from my kitchen to..

...yours! (as paula deen would have said). i have been on a roll this past weeks. i have been making so food from my kitchen that is so totally diverse. just this past week alone, i had made italian (spaghetti with spicy red bellpeppers), filipino (pinakbet, chicken marinated in mama sita bbq), chinese (chicken sauteed with some veggies), and indian (chicken curry) food. to top it, i had made my first brownies from scratch and a banana bread!

mind you, i am not a great cook. i can cook, yes, but great - not at all! someone had said a great cook need not a recipe to follow. i mean, i can cook without a recipe, the results could be unpredictable. i really don't know where the passion of making food comes from, but as what my sister had told me "it's in our genes." i guess, she is right... from both sides of my family, food has been a center of everything. we love to gather around the table and just enjoy a great meal and conversation. should i say, the family that eats together, stays together?


i used to remember Ammah (my grandma from my dad's side) would always be in the kitchen making something.. from the peanuts that she would roast and later sell to great chinese food that (i believe) she had learned to make from her parents for us to feast on. too bad, she would usually kick my and my cousin out of the kitchen in fear of us spilling stuff onto ourselves and burn ourselves! it would have been great to have learned how she made all those food that i now still crave for and pass it along my kids.

in the baking arena, i remember my aunt (from my mom's side) would let us lick the batter off the spatula or the mixer attachments after she was done with it! and those times when my cousin and i would sneak into her pantry and eat the candy sprinkles from the jar! the best part of the baking experience that i had as a child was when my cousin (dad's side) would make this fruit cake for christmas. the whole place would just smell of tha rum, fruits and nuts! i could smell it until now.. unfortunately, the recipe is a top secret that i just can't seem to get a hold of!

i could see why people would instantly think that i would love to become a chef for a day, but then again, why would i want to be one if i could always enjoy making things from my kitchen? i just get a nice feeling whenever i see people enjoying the food that i make, and it doesn't hurt to have someone that is more than willing to try the (new) foods that i create!