My Cooking Experience

I started cooking when I was thirteen. I grew up in a home where both of my parents worked, so I was usually alone with my two younger siblings after school. Unlike other days, our parents forgot to prepare our dinner before they went to work. I was the oldest among us all, and going out for dinner was beyond our budget at the moment, so I decided to be the chef of the day. A few moments later, I settled to cook fried rice, which seemed to be the best option out of limited resources, including my cooking knowledge. After placing a skillet on the stove and turning up the heat, it soon began to sizzle. My stomach was growling, so I rushed and threw everything into the pan all together. In went rice, pieces of meat, some soy sauce for flavoring, and scraps of veggies. Little did I know that the order of ingredients was crucial in cooking. I waited for the meat to be thoroughly cooked, but other ingredients were burning. At first, I mistook it as a steam from cooking, but I soon grasped something went horribly wrong when billows of smoke emerged to fill the kitchen.

Later that day, my mother told me that you cannot rush yourself when cooking. Rather, I should take steps, turning to the basics such as learning about ingredients and referring back to the recipe. My first cooking experience went haywire, but its implications went far beyond simply being a cooking fiasco. It was not until I was a freshman in college that this lesson started to shape my perspective on life.

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