From Cooking 🍄 and Baking 🥐 , I Learned…

Cooking has been a part of me outside design and writing. This hobby stays on my mind since I was in junior high school and I like how it turns out to be who I am now.

Short story, I started to cook when I was in high school. At that time, I didn’t know how to start. It seems like cooking is harder than how I solve math problems. I know that I had an interest in cooking and baking when I lived with my grandma for a few years. My grandma loved to bake cookies and cakes. Sometimes, I helped her to mix the batter. Then, when my grandma passed away, I moved to another city and started a new life with my parents.

Photo by sofatutor on Unsplash — I started a new life with my parents

My mom, the one in charge of cooking at home (since she decided to be a full-time housewife), never let me cook even the easiest one, making omelets.

Her response when I asked her to let me in charge of cooking, is,

“You don’t know how to cook. It’s better to help me chop the garlic instead of cooking.”

Or,

“You waste the ingredients. It won’t taste good.”

As a young child, I felt disappointed and decided to follow her instruction instead, just to avoid the fight. Unfortunately, I couldn’t prove that I was better than her. My pace was slow because I never chopped garlic before. My mom was a little bit impatient waiting for me to get done with the garlic. Haha, that was a weird moment.

It was like you joined the Masterchef and the chef stares at you in the entire cooking scene.

But I never gave up. My mom’s words above inspired me to do better in everything, including cooking. I kept learning and asking many people around me. At that time, the internet wasn’t as good as today, especially if you live in a small city in Indonesia.

Photo by Sebastian Coman Photography on Unsplash — Cooking illustration

The time came when my mom had a religious trip to another city. I was tasked with many things relating to cooking. My dad used to have 13+ employees in his shop, and they all had lunch in my house. That meant that I had to cook for all of them, my dad, and the housemaid.

Imagine, as a young girl who never cooked for a mass of people. How could I do it? It was such a challenge for me.

My mom was concerned with how bad my cooking was. To anticipate it, she cooked all food and stored all of them in the freezer. It was a good idea but the freezer couldn’t store it all until my mom came back from her trip (the trip was about three weeks). With a bad feeling, she told me to cook certain foods, such as vegetable stir fry or fried noodles every day for all of us.

I agreed with her to take charge of being a cook at home. It was a hard time because I had to juggle school, private lessons (piano, science, and language lessons). However, I found it to be refreshing and satisfying to see a wok and all prepped ingredients. I never got bored or tired when seeing that.

I experimented with lots of raw veggies or meats from the fridge. My housemaid was also so supportive. I told her that I couldn’t prepare rice or sambal (homemade chili sauce) because I had school every morning.

From three weeks of timeline, I cooked different kinds of foods, from fried noodles with crunchy carrots (vegan food), mixed veggies (or we call it ‘capcay’ in the Indonesian language), mixed veggies cake (or ‘bakwan’), and different kinds of stir fry veggies. I was satisfied to see all of the homemade foods that I made. Additionally, the employees and dad were satisfied to see how I made a progress.

Then, I decided to study abroad after graduating from senior high school. Even though I had to start a new life again out of the country, which meant I had to buy grocery or kitchen appliances all by myself, the willingness to try experimenting learning to cook different kinds of foods is always in my mind.

Photo by Daniel on Unsplash — study abroad

In my spare time, I also baked the cake and if the shape of the cakes was good enough, I was glad to share it with my friends and professors at the college. Furthermore, I consistently watched YouTube and Instagram if I wanted to cook something new and learned different kinds of techniques from different chefs.

And without further ado, I would like to share what I learned from cooking. It seems not a lot but I agree that these things impact my life so much.

https://www.instagram.com/p/But5QbtBjx_/ — My First Homemade Egg Tart :)

Juggling with the time

I am a student, designer, and also at the same time, I am a content creator. And cooking is the best choice for me to save money for my tuition and for my living cost.

However, managing time is not always easy. Before the pandemic hit, I had to be on campus early morning and it encouraged me to adjust my cooking schedule and prepare the ingredients the night before.

Photo by Luke Chesser on Unsplash — Juggling with time is not easy

Waking up in the morning is a routine

Before class moved to online, I had to wake up at 4 AM to cook for breakfast and lunch. Sometimes, I skipped going to shower (*P.S., that doesn’t mean I didn’t wash my face, brush my teeth, and even have my routine skincare).

Instead, I directly cooked and prepared for parties of three at the house. I was tired but I became more productive waking up in the morning.

Photo by Kinga Cichewicz on Unsplash — What if waking up before sunrise?

Unexpected things make us more creative

Sometimes, things happen out of my expectation, e.g., when I cooked the potatoes. It got burnt because I set up the temperature of the air fryer so high, and I was disappointed. I didn’t want to start again peeling the potatoes and wasting the time again.

Instead, I tried to find another ingredient that is easy to cook. Time is short, especially if I have to go to campus at 6.00 AM. I had to consider the traffic on the way to campus as well! :(

Learning from the mistakes can make us better and more creative.

I can tell from my experience of baking the cake. I kept practicing to make good pineapple cookies. I tried to hide my disappointment if things went bad.

Photo by Skye Studios on Unsplash — being a creative person

Applying eco-friendly life

I try my best to keep everything eco-friendly, including cooking and baking. I skip using plastic wrap to wrap the food or to cover the bun that I make.

I understand that to care about environment, we have to start from small thing that we do at home.

Also, I use the food container to store my food. I found that plastic wrap is sticky and I can’t reuse it anymore. For the straw, I bought the silicon straw and the small brush as a straw cleaner.

Photo by Anna Oliinyk on Unsplash

Enjoying the process is all that we need

I posted my mistakes on LinkedIn. It was to remind me that everything takes time. Baking and cooking taught me a lot. I was glad that everyone responded well to the post.

Enjoying the process is not always bad as long as you keep improving and keep learning from that.

Beatrix Cendana on LinkedIn: #ChineseNewYear #Instagram #Sharing