I found myself in the outdoors with at least 50 others, for three morning hours. I regretted almost immediately but was somewhat comforted when one of the Franklin guys came out to greet us. He thanked us for our patience and expressed how grateful and honoured they were to have our support despite the ungodly weather. Now, that was surprising. Franklin had been seeing snaking lines outside their restaurant almost every other day. Most restaurateurs, chefs or receptionists would have been immune to that sight however grand they initially might be, or they would very imperfectly suppress their vexation of the crowd, the noise, and the long, intense working hours that follow their patronisation. But based on the comments on social media, Franklin had been appreciative to their customers. They provided chairs and blankets, although not enough for everyone, to make our wait a little more comfortable. They welcomed us to use their toilets inside the restaurant, and the men took opportunity to warm themselves up while waiting in a much shorter line to use the men’s room. Woman was a rare breed in this carnivores setting, so I thawed my hands under hot running water for as long as I could without seeming like I was camping in the toilet.

Photo taken by shivery hands.

Most people preferred to stay outside in the line, where the carnival took place. Even though I was not much of a participant, it was entertaining to watch. They brought music, cartons and cartons of beers, and track shoes to run in to ward off the cold and perhaps, shed off the calories they were about to put on. I was watching a movie on my iPad but I later realised, though not too late, that jogging in place and to my neighbour’s music helped me feel my toes again. Plus I had a good chat with others when I was not staring at the screen. One generous lady even offered me a pair of gloves. Everyone was talking to someone they didn’t know about where they had driven from, what they did for a living, and whether they had tried Franklin. By the time we were right outside the restaurant, but still some distance away from the counter, we were egging each other on to kiss the door, exchanging strategies on what and how much to order, and becoming one another’s camera guy. It was so much fun and laughter during the anticipation that eating the brisket was anti-climatic. Oh it was so delicious, probably the best barbecue I’ve eaten, but not as unforgettable as a potentially-most-excruciating-but-turned-around-to-become-the-most-entertaining-wait-for-food.

What too much food looks like.

Would I do it again? God no. So I’m glad my only experience was an unexpectedly pleasant one.

NYC’s deliverymen brave the heat, the rain, the potholes, the mad men behind the wheels, and, at this time of the year, the snow. Unless it is a blizzard like today, when the mayor bans all non-emergency vehicles including food delivery bicycles, these men have to put up with slick roads and wind chill. Many refurbish their bicycles to make their job as tolerable as possible, like fitting two furry pockets on the handlebars to keep the hands warm during the ride. The plastic bags, I believe, keep the pockets from getting wet by the rain or snow. Simple brilliance like this reminds me of how little some people have but also how having little inspires ingenuity.