Yoyo Li shares about her experience cooking for her family.
I am scared of cooking. I am scared not because of the splattering hot oil or the sharp knife blade, but because of the choice. My entire life, I have been focusing on making the correct choice. When I was 8 years old, my parents would ask me every night on the way home from my Chinese after school program what I wanted for dinner.
Secretly knowing about our financial situation, I would always choose a convenient vegetarian stir fry over my dad’s steamed fish stew that secretly beckoned me. When I was in middle school, I would choose to help my parents grocery shop as opposed to going to my best friend’s pool party. In cooking, there is no “correct” choice, there are just choices.
The first time I cooked, there was no assistance, it was just me in an empty dark kitchen on the night of Thanksgiving in 2023. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to cook, because I could cook with recipes just fine. However, this time I had no recipe to follow, but regardless I wanted my dad to come home to a warm meal after eating bland hospital food for a week. I opened the fridge and cautiously chose the day-old rice, three small eggs and a stalk of celery that was hanging on for dear life.
I accidentally chose to crank the heat too high which resulted in slightly scorched rice. I purposefully chose to use soy sauce instead of sea salt to increase the fried rice’s flavor profile. A dish of slightly raw celery, undermixed egg and overly oily rice was served as fried rice that night which my family still ate gratefully. Although it was far from perfect, it was the first dish that I could finally call my own. With a Perspective, I’m Yoyo Li.