No pictures with this post - sorry! Instead, some stream-of-consciousness musings here. Recently, I hit a lull in my cooking. Nothing was interesting anymore, didn’t have much inspiration or desire to make anything new or yummy. Probably because it’s been so freakin hot here lately (we just passed through a heat spell up to 107 degrees F).

No one really taught me how to cook. When I was a teenager, my dad taught me how to steam rice. I knew how to make ramen and canned soup. And when I went off to college, my mom taught me how to do three basic dishes: stirfried baby bok choy with oyster sauce, chicken wings (Chinese style), and black bean pork ribs (pai gu). It wasn’t enough to get me going. So by the time I got married, and had a resident doctor husband to help support at home, I turned on the Food Network and it was Rachael Ray who taught me how to cook. The only thing with everything on the Food Network, all the cuisine is Americanized. There are some European influences here and there (Italian cooking, etc.), but for the most part, there isn’t much room for different ethnic cooking. Which is sad, because here I am, a Chinese-American, grown up on eating Chinese home cooking, and I can’t cook a thing from my own culture/heritage. Ask me to make cream of mushroom from scratch, bake a cheesecake from scratch, do a million pastas, a zillion homemade soups, even osso bucco. But I suck at stirfry dishes (don’t laugh), and I can’t even do a good job with fried rice, that’s how upsetting this is.

So I’ve recently had a change of heart. I’m going to teach myself how to make the foods that I grew up with, the ones that I crave from my childhood and family dinners. The supermarkets around me are all western grocery stores, so I have to go a bit far to the nearest Asian supermarket, but that’s okay. It’s about time I learned how to cook usual Chinese homecooked meals. From scratch. I’m not talking about the greasy, salty, MSG-laden Chinese restaurant dishes out there (Sacramento is not known for having an abundance of quality and variety of Chinese food options). I’m talking the simple, nostalgic, healthy, yummy, home-cooked meals of my past.

We’ll see how I do. Wish me luck! =)