Listen to the Rain

Yoshinoya is selling a riceless veggie-based gyūdon bowl.

This makes me really happy, because going out for cheap beef bowls after a night of karaoke, though at Sukiya or Nakau rather than Yoshinoya (specifically this one), was a tradition we had for years. Typical gyūdon is really heavy, though, a giant load of rice and meat, and eating that at 3 a.m. after spending four hours drinking and singing was certainly memorable but wasn't always the best idea. This is a version I'd eat repeatedly, especially since it only costs ¥540. But when I posted about it on Facebook, aaron.hosek correctly pointed out:

In America it will taste not as good and cost 15 dollars.

Which is sad but true--I'm looking at you, $16 ramen that would be ¥750 in Japan--but on the other hand, I could easily make this. I've made gyūdon before and it's easier than making oyakodon, where I still sometimes screw up the egg. Making a veggie version would be delicious, and it' something I should get under my belt. I'm already the go-to guy among my friends for Japanese food, both as a determinant of its quality and as someone who can cook it.

And that made me think...how come I can cook?

I was never taught how to cook when I grew up. My mother is a housewife and did all the cooking except for dessert, which my father cooked, and grilling, which my father also handled. So it was a pretty stereotypical middle class American childhood. But I realize that did provide me with a model of living where daily cooking was affordable and attainable, and where cooking wasn't some exotic skill but something that everyone could do. Even so, when I went away to university, I did for myself sometimes, but Penn had so many food carts offering cheap food that I'd usually just spend $5 on a giant Greek salad and get two meals out of it.

Sometimes I'd make food for friends, but I lived at home until schoolpsychnerd and I got married and I moved out. Then we sometimes cooked together, but when I worked at Suzugamine, she took over cooking and did basically alone for nine years, other than some rare occasions or when she was off on a trip. But after we separated I stepped right into cooking again and started making food like I had been doing it that entire time. And it's never felt overwhelming or hard to me. I even like it. And other people do too--luke.beasley.262 told me he's only enjoyed eating chicken twice in the last six months and both times I made it.

Some of it is just confidence from being able to look up a recipe for anything any time I want. But I also add spices to things all the time without checking interactions and it usually works. I guess I do have a talent for cooking that I developed passively, though being able people who cook and sometimes helping out, and it's provided me enough of a foundation that when I want to make new things, like when I made Japanese-Jewish food for my Seder, it works out. I just wish it was a process that I understood. My memory doesn't really have any "bad at cooking" stage, I just went from never cooking to making good food with nothing in between, and I feel like that can't be true. But I don't remember any part of the median stage of that leap.

Maybe it's just that I like doing it and feel like it's not unattainably hard thanks to early-life exposure. Not everything has a complex answer.