Cooking for the Family

Background:

Yesterday morning, MIL instructed me to prepare a bee hoon dinner for the family with the assistance of their new dunno-how-to-cook helper. That was because she would be kept busy all day since her father would be dying within these two days. The 86-yr-old patriarch had been critically ill since middle of last month and his blood pressure went really low the day before. True enough, he passed away at 3pm yesterday afternoon.

Later, I tried explaining to Ying Ying about his passing and that her papa would be going to the funeral wake but she didn't understand about funerals and thought he was making a trip up heaven to visit! I guess it was beause I just read to her last Sunday a children's book entitled Heaven which explains about death of a pet dog - a touching book really.

Pre-Cooking:

To make things easy, MIL gave me detailed instructions on how the bee hoon was to be cooked (her way) and I mentally rehearsed the steps before stepping into the kitchen. I was a bit nervous about it not because I have not fried bee hoon before but because I wasn't sure if they (i.e. FIL, husband's paternal grandmother plus ms dunno-how-to-cook) would like what I cook for them. As for husband, I don't really care - it's like he better eat up after all the time I spent cooking in the kitchen!

In addition, my culinary skills have turned rusty already - I have not cooked real meals (i.e. not instant noodles) since moving into Hotel Serangoon (see previous post). You see, MIL always does the cooking and I never interfere (unless if she asks me to help, of course, but it has never occurred before) because I believe two women in the kitchen can cause potential conflict. In short, she is THE BOSS when comes to preparing family meals. (I still recall many years ago how upset she was when I drained away all her fragrant fried shallot oil so as to make the fried shallots 'healthier' to eat. :p) Similarly, she didn't interfere whenever I used to do leisure baking in her kitchen occasionally (ok, more like she wasn't not interested to begin with. haha).

During Cooking:

Anyway, the process went smoothly though I had a hard time trying to find things to occupy meimei while trying to cook. Having a domestic helper makes cooking such a breeze - you don't need to do the preparation (e.g. peeling and chopping onions and garlic; shredding the veggies etc) and washing/cleaning up part. Not to mention the marketing part. All these are so very time-consuming and I would rather eat out sometimes so that I could better spend time with the girls.

I must add that I was surprised ms dunno-how-to-cook really doesn't know how to cook. MIL always complains about her incompetency but I thought she might be exaggerating or simply being too harsh in judging the poor girl. Turned out she had difficulty even flipping over the omelette and wasn't very sure how to manipulate the fire in the process of cooking. So I ended up taking over most of the time otherwise there might even be no dinner. I once suggested MIL leave the frying of the kids' cod fish to her since it was pretty easy dish to do, in my opinion. I didn't quite believe it when MIL said she didn't know how but now I do!

Post-Cooking:

I was secretly pleased when FIL commented the final product looked good (cos I used lots of shredded omelette as garnish heheh) though husband thought it was a little wet for his liking. Wet or not, I found it nice enough to eat it again for supper. Hahaha.

It made me wonder what would happen if MIL gets too old or not be around *touch wood* in future??? Who will do all the cooking for the family??? For the sake of my kids, I guess I better eat humble pie and learn all her family recipes now before it becomes too late. :p