Take Cover!

I just came back from the warzone - otherwise known as our kitchen. Factions are forming and tension is building up. I went inside the room and switched on my machine to seek temporary shelter from the heat of the activities – heat, literally and figuratively.

Our household help picked the most inopportune time to not be around - the time when I am the one who’s around (and these chances are just so few and far in between). And so, here I am: programmer during the workweek, dakilang kusina alalay during this New Year long weekend. I switched my keyboard and mouse for the knife and chopping board. Writing codes for washing plates. Ok, enough of the analogies. You get the picture.

My official duty is to prepare the ingredients. Peel, pare, slice, chop. You need it done, I’m the one to go to. I’m a lean, mean, ingredient prepping machine – or something like that. Now here’s the thing. Apart from the usual dishes we prepare during the holidays, my mother and sister each has their own addition to our Media Noche menu. Let’s call them their “baby recipes”. Mama is cooking paella and Mae is cooking penne. Actually, the official names of these recipes are longer and harder to remember, something that is descriptive of how they are prepared and some of the key ingredients. You know, like “Baked penne in creamy tomato-based smoked bacon sauce”. Can you imagine if fastfood is named liked this? I’ll have one “grilled burger patty, lettuce, and cheese in between two bread smeared with dressing”. Whew. What a mouthful, even before you get to eat anything.

So anyway, there I was, resigned to my fate, chopping meat and vegetables as they are pushed to my face. And I was asked the question. The question. Whose garlic am I chopping? And I thought to myself, they’re garlic, they belonged to nature before humans forcefully took them out from their comfort. But I’m glad I didn’t say it out loud since Mama and Mae were in no mood for my sarcastic humor. Apparently, there is now delineation on the ingredients I was preparing. Before I do anything, I had to ask if it was for the paella or for the penne. And how would it be cut specifically and which side of the kitchen it would be stationed. Requirements specification. Darn it, I can’t escape it even at home.

One thing you have to know about my mother and my sister – they are so similar in their personalities. Domineering, outspoken, and highly opinionated. No wonder they clash so often. Me? Whenever they begin an argument on the size of mushrooms, for example - I just take a sudden keen interest on my chopping board (“What a weird shape for a bell pepper…”). Oh, and they’re both indecisive as hell. I diced one carrot – because that’s what I’ve been informed in the verbal specs – but when my mother saw it, she asked me why it was that way. I told her - not without a little incredulity and volume increase in my voice - that it was what she told me to do. She casually said that she changed her mind, and would want them in semicircles instead. HK, is that you? (Sorry, Azeus inside joke.)

But it’s fun. It’s not too often I get to join the family dynamics. We get to exchange laughter and even our white sauce now has its own soundtrack which we sing together: “Béchamel, béchamel mucho…” Ah, craziness. It indeed runs in the family.

They’re calling me for another round of preparations. Wish me luck and a shrapnel-free New Year’s Eve.