“When life gives you lemons, politely decline, then run for the hills,” – Ryan K Prasad
Let me start off by saying, I was not prepared for life in the UK. Starvation is a very imminent, very real issue that I tackled through sheer luck. You see, I come from a very simple family background which uses an incredibly limited food range to get by daily in Malaysia. My mother, with her extraordinary talents, kept us alive by mixing water and an assortment of spices to make curry.
That, and beans, we had lots of beans. Everyday.
And it is from her, that I was able to procure the secret recipes needed to make beans and curry. I had made a resolution to survive only on these basic foods, so that father would not have to send precious hard-earned money to feed me. However, life is rarely as simple as one makes it out to be, as little ol’ me would soon find out, life in fact had a lot more lemons to shove down my throat.
As I stepped into the well-heated doors of the local grocery store, to my dismay, everything that I had grown used to eating the past 21 years were either unaffordable or non-existent. And so for the first two weeks or so, I was forced to survive the harsh unknowns with multi-grain bread (on sale) and multivitamins. Fortunately for me, the cold weather messed up my appetite, and I was barely hungry at any given time.
Thinking back now, that was probably me going insane with hunger.
Just as every storm has its silver lining, things soon changed for the better, because the next time I went grocery shopping, I had Daniel come with me. You see, Daniel is a successful and very accomplished survivor/flatmate of mine. Nobody knows how exactly he had survived this long, because every time he cooks, he dumps our entire fridge’s contents onto the frying pan. That day in that grocery shop, Daniel showed me the secret to his longevity. As I laid my eyes on the aisle he was pointing at, my jaws hit the floor, and my eyes was instantly blinded by the holy light exuded by its fantastical prices.
It was pasta and tortillas!
Hence thereafter, everyday, I have had pasta and wraps of every kind. I found happiness. Little did I know, that was only the beginning of a wonderful journey into the whimsical world of food that would either cauterize or elevate the senses of my taste-buds. Daniel and I began to frequently cook together, concocting the most freakishly delightful meals anyone has ever seen. We make it a point to never use recipes, and make every meal an experiment, which meant it could go marvelously, or it could be an utter disaster.
It started off simple:
Mac and probably 15 different kinds of cheese
Then it got weird:
Mac and yuck: The Muck
Some days we went small:
Noodles and Chocolate Curry
Some days we went big:
VEGAN LASAGNA!
Sometimes we’d feel lazy:
Rice and er, veg….probably (no one really knows)
Sometimes we’d pamper ourselves:
GIANT PASTRIES!
None of us would claim that we know how to cook, but we sure do know how to play with our food. The experimentation with food goes on till today. Sometimes, it is said that if you listen closely, you may pick up the sound of Daniel cackling like a madman, dressed in his lab coat (he doesn’t own an apron), gleefully overseeing his cauldron of questionable content.
Well, at least I wasn’t hungry anymore. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I wasn’t joking about the lab coat