Day 68 – 1.04.68 – Delicious Food

Tomorrow I go to the hospital for my 3 hr pre-admission. I need to remember to bring my note book and to write everything down. During this time I have some bloodwork and meet some people. I am not sure what to expect. If it was a Thursday I would have gone in a suit. When I was working at the hospital I wore a suit every Thursday. On the rare occasion I did not wear a suit everyone would make a comment on why I did not have a suit on that day. Most of the staff were used to me wearing a suit. One thing about being in the hospital is that the food in the cafeteria was not actually too bad. I did not mind eating the food there.

1.) When I started working at Vale, I became friends with a lot of the Brazilians. They introduced me to a bunch of delicious food such as picanha which is a cut of steak that Brazilians eat. Initially it was difficult to find since it is cut differently than most butchers do. Tarini’s carries this now that you can ask for it after so many Brazilians asked for it. Another is a birthday treat traditionally served at birthdays, brigadeiro, made of chocolate and condensed sweetened milk. Probably my favorite food though is pudim de leite condensado, which is a Brazilian flan. If I had not become friends with the Brazilians at Vale I would not have had the opportunity to have all of this deliciousness. A couple of summers ago we invited some of them over and ended up with quite a few at my place having dinner. I made the flan for the first time and it was apparently quite tasty. It is made from sweetened condensed milk. I am fond of it as it reminds me of my childhood. I use to eat it on toast. I appreciate the exposure to new foods and the new friends I made.

2.) Growing up my parents were fantastic cooks and made so many delicious foods. Growing up I tried to learn how to make a lot of it, but my parents would criticize my technique or the way I was doing things and take over. It is interesting because now when I go to my in-laws or some of Mel’s family I end up cooking a lot. When I cook at home and my parents come over for get togethers things are interesting. I love having my mother help me though if it is non-Asian food. She will help out and not be critical and will help me chop everything up perfectly. That is one criticism I get from my parents that every single piece of food or vegetable is not perfectly uniform in size. I have learned how to make some of the dishes and I know conceptually how to do the rest and the ingredients, I just do not possess some of the knife skills to cut the meat to the appropriate thinness to make some of the dishes. I will need to perfect it soon while I still can from my parents.

3.) The food that some of my friends parents made were delicious. My best friends mom made Italian food all of the time and all of that pasta probably helped with my incessant growth spurts, but the food I love the most are her cabbage rolls made in the Ukrainian style. Delicious, as well as the stuffed shells and pork sticks. The other dish I really remember from one the same family is the twins mother cooking chicken cacciatore with polenta. Those are dishes that I really remember. The other family that I had mentioned that took me camping, Gene and Joyce. Joyce was a fantastic cook and made simple meals that were great. I remember having swordfish at their house and it was quite tasty. I was exposed to things like that as a kid and really appreciated the exposure to non-Asian food. When my parents made non-Asian food it was all right, but in Asian cooking they seem to add a bit of sugar to a lot of things to counter the salty sauces they use. It is not the same when you add it to non-Asian food.

When I told my mother that I could not taste food right now her response was that it was a good thing that I have had the chance to eat so much good food in my life. People do not like to cook for me because they think I am too critical. Growing up my parents would critique every dish they made or when we went out to a restaurant they would discuss what was good and how to improve on every dish. It is something that I grew up with my whole life and something I am use to. So every time I make a dish, I always indicate what was wrong with it and how I could improve it next time. Since I am so critical with my own dishes people expect I will nitpick theirs. I tend not to and appreciate what they make. If someone asks then I try not to always comment on things. Growing up in restaurants what they would do on occasion is leave out something and get me to taste it to see if I could identify what was missing. I learned a lot from that and have a pretty good palate for tasting things. That is what makes it so difficult now for me with the lost of taste. If money was not an issue, and I could do any job, I would open a 3 to 5 table restaurant and just randomly cook for people and not charge for it. I enjoy being in the kitchen even if it seems I am stressed or running around. I like hosting people for dinner, but would prefer to plate each dish individually instead of group food for everyone. I prefer each food to order like a restaurant instead of having food sit there. That way it would be the perfect temperature for each person. Melanie disagrees and thinks I should socialize with the guests instead of just being in the kitchen. When we renovate the kitchen if I can get an 8 burner stove top I think I can manage to cook meals to order for everyone and plate it all.

Quoc Hao