Kids; just listen It pays

For some, cooking is a hobby. For others, it's a craft. But for me, as a mother of three kids, it's a must. Cooking is the art of life, everyone must know how. Because food fuels our everyday life, we need to learn it and how. Imagine yourself; eating raw foods every time you want to eat, it's not a joke. So, at the age of twelve, I was lucky enough my parents are so fond of cooking the food we ate daily. And that's what I'm doing too, to my kids nowadays. I hadn't gone to a cooking or culinary arts school as well, but i can prove it, that I can cook and I loved cooking. So, allow me to tell you, how i started to do it and enjoy doing it for my family, relatives, friends and to other people whom sometimes I do not know.
I belong to a big family, my parents, my five brothers and my two sisters. I was the second child, in the family of eight children. The eldest is a boy. Since there's a lot of mouth to be fed, the budget and the kind of food to cook was always my mother's concern, all of the time and even my father too. Because, he also loves cooking and eventually, he's much better than my mother.
I can't remember when I started cooking, but I can exactly recall how I learned to do so. It was a mid-year of 1974, when my father was hired as a night club cashier in Olongapo City. In that same year, my mother brought us to Olongapo City to spend our summer vacation. It was my very first time to travel that far from our province. I really love the place, though the house we were renting was quite small.
Since, I was the only girl in the family and my mother did the marketing, she would ask me to go with her every time she went to the market. In the market she taught me, how to choose the food that were in season and that were good to eat; especially meat, fish, vegetables and fruits. Every time we went home from the market, after taking her cup of coffee, she will call me up to help her in cooking the family food for lunch. At first I was very hesitant to help her. By the time she would called my name, I'd rather asked her, " Why me?” Why not my older brother, Arman? Then mother would look at me and would said, you're the only girl in the family so you must learn how to cook, instead of your brothers. Those words from my mother would calm me down and encourage me to start helping her in the kitchen. That was my routine from the very first day, which we arrived in Olongapo City for a vacation.
Two months passed by, we had to go back to the province for our studies, leaving my father behind, because he had a work to attend to. It was a very short time, but, what my mother had taught me gets into my system well. I'd learned a lot from my mother, of what she had told me and I listened to her well at that time. She died in September of 1992, but everything she taught me about cooking remains in me. And I did, practiced it everyday for my family. Thanks to her; my mother.