What’s that saying of how there’s only ONE woman per kitchen? Well, that certainly isn’t the case here, translated…
In the heat of the summer, the kitchen became my place of intern for bettering my cooking skills. My mother-in-law had a towel, wrapped around her neck, so she could wipe away the sweat coming down her face and neck. The gauze in the wok had agars, and they were, dancing in the broiling water. I’d heard my mother-in-law told of her childhood memories, how the temperatures of the oceans wasn’t that cold in April on the northern shorelines, she who was still very young, followed her uncle into the seas, to pick the agars; in order to get the better quality agars, the adults would normally dive down deeper, the children would hang around by the shores, picking up the agars off the rocks, and washing their pants at the same time. As she’d told the tales, my almost seventy-year-old, with a head of silvery brown hair, flashed that smile of a naughty child.
“From before, the agars we’d picked off the rocks had to be washed five times, dried five times before they can be sold! Now I’m elderly, I can no longer manage it! The $420N.T. per kilogram, is now, someone else’s to earn!” I was, feeling bad about not being there to bear witness to how the agars were harvested, and at the same time, I can’t help but feel glad that I didn’t need to withstand the hardships.
“Come on over, I’ll teach you, as the water starts to broil, add some vinegar, that can reduce the stench from the sea, and it can also quickly help the agar to release the collagen………”, the real-life cooking sessions are so very amazing, from before I can’t ever remember the scientific stuff, but right this moment, the agar is going through the chemical reactions! As the water broiled, we’d switched the temperature to low, and, patiently, cooked it for one to two hours, because we had wrapped the agar up with gauze, it could save up the time from when we’d needed to scoop up the leftover, and, all of these details are, exactly what I wanted to pick up. We’d divided up the gelatinous agar into smaller pots, waiting until the gelatin cooled, then, send it into the fridge, for it to become solids, then, it’s, chow time!
Says WHO there’s only one woman in the kitchen, I’m having a grand time, hearing my mother-in-law’s tales of her youthful days, and picking up some cooking skills at the same time!
So, this, is the wonderful interactions the mother and daughter-in-law shared in the kitchen, and the reason that this worked out so well is because the mother-in-law wanted to teach the daughter-in-law something, as the daughter-in-law was also, eager, to pick up the skills, and that, is why in this particular kitchen, there were, TWO ladies allowed!
no, still NOT my drawing here…
Life, the Obstacle Course 