My dad sees cooking as a labor of love. Now, I share with it friends.
overs in the fridge and make an amazing meal. It’s true.
If I was craving a shrimp stir fry or chicken with a spicy honey glaze, he would make it. I loved seeing the smile spread across his face when he knew he got it just right.
I will admit that I did not inherit his expert touch, but I also enjoy experimenting and altering recipes to make something delicious.
Last summer was my first spent away from home. Instead of returning to Colorado and to his delectable home-cooked meals, I was living in my small Boston apartment, responsible for my own dinners. With a full-time job and other obligations, it became difficult to find joy in cooking.
Exhausted, I found myself opting for a frozen meal or something fast and simple. It didn’t make sense to make an elaborate meal for one person.
My best friend, Bobby Wu, also enjoys cooking. He found love in his mom’s mala fish and his dad’s beef soup. Bobby also had a full schedule last summer, but in trying to coordinate time to hang out, we found that we could make a weekly dinner work. So after all of the stress of the day, we could at least sit down once a week and share a meal.
We got ideas from TikTok videos or crafted a meal around a special item on sale at Trader Joe’s. As college students, we didn’t splurge on ingredients unless there was a special occasion. We made a lot of pastas with chicken and fish with rice. Leftovers were a big plus.
We’re both introverts, so our cooking sessions became a time to decompress. We shuffled music by Noah Kahan and Chappell Roan and moved around each other as we worked on our own tasks, chopping vegetables or boiling noodles. Then we would eat and watch whatever show we were working through. It used to be “Afterparty,” but I eventually convinced him to start one of my favorite shows, “Gilmore Girls.”
When the fall semester began, it became even harder to find time to cook together. We are seniors with multiple jobs and clubs and projects to complete. But we still dine a couple of times a month.
Bobby recently ran the Cape Cod Marathon, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to make homemade tomato soup and grilled cheese — a comforting end to a long day. Our biggest challenge was the fact that the only blender in my apartment is my roommate’s personal smoothie blender, which fits just one tumbler’s worth of liquid. We worked with what we had and blended in small batches. It was tedious, but nothing tastes better than food you work hard for.
Our latest creation was the omelet Sydney makes for Natalie on “The Bear.” It’s another comfort meal — eggs filled with Boursin cheese and topped with chives and crushed potato chips. Bobby took the lead on crafting the omelets while I chopped chives and created a makeshift pipping bag for the cheese out of a Ziploc. We invited our friend Liz over and devoured the omelets with cups of cheap wine, sitting on the floor around my coffee table. (I still don’t have an actual kitchen table.) We chatted and laughed and enjoyed a small moment of peace in our busy lives.
We made mistakes over the past couple months, burning bread and ruining an entire sauce by adding cream we didn’t realize was spoiled. But we had fun testing out new recipes and learning more about cooking from each other. We didn’t have fancy gadgets or a spacious kitchen, but we were still able to create our own version of what my dad created for me.
We made mistakes over the past couple months. But we had fun testing out new recipes and learning more about cooking from each other.