03 Nov 2025 ------------ Technically Unimportant Things (TuT): Cooking I didn't know how to cook before I was married. Even now, my meals can be as simple as a pack of oatcakes with sandwich cheese or simple bread with canned soup, when I am eating alone. Couldn't remmember why, but I started cooking after getting married. At first, it was simply pan seared fish, then overcooked steaks and simple pasta. No matter how easy the recipes seem to be, the execution always create unexpected results. Like the urge to turn the fish 1 second after it touched the pan, making it stick like wallpaper, or having steaks cooked just right on one side but fully well done on another side due to uneven heat with the home stove. I am not the type that carefully measure everything, so I think it added some uncertainties into the process. I still struggle to reproduce a few sauces which I seasoned with my creativity and unforunately, liked. I am sometimes too confident in my memory too, so one time I added 3 times the milk into what was supposed to be colcannon, wondering why I was making a milk stew. But generally speaking I think cooking is fun. It is like science experiments. Every time I remind myself not to repeat a past mistake, only to make another one because I have another random idea I suddenly want to try out. Another thing is that cooking really tests one's timing skill and ability to work in parallel. Sometimes you will have to start cooking something or at least heat the pan, boil some water while still preparing the ingredients. The first few times I cooked, it was super messy. Then I learned to plan in my head what I would be doing and what could be done in parallel before I picked up the knife. Helped a lot expect when I suddenly wanted to add some other spices that were not on the recipe. Not always the creativity yielded good results, but my wife always tell me that what I cooked for her was tasty. I think she really has a big heart. On the other hand, I actually am glad that I started to learn how to cook. My child, just like many other babies, went through milk then the likes of Ella's Kitchen or Little Freddie pouches when he was very little. But one day, he decided to not eat any of those baby food pouches anymore. We didn't know why but then I was thinking if he got tired of the baby food already, so I made a "mac and cheese" with only roux, milk, cheese and pasta. I hoped, but didn't believe. Then to my surprise, the little one ate the mac and cheese happily! I felt so relieved because my kid is the type that will rather be hungry than eating something he doesn't like. When he was one time in hospital due to allergy, he chose not to eat for a day until I brought him some cheese sandwiches...I was so happy that he was not sick or something, but just wanted to eat something else. Since then, we started needing to think about what to cook for the baby. Soft pasta, puree, baby congee, those worked for a while until the next cycle. When it came to the next this-food-sucks-I-don't-want-to-eat moment, I was guessing that maybe the kid want a little more complexity in the taste? I couldn't remember what I did, but in the end I betted on tomato and orzo. Like many classic early games, I cooked finely diced onions first, made them really soft but not brown. Usually kept stirring them for 10 minutes. Another pot would be cooking corns, green peas and carrots. Once the onions looked okay, plum tomatos would go in, a tea spoon of salt and sugar, a splash of milk and sometimes a little bit of baby cheese (less salty), followed by the corns, peas, carrots and dried basil. Orzo was cooked right after the corns and peas, giving the sauce some time to simmer. Finally mix the pasta with the sauce and done! My son loved eating the orzo. He ate a lot of what my wife cooked as well, until one day he stopped liking his food. I was going on a business trip and my wife was worried, wondering why the kid was not eating. Suddenly we got a hint that he might be teething. I taught my wife how to cook the orzo, hoping that the pasta was small and soft enough so that it didn't need too much chewing. The hungry baby ate big bowls of orzo and we got through another crisis. One time when we were in Edinburgh, we were in front of an Italian place that my wife wanted to go in badly. Our kid had another opinion - he wanted to go back to the hotel. We asked him why, and he said he missed his new toy train. We ended up going back to the hotel, with an angry mummy and a clueless child. The hotel was more like a serviced apartment so it had an open kitchen. We bought a jarred pesto sauce, some pasta, veggies, strawberries and crisps. I was worried that my son wouldn't like the pesto sauce, then he happily finished his plate and told me it was tastier than eating out, leaving his mum wordlessly munching her food. My son's plate is changing again recently, so I am experimenting with marinara sauce. It was quite difficult to catch becuase the first time I didn't cook it long enough. To me and my wife it was quite sour, but my kid said it was very good. The second time the garlic got pan fried for a bit too long. It was very nice for us but the kid didn't like it at all...Also every time it was like detective stories - when the kid said he didn't like the food, you have to think again and again what you did and what was different comparing to last time... My wife is way easier to satisfy. We usually have stew. Less washing after the meal! I like potato, carrot, onion, kale, and I can put them into Irish stew and pot roasts and eat lots of them. I was also trying to make our own bacon for bacon and cabbage, but not quite there yet. Cullen skink too needed some more practice. Occasional cooking surely is fun.