Everyone cringes when they get compared to their parents. It’s not the looks that bother me. I can tolerate being told that I have my father’s squat build, thick bones, darker skin and round face. I’m fine with being told that I have tiny, breakable wrists and a soft middle like my mother. It’s the personality traits that irk me.
I’m highly strung, like my mother. I am a control freak, like my mother. I like being indoors, like my mother. I cannot tolerate stupidity, like my father. I make inappropriate jokes, like my father. I like fading into the background, like my father. I like to keep an insanely well-stocked pantry to the point where a regular person would consider it hoarding, like the both of them.
I buy soy sauce, fish sauce and oyster sauce in bulk by the 4.5L drum. I skip over the retail section of spices and purchase them by the kilo. I have a 15L goon bag of extra virgin olive oil lying in the bottom of my pantry. I carry 25kg sacks of rice over my shoulder using my dad’s country genes and store them in buckets in the cupboard. Salt lives in 5kg pails. My collection of vinegars look like they belong in a grocer. I have an entire freezer dedicated to the dried seafood I have brought back from Hong Kong that I regularly dip into by the handful and sprinkle all over my cooking, but never seem to deplete. But if you compare it to my parents, it is nothing.
Every single Asian kid will tell you how their parents have multiple fridges and freezers. My parents live on their own and have three fridge/freezers, a stand-up freezer and two chest freezers. My nephew dragged me to the garage one day and asked me to open one of the freezers for him. He was disappointed because he expected to find icecream (which is what regular freezers are filled with) rather than bags and bags of frozen fish heads, steamed buns and pork bones. When I am asked to go and get a piece of meat or fish to defrost, it is a very dangerous game of 3D Tetris to; 1- find the protein they’re asking for, and 2- put everything back perfectly so the door will close because meat has been jammed in and frozen into very specific shapes that if you don’t put it back exactly the way you found it, you will have to defrost 38 years of hoarding and start all over again. Have I been served meat with freezer burn before? Yes. Did I die? Almost. Is there meat older than me in those freezers? Definitely. Why won’t my parent's throw away poisoned meat? Because they’re Asian and it could be useful one day. (My parents are also the age where they are shrinking and I genuinely don’t think they can reach the bottom of the chest freezer anymore.)
My dad has spent his retirement hammering reclaimed wood (off the street) to build floor-to-ceiling shelves in the garage to hold whatever is on special at the supermarket. Last time I was down there, there was an entire row dedicated to canned legumes (which I have never seen my parents eat), Listerine, toilet paper (this was before the great poo-demic of 2020), pineapple jam (which was discontinued when I was in primary school) laundry detergent (so old the labelling had been bleached by the sun) and dried noodles (vermicelli, mung bean, plain instant, thick rice, so mein). My parents could have survived lockdown 10 times over with the amount of food they have squirrelled away. Remember the great scare of Y2K? My dad joked that they had enough food to survive without even trying. No, I thought. You have been preparing for this moment your entire lives.
This is why I refer to my pantry as my Shame Cupboards. It’s proof that I’m my parent’s daughter. I couldn’t give two fucks about my chink eyes, my flat face, my Lockdown Mullet, the jumper I’ve adopted into my wardrobe from the lost property bucket from a job I had 10 years ago, the pair of Docs I’ve been wearing since I was a teenager or my adult acne, but one peep into my pantry and I’ll crumble into a mess of self-consciousness.
This is why I was surprised when I was lucky enough to visit Tony Tan at his new home and cooking school in Trentham. We made no plans. I just happened to be close by and dropped in for a cuddle and a cup of tea. He showed me around and with zero shame, he let me step into his pantry and it looked exactly like mine. There’s a wall of jarred and labelled spices organised with the best intentions. One side is dedicated to sweet cookery, another to western cookery, a giant jar of salted duck eggs in the making is sitting on a ledge (because that’s the only place it will fit), and buckets of dried goods used for herbal soups are neatly stacked on the floor. Oh, and a second fridge is hiding in the corner. Before I could even say hi, Tony turned the burners on under a few pots on his stove, rustled around in his second fridge, poured me a glass of wine, offered me different types of water and put together a five-component lunch. “I’m sorry it is so simple,” he said. “It’s just a few leftovers.” And then he sent me home clutching eggs plucked from his chicken coop.
My partner pointed out on the way home that it is cultural. When people pop over to our place, I don’t let them sit down without offering them water, a drink and enough snacks to qualify as a meal by rifling through the Shame Cupboards and the fridge. When I walk into my uncle’s house for dinner, he plans for the fact that I’m going to get there early by trying to shove snacks down my throat while he is finishing off a few dishes (you read that correctly, he feeds me before he feeds me). I have friends who would be horrified if they didn’t at least have a platter of something they could throw together if I popped by. By contrast, I’ve been invited into homes where water is apparently a scarce and precious resource, I’m left to die in the corner and I think to myself who raised you?
Well, I can tell you that I was raised by feeders and I’ve inherited the feeding gene (with equal input from both parents). I’m not hospitable because I’ve worked in hospitality, it’s because I would have failed culturally if I didn’t force-feed everyone like doomed geese as soon as they entered my home. But, there is a difference between what I do and what my parents do, and the fine line between having well-stocked cupboards and hoarding is one very simple thing: adhering to expiry dates.
Now, for some housekeeping. If you’ve read this far, I’m gathering you enjoy these newsletters. A word of warning, this will be the last free newsletter. Please subscribe if you enjoy understanding how neurotic I am. Don’t worry, it’s cheap- the cost of a cup of coffee per month, and less than that if you opt for a year. I know, I know, I’m breaking the bank. You can review the prices here.
What I’m reading:
I have about 75 pages left of A Little Life. I also just realised that once I finish this book, I would have gorged myself on three epic novels that have been difficult for my emotional digestive system. Please feel free to suggest a light, easy read with some humour before I lose the will to live.
What I’m listening to:
After her tragic death, Sophie.
What I’m eating:
I’ve been buying a lot of stone fruit and Padron peppers from the farmers’ market. The peppers are from Remi’s Patch and are fiery as fuck this year. The hot ones are more frequent than not and they leave me teary, red-faced and gasping for air with a heart rate of 82BPM. Proceed with caution. Thankfully, the sugar from the stone fruit has been soothing the burns.
What I’m watching:
I was put onto this food series produced by Apple Daily by an Instagram follower. I have been missing Hong Kong dearly and these videos did not help. Just a heads up, some of them have subtitles and some don’t.
Did you recognise your friend with a well-stocked pantry in this week’s newsletter?
Wanna start hoarding paid subscriptions?