Family’s Meal
The sweet cheesy aroma of stuffed mushrooms and creamy avocado soup wafted down by the smell of warm bread and melting yellow butter. Mushroom soup bowls with lettuce and ripe baby tomato salad drenched in canola oil and vinegar. Steaks are delicately seasoned with a crisp of salt, garlic powder, and ground pepper; each topped with a seared brown crust. This was our family’s best meal. When I was little, I identified ‘achievement’ as gaining success, but my definition has been challenged by this meal I made in eighth grade from Black Friday’s sale ingredients, Gordon Ramsay’s tutorials, and my trial-and-error cooking knowledge. I realized that achievement is not a mere perfection, but the effort to fulfill one’s mission from however little resources.
After my father left, I’ve witnessed poverty corrupt my mother’s social life and health from working in a blue-collar job that paid her minimum wages and eczema that scaled her hands, all for her two daughters. Undesirably, I partook in her role as the house’s leader. I started my career with an “easy egg fried rice,” unintentionally launching the most unpalatable rice dish in Asian cuisine, that featured salmonella from raw eggs and messy blood stains. Little did I know, cooking has taught me the foundations of achievement: appreciate failures and seek solutions for goals rather than complaints. During those times, I learned to compromise with others like picky sisters and how comforting a good meal is to my family.
My testimony to not becoming another consequential statistic of fatherlessness is fueled by my faith, ambition for education, and effort to do my best. My guts boiled to the media’s depiction of single-parent children as lacking self-value and a probable dropout statistic. I started to cook out of survival, but it has grown into more than this. Yet, to me now, cooking is a statement that I can break expectations, stereotypes, and boundaries. Starring just blank papers and pencils, I aspire to promote the effect of this “create something from nothing” mindset. Though the mystery basket might be imperfection, I believe that anyone can recreate the recipe of achievement through this simple mindset.