There's a voyeur deep down in every one of us. Then for some of us, it's not that deep. 

I'll show you mine if you show me yours... 

Strangers in the night... exchanging trousers... wondering what's inside... 

Okay. Perhaps I'm on a sugar+caffeine high. Or perhaps it's the wind. I get carried away.

My pantry at the moment exists only in my head. We haven't secured our "home" in KL yet. No panic despite our one-way flight four days from now. But since we were talking about cooking at home earlier on, I might as well share with you my pantry list. My apologies for not having any photos as show-and-tell. Another day, maybe.

This has to be my final post on why we don't cook. Much had been said here and here, along with some practical ideas we can adopt. Or try at the very least. I can't think of much else to help ourselves so here's my last shot at it.

I've Never Cooked All My Life

Sad but true: some of us grew up not having done anything in the kitchen. By the time we left home, we relied on street food. Then we got married, have kids, and eventually find ourselves cornered because either we care about what our kids eat, or we find eating out a logistical challenge. But we never really learned how to cook. So how? What do you mean how? 

This follows from my blog entry earlier this week. Again, the disclaimer is there so I won't get dirty looks or not hear from some of my friends in future.

Street Food Galore

With the ever-increasing number of food trucks, food courts, hawker centers and mamak stalls, one starts to think "why bother?". And by the way, have you checked out The Big Group's newer eateries (they're expanding too fast at the expense of quality service and food, in my humble opinion) or the latest Din Tai Fung (err... the Singaporean one, not the one in KL) yet? Speaking of which, I'm also thinking of the Muar gluttons' street wantan mee... You see where we're heading? Exactly! Why bother cooking? 

Look, I love eating out too. But too much of a good thing can be bad for you. How many of us actually pay attention to the amount of pork lard in that serving of char kway teow? The sugar and condensed milk in our teh tarik? "But it just tastes soooo good!", we'd whine. Sure, when it does and we get thirsty, it's probably a few ounces of MSG in the broth. It is affordable and convenient after a day's work, no one's denying that. But what are we doing to our bodies? And again, what are we teaching our children eating out all the time? More importantly, the children can eat without you? No, I don't mean you should hold it against them, let me explain in a bit.

Big disclaimer before I continue: this is not meant to slam people who don't cook. It is also not meant to be sexist. Hence the generic "we" instead of "women" or "some people". 

Home-cooking is dying a slow death especially in big cities like Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Home-cooking is dying simply because we don't cook like our parents and their parents did. And here's a list of reasons why we don't cook, (based on what I observe around me) followed by some suggestions that could bring us back to cooking at home. I am unable to cover them all within a single posting but will continue with subsequent ones.

Negative first experiences

Some of us did try our hand at cooking. This is especially true when we left home for college, or when we started working and realized how our meagre paycheck couldn't afford our eating out every meal. So we started with instant noodles but grew tired of it. Then we thought, why not make our own steaks and mashed potatoes at home? But because nobody taught us and these we didn't learn from textbooks, we left the pan so smoking hot it triggered the smoke alarm. Or we blitzed the freshly boiled potatoes in the blender, never had we imagined the pressure within would be so great the cover gets blown off, and we spent the night wiping off random globs of spud in the kitchen. Never again.

Do you enjoy ironing? 

Sorry, let me rephrase... How does the thought of ironing make you feel?

I used to despise it and thus bought only clothes that didn't require ironing. Until I got married, had to iron some of the husband's shirts occasionally, still hated it though a little less, and later on, became more competent at it and have since grown to like it.

Most people dread ironing largely because they never really learned how to, let alone realized how their choice (or the lack thereof) of iron and ironing board can totally affect their experience. It's almost like driving a car. Before buying it, you would have asked: Are the seats comfortable enough to take you through a 5-kilometer jam? Does the dashboard look cool enough for you? How does the steering wheel feel? And the accelerator? Does the car say "you" all over? Will you and the vehicle become one on the road? 

Now I know some of you may laugh at what I've just said. Of course we'd ask ourselves 101 questions before buying a car! After all it is a major financial commitment we're signing ourselves to. An iron and the accompanying board cost no more than a couple of hundred bucks tops. Why think so much? 

Oh wait, before I continue: if you think ironing is something only maids do because they are paid and thus have no choice but to do so, you can stop reading now and get back to Facebooking. Otherwise, please carry on :)

It's Monday morning bright and early - 6:20am - at the KLM lounge at Schiphol: soft eclectic mix of music accompany the early (mostly tired nonetheless) business executives; delightful clinking of glasses and frothing of milk from the coffee machines at the food service area. And what truly draws the line between relaxing and relaxing: no smartypants monkeying around (yes, he's almost like Tom Cruise on Oprah's couch), only to outdo himself later by catching bubbles with his mouth, reporting his every achievement to the mother, who probably thinks her son is the world's most adorable kid, never mind that he's disturbing everyone else around. 

