Up till today, one of the traits in cooking that my mom always frown at is making food sweet by adding excess seasoning. She frowns at it to the core, and if any of us do it and give it to her to eat, she would rain fire and brimstone on such a person, rubbishing the cooking habit of such a person.
When I was at home with family while growing up, I disliked my mom for that because food in our house didn't come out as sweet as the ones eaten outside (fast food), and the worst thing was that my female siblings, who were always on kitchen duties, were following her steps. I used to talk trash about their food whenever we were together, which sometimes led to me getting a small portion to recook, with my siblings laughing at how sneaky I was for doing that because if Mom caught me wasting her ingredients, it would mean a whipping gyration for the day.
Using beans as an example, when my mom cooked beans, she added just one cube of seasoning (Star Maggi), no matter how big the pot of beans was. She would say beans had its sweet taste already, and adding excess seasoning to sweeten it was a sign of lacking good cooking skills.
Although her beans would come out sweet with just one cube of seasoning, I didn't like it. I always wanted to eat sweeter beans like the ones I bought from a food vendor for my lunch when going to hustle for money.
Whenever they cooked beans, I would always get a portion of mine, wait for when she wasn't around, bribe my siblings with money, and go ahead to sweeten my beans by adding more onions and cubes of seasoning to make it to my taste.
Guess what?
It was when I left home that I saw the importance of her balanced seasoning in food. When I started cooking by myself at school, I saw that my food was always sweet due to the addition of excess seasoning, and sometimes I would find it very hard to finish the food because the sweetness was always in overdose. I didn't often buy food from eateries at school. The few times I did, I saw that most of the food was nothing but a mere addition of voluminous seasonings to make the food sweet.
During my second year in school, I had two roommates, one of whom was the chef because he loved to cook. He usually cooked English 'frying' dishes, meaning he fried everything with seasoning. One day, I was left to cook. It was Egusi soup, and when I was done, the two confirmed that I had cooked a real homemade food, as if they were eating food made by their mom at home. Lol 😅
The tradition of cooking like my mom is what I'm practicing till today, cooking very local meals that don't need excess seasonings to fall into place.
Thank you for reading.
This is my response to Ladies Of Hive contest #185;
Is there a special recipe or tradition that is associated with your mom (or mom figure) that you would love to share with us?
| All photos are mine |
