Love — Blog — Healy Chen

Cooking for others

This era of high food prices is really causing me to rethink about outside food consumption. I don’t see a reason to pay $30 for a simple meal when I can make that same dish at home for cheaper, healthier, and with more meat. (As a consistently lifter of weights, more protein is always good.) The skills I learn cooking for myself and the recipes I keep will last an entire lifetime. The kitchen smells great, too.

The only tradeoff? Time commitment, of course.

Another joy to be found in cooking at home is in sharing the food with others. There’s a great motherly pride when someone eats the food that you’ve made and they absolutely love it. No wonder parents everywhere get their feelings hurt when their kids tell them a particular dish tastes not so great. All that love and attention in making the food, crushed in a moment of child-like honesty.

Is Thanksgiving not the epitome of sharing this kind of love? No one bakes a turkey for themselves (even a high protein eat like me have no need for a 20-pounder); it’s all about doing it for the culinary enjoyment of others. It would be entirely different - and loses its meaning - if an entire Thanksgiving feast is made to order. The time commitment is the point. Though the least the non-cookers could do is clean up afterwards.

This coming Thursday I hope you get the privilege to cook for those close to you.

Grow old together

On a leisurely stroll through the local park this Saturday, I encountered an old Asian couple having a picnic at the bench tables. Both looked older than my own parents, who are in their 60s. It was a beautiful scene to see. A loving couple, well into their golden years, still going out on a date. Both enjoying each other’s company and conversation, while eating a nice meal.

That’s just sweet, isn’t it? We’d all be so lucky to find a life partner like that. A loving relationship with the ultimate longevity. The type that can weather the ups and downs, well beyond the initial spark and illogical craziness. I’m sure the couple I encountered had to work hard through some shitty times to get to where they are. They understood the tradeoffs, and had no qualms with dealing with both the positives and negatives in choosing one another.

Or perhaps I’m merely projecting my own hopes and dreams to this lovely couple (I definitely am). Maybe they’d just met each other on an online dating app, (they’ve got those for older folks, surely) and this picnic at the park is their first date. But I doubt that. Asian couples of that generation tend to have stuck around with each other for a very long time. They didn’t have the options available to go do something else. A commitment was made, and that was it.

And if there were irreconcilable differences, they would stick together despite it. Either for the kids, or for the safety of money. There’s pros and cons to this too, obviously.

I feel like our generation have too many options. Dating apps, social media; everybody’s waiting for the person who is just right. Any sight of a red flag means game over. And why not? We’ve got access to so many others at the flick of a finger. It’s easier to give up than to work things through. Is this necessary better and improved? I honestly don’t know.

What I do know is it would be kind of wonderful to get to that picnic table with someone, in my old age.