There are two reasons I attribute to for my retreat from KL’s
restaurant scene. Not that it is any lackluster,
new restaurants are mushrooming at every corner. Just close to where I live, work and eat in
Taman Tun Dr Ismail, at least four new outlets have popped up within the last
year on the same block.
Klang Valley is the hotpot of
all good Malaysian & non-Malaysian cuisine. Ask any local and chances are you’ll learn a new place to dine. If you talk to ten people, probably you can
add nine new spots to your “To Eat” list.
shame to discard the practice of cooking and eating at home. We rather spend the next 30 minutes trying to
surf the internet for the latest gossip before scrambling out of the office,
run an extra 3km on the treadmill in wish of a trimmer derriere or window
shopping away a long day. And we say
there’s just no time to cook.
For those of who you feeling the pinch of petrol price and
electricity tariffs hike, cooking at
home is one of the best ways to control the already escalating costs. One portion of decent spaghetti carbonara
would costs about RM15. Have you ever
taken the time to flip open a cookbook while browsing away at the bookstore to
notice how easy it is to make carbonara? That’s why I always call pasta dishes fast food.
ingredients. While shopping at the wet
market (yes, too early to rise for some and too crowded for others), we don’t just grab the greens and
poultry. Naturally you would want to
greenest of greens and the freshest of fish. Not only we are ensuring the best produce for our meals, we also have
more respect for each ingredient. None
of us would be up to take a peek at the original state of our fried greens at
the restaurant.
One thing we all know for sure, eating in is definitely a
healthier option. For me, deep-frying is
a pain. So much oil used and cannot be
reused, a long wash to remove kitchen counter’s grease and managing the oil’s
temperature for an even, golden colour are some big put-offs. So I grill or steam or bake for a cleaner
kitchen and less time spent washing up.
prefer to be exercising or watching Desperate Housewives. Maybe the most important reason for eating in
is too intangible, it doesn’t save us money, it doesn’t make us physically
healthier and it doesn’t make us thinner so we never realized its existence.
stimulation, from the internet, tv, radio and human company that we live in
fear of being alone. Having time out
alone sounds so scary to us, we have become alienated from our own self. Cooking for me has been an excellent form of
escapism, a retreat into my own world and time away from the rest. Husbands are not interested to step into the
hot, greasy kitchen. Children stay away
from all those stinky fresh cut onion and spicy pounded chilli. It’s just you and your kitchen. How wonderful!
An inspiring story of someone I know. She has created a cooking day for her three
children. On this day her children would
rule the kitchen, making their own decision on what is to be served for lunch. She’ll provide the ingredients and will eat
anything they concoct, be it fried sausages with chips or pancakes with
ham. Every week, these three children
look forward excitedly to their cooking day to create some havoc in the kitchen
and be the kids that they are. They would
realize in future that their mother has built for them a bond. Three siblings who may have spend their times
fighting for the computer and playing tricks on each other spends a day each
week when they all worked together as team, stand behind each other for the
lousy food they served up and finally to eat happily and to laugh about it all
on the dining table.