Smartypants aside, nor are there young, eager, first-time Asian parents who attend to their baby's cooing. (Seriously!) I'm not racist but I think it is just the Asian parenting style. Young mummy kept shushing the little one so that baby will sleep and not make noise. But she didn't realize she was the cause of annoyance because whenever she does her larger-than-life spin of "sshhh, ssshhhh, sssshhhh...... ssh, ssshhhhh.......", she could put the entire section of passengers to sleep. Just that we're all adults, hullo... One word to her: SHHHHHHHH.

This will be the last of my two-cents' worth on packing for moving. In the past week, we've been taking our own sweet time - no pressure in all honesty - collecting the stuff we've accumulated post-Singapore for packing. It's all over the FIL's house: some in our bedroom cupboard, or under the bed, others in JL's own bedroom (which had recently been taken over by the 7-year-old nephew whenever), and mostly in the UPS boxes from our time in Cambridge at the garage. 

Tomorrow the movers will come to pick up these ones, and the whole lot of the rest at the other garage (read: what used to constitute our "home" in Singapore). Apparently, the container will only be on the waters for 25 days. Add 10 working days or so to both ends of the customs, it should arrive in KL within 6-8 weeks. Fingers crossed that no fire incident onboard the ship this time!

Every few weeks, JL and I make a trip down to Singapore for many reasons: catching up with old friends, meeting people regarding work, dropping by the hairdresser's (hey I've been seeing him since the turn of the century!) and running errands (banks, post office). 

In between these, we also try to plan our meals revisiting our old haunts -- good old Singapore-style Hainanese chicken rice and dry beef horfun at Chin Chin; the sole mio pizza at Mario's; tandoori chicken and curry at Samy's; nachos and Asian grilled chicken wings washed down with golden ale at Brewerkz; rojak and sliced fish beehoon soup (with milk!) at Wisma's Food Republic; xiaolongbao, braised beef noodles soup and shrimp wanton noodles soup at Din Tai Fung (the one in KL Pavilion just couldn't cut it)... A long list which is limited only by the number of nights allocated for each trip.

We are such creatures of habit that we almost always order the same items at these places. Hence our broken hearts when we walked to our regular Japanese manga store cum home-cooked food café, only to be shocked by slabs of bare concrete walls through glass panels, not even the tiniest hint of what was previously there. I'd dare say for that few minutes, hunger was taken over by sadness.

It's been three days and memories of Bon Goût at Robertson Quay still linger on. The motherly Japanese lady boss and her younger hippy-chic assistant, the odd duo (one tiny Ah Pek and the other his exact opposite) working in the kitchen who'd sneak a peek at the diners when they were less busy, the sight of Japanese families quietly reading their mangas or magazines after a meal, the rice cookers and slow cookers sitting along the wall behind the service counter, and the unpredictable genres of music playing on the blue portable player near the cashier. 

Yes, it was so regular that we had even gone there both lunch and dinner on the same day. And I regret having only ever taken two photos there.  

It was through Bon Goût that I realized how a good home-cooked meal can be as simple as it is satisfying. It was the hippy-chic lady who said to use California-grown sushi rice (Kokuho, which eventually became our staple in Cambridge). It was the portable player that convinced me Céline Dion sounds only as great as the audio system through which her voice is amplified. 

I suppose the coffee table we have for our living room will always remind me of the tables and counter by which we used to sit at Bon Goût, as they are all of the same shade of wood. And the simplicity of a home-cooked Japanese meal inspired by their menu: udon with cod, naruto maki, and fresh greens in miso soup.  

We'll remember your pan-fried beef steak rice set with creamy carrot-potato salad; your curry rice where half the plate is covered with curry containing potato, carrot and onion, while the other half just white rice with neatly sliced tonkatsu resting on top, served with the most delightful salad of pickled cabbage and onion I've ever tasted; your fried chicken with negi sauce rice set; your stir-fried miso chicken with eggplant. 

And not forgetting your shoyu ramen, which had become our own little joke, as JL would say "I'll shoyu ramen" when he really means "I'll show you". So thanks for the good-tasting memories and inspiration, and I secretly hope that one day, my collection of pretty little stoneware dishes will be as widely assorted as yours. One day.