After finishing high school in Hong Kong, I was half-reluctantly sent by my father to spend a year of prep school in a small town called Pennington in New Jersey, USA. My Aunt Patsy, who lived in Princeton, a short drive from my school, took me shopping at the local supermarket, which was an eyeopening experience as I watched her loading up her trolley with all sorts of groceries and supplies. A different way of shopping from the maid back home. She showed me how to cook lasagna, which was something new and rather exciting. My sister, who had arrived a year before me, took me out to have pizzas for the first time, which I had to learn to eat with my hand. At the school's dining room, I sampled macaroni cheese, French fries, Sloppy Joe and apple pie. It didn't take long for me to blossom from a slender size 8 to a size 12. I muddled through the year in spite of being painfully shy, culturally overwhelmed, and missing home. During Easter holidays, my Aunt Ming invited me to visit her in Syracuse, New York. I remember taking a train and a bus, stepping into a puddle of melting snow as I disembarked, staying at her grand old home, but most of all, learning how to cook, sew and crochet all during my short stay. Before I left, Aunt Ming gifted me with a cook book she had written, Chinese Cooking in American Kitchens. Written in the 70's when Chinese food would have been a novelty in America and Chinese ingredients were hard to get, Aunt Ming was ahead of her time. This book, with its cover yellowing and pages worn from years of use, still sits in my cookbook collection. For giving me a head start and inspirations in cooking, I am forever indebted to Aunt Ming.
Residing in dormitories, I never had to cook during my college years in San Francisco. After graduating, I landed a part-time job in a preschool. Armed with Aunt Ming's cookbook I began to cook for myself. Back from work in the evening in my little apartment, I first learned how to cook rice (without a rice cooker, that is, as I didn't have one). I then experimented with some of the easiest dishes in her cook book - fried rice, rice with ground beef, rice with chicken, with the television blaring to watch my favourite American sitcoms The Nanny or MASH at the same time. One-pan meals were my favourite. My father, now remarried to Amy, lived close by, and I often visited them for meals. Amy and her two sons from a previous marriage used to live in Japan and spoke fluent Japanese. An instant expanded family was formed with my father, my sister and I. It was Amy who first introduced me to Japanese food - sushi, tempura, teriyaki, donburi and more which she expertly prepared. When we were all home from college, the family would gather at the table for sukiyaki and endless conversations. Food in the 80's was diverse, relatively cheap and very accessible in San Francisco, but I couldn't get over the size of the portions. Everything was big and plentiful, if not too much. I enjoyed the clam chowder in sourdough bread at Fisherman's Wharf, dungeon crabs when they were in season and the delights of Chinatown. Or if you prefer a Korean barbecue, or fancy Mexican tacos or enchiladas, they were everywhere too. If I hadn't then move to live in New Zealand, there would have been little incentive for me to learn to cook.
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