Saturday 24 May 2014

CAN LI NA COOK?


I like making and eating salads. During my first month as an undergraduate at the University of Bristol, I lived in a hostel with my course mates from Malaysia. They noticed that I liked to eat my food raw or I just ate boiled potatoes and hard boiled eggs.
After the first month, we moved out from the hostel and shared the rental for a house as it was much cheaper. I shared a house with two Malaysian teachers, Diana Patricks and Annabelle Thomas. The two ladies said they would do the cooking while I did other chores. Diana's sister, Liz who is married to a British, Philip asked why I never did the cooking and were told that my cooking skills were limited to boiling eggs and vegetables. However, Liz insisted that I do the cooking during their next visit. Her reasoning was that my grandma was a Straits born Chinese and she said that most of her friends with nyonya backgrounds could cook.
So cook I did and Liz was right. I never said I could not cook, it was just that I loved eating raw food or simple boiled food. Until today, my love for raw or simple cooked food remains. Wonder if Diana remembers this episode of our lives in England?

No comments: