Prattle

My brother has been slacking in keeping updated with my doings. I swear, you regular readers of my blog know more about what's happening in my life than he does sometimes! His mounting pressures and hours at work made it difficult for us to chat in real-time mode.

So yesterday, I was pleased when he announced (in real-time mode) that he had read my latest entry on the Five Find-Outers.

"Bettie sounds like a real vainpot!" was his comment.

I grinned cheerfully, "Yes, she is, isn't she?"

His eyes narrowed suspiciously, "Are you writing about yourself?"

"What do you mean?" I asked, all innocence.

"Well, are you anything like Bettie?"

I pondered for a while. While it's true that writers sometimes mould their protagonists to be their alter ego of sorts, not ALL writers do that. Still, my brother's sincere question deserves an honest answer.

"Only on my bad days, bro," I sagely said. "Only on my bad days."

To be fair, I feel I must also include my cooking gaffes to balance my [url=http://www.coolcatalyst.com/index.php?id=P281]resume[/url].

Once when my parents were overseas and I had the kitchen all to myself, I had this great desire to make my very own wantan noodle. How hard can it be anyway? Just get some wantan wrappers, minced meat and put them together. Easy peasy. During work meetings that day, I was fantasizing on where to get the ingredients and how heavenly it would taste. I floated to the supermarket as soon as I could and did my shopping happily. I couldn't wait to get home!

As soon as I reached home, I got to work. Put some water into the pot to boil, put some salt into the ready-made minced meat and then put the meat into the wantan wrapper. Ooops, the wrapper broke. I must have stuffed too much meat in it. Never mind, next one then. When I had about 8-10 wantans, I put them all into the pot to boil.

To my horror, the wrappers started to uncurl exposing the meat inside. Gosh, what did I do wrong? How come the wantan noodle sellers made it look so simple??

Oh well, no sense wasting the stuff. After it looked cooked, I called my brother down for dinner. He gave the broth a funny look and asked, "What is it? Is it edible?"

"It's wantan soup," I patiently told him. "It may not look much like it, but it should taste quite similar. Try it."

I was wrong. The whole thing tasted quite awful. Both of us took a bite and gagged.

"Ok, now why don't I whip out some instant noodle for the both of us?" I said cheerily.

My brother brightened up, "Oooh, yes please! You make the best instant noodle!"

And that was the last time I experimented on cooking something as exotic as wantans.

Ok, one of my guy friends confided that his mother's marinara pasta tasted quite... yucky. That just confirms my theory (and experience) about guys being better cooks than girls.

Now, he's asking me if I can cook.

Garn, I don't get that asked of me very often. I mean, throw any stone at any girl these days and chances are, they'll say that they don't cook. And it's never too late to pick up cooking when necessity strikes.

Once, I had a cookout with a guy friend - he wanted to impress me and I wanted to impress his dad. Our cooking that day could rival any decent Chinese restaurant, let me tell ya. And his dad kept telling me about the things I did right with my sweet and sour chicken dish. That made me wonder who's trying to impress who. Heh.

The second big cookout was last year where I single-handedly whipped out a dishy spaghetti bolognaise complete with musroom soup for my family.

Thus far, those were the successful local cookouts that I had in the recent years. The others that took place during uni days involved a lamb curry dish, roasted chicken, masala chicken, black chicken and potato salad. We used to like hosting small dinner get-togethers at our flat every now and then.

Now, with dad in the kitchen, I hardly ever get the chance to cook other than the occassional instant noodle. So, you can't really blame me for not having a more impressive cooking resume, eh?